Malaysia - Penang and Langkawi

Another holiday. I know. Sickening isn't it? Just back from Bali and off again to Malaysia. Two reasons, one - it's half term, two - the outlaws (the DFP's family) are in town.

Penang and Langkawi are both islands off the north-west of Malaysia. Penang is famous for its old buildings and delicious food and Langkawi as the pearl of the tropics.

In Langkawi we stayed in a wooden villa on the tropical cliff side overlooking the sea. There were two very friendly cats, a mother and her little black kitten. By our final day there I had fed them enough milk and cheese slices for them to grace my lap. They curled up there like fury yin and yang. It made me very happy.

We hired a boat for a day to snorkel, swim in a mountain lake and eat an amazing barbeque lunch on a beach. Proper tropical island paradise beach stuff.

The mountain lake. So deep the DFP was able to dive into it to his hearts content. 

One of the social bi-products of 9/11 has been that Arab holiday makers have found themselves less welcome visitors to some countries. They're given lots of grief at passport control and are travelling in greater numbers to Langkawi. The owners of the place we were staying told us they vet their guests and tell Arab enquirers that they're fully booked, which I found disquieting.

Their reason was that people felt uncomfortable seeing be-burka-ed women sitting on the balcony swathed entirely in black. I don't agree with discrimination but did feel a bit odd while trying to struggle discreetly in or out of a swimming costume on a beach and being passed by a woman dressed from head to toe in voluminous black with only eyes and hands visible. Her husband next to her in shorts. I would suddenly feel very self concious and a bit of a tart.   

You may remember how much I loved crumbly, old Mumbai. I miss old in shiny, new Singapore. I am constantly bewailing the bulldozers knocking down anything with age and character to make way for yet another condo. This happens a lot at the moment in Geylang. There's a big push to build lots of new apartments and it feels as though 80% of them are being built around the corner from our flat.

Penang satisfied my appetite for old and crumbly. It's a UNESCO heritage site, twinned with Malacca. Malacca is also in Malaysia but at the bottom end only two hours by bus from Singapore. 

In the mid eighteenth century Captain Francis Light, under the auspicious of the all prevalent East India Company, leased Penang beginning several centuries of British involvement. The British legacy is still everywhere, literally underfoot. You see Staffordshire tiles again and again, ironwork from Glasgow and in amongst the Chinese shop-houses find colonial grandeur rotting away, though not rotting at the speed and extent that it does in Mumbai.

We stayed in a wonderful heritage hotel right in the centre of Chinatown, The Campbell House Hotel www.campbellhousepenang.com, recently refurbished by an extremely on the ball expat couple. They've got every detail right. It's quirky and tasteful, comfortable and beautiful. There are those lovely little details which make all the difference. In the fridge in every room instead of overpriced snacks you find a bottle of complimentary iced lemon tea. The shower is amazing. So is the coffee machine. When we arrived one of the owners, Nadya, was there to meet us, tell us where to park, the best places to eat in the area and what to see the next day. Very, very impressive.

Note the Staffordshire tiles!

We wandered around looking at old buildings and eating whenever we had the appetite to. Penang is famous for its food and deservedly so. One of the dishes it claims as its own is char kway teow. This fried dish of thick, flat rice noodles and seafood is common in Singapore too, but Malaysians swear you can only get the real deal in Penang. Very tasty.

My favourite trip was to the Cheong Fatt Zhe Mansion. Cheong Fatt Zhe left China at sixteen with only the clothes on his back and, of course for this to be a story worth telling, became massively wealthy. He had a finger in every pie: railway pie, bank pie, building pie, British and Dutch pie. So of course he needed a house to match. Well, he needed lots of houses to match and he built one of them in Penang. 

The guided tour was led by one of the team of architects who had bought the house in 1990. In his will Cheong Fatt Zhe said that no one could inherit from his estate until after his last son died. He had eight wives and fathered his last child at 74. He died in 1916 and his last son didn't die until 1989.

By the time he died every single inch of the house had been let out to pay for its upkeep. The grand entrance hall was full of cooking stoves; motor bikes drove in and out; washing lines were strung from the fine wooden carved screens; someone was running a hairdressing salon and hundreds of families were living there. They all had to be paid off before the renovations could begin. It's well worth a visit. The house and it's history are as fascinating as he clearly was.

So please add Penang and Langkawi to your list of places to visit. Here are some more pictures to whet your appetite for travel....

Bali

B-ahhh-li. Bali. Land of 'Eat Pray Love', of rolling beaches, palm trees and of green rice terraces. Calm, relaxing Bali.

Or not. We both look at though we went to Bali to do a bit of cage fighting. I'm exaggerating. But we are both battered and bruised.

Three days before we left the DFP came up to me looking perky and pleased.
'You realise', he said, 'you realise that you've booked us in for a surfing holiday, ha ha.'
'No I haven't. We're going to have lovely relaxing massages and visit temples'.
'We're staying in a place renown for surfing. You chose a place for us to stay in that you go to specifically to surf. We're going to get up every morning and go surfing for a couple of hours.'

Darn. He's right. I did. Not so much B-ahhh-li as crash-bash-bang Bali.

Balian Beach where we stayed for the first three nights is a surfers paradise. The sand is volcanic black and sparkling. The waves are huge. It's a very experienced surfers paradise. Not a beginners surfers paradise.

I had researched carefully and found an exquisite resort designed by a French architect with it's own private beach. But that was too expensive so we stayed at the place next door, which though not so swish it was very nice.

We arrived late on Thursday night and woke up to this view the next morning.

Not bad eh? At the bottom of the garden was a cove with the enormous waves that characterize Balian crashing hard on the black rocks.

We walked along the cove and on the neighbouring beach could see what looked like black seal heads until the seals jumped up and surfed their way to shore.

At the beach the DFP went and enquired about hiring surf boards and having a lesson. I was feeling a bit nervous about the size of the gigantic waves. The man asked if we had surfed before then told us it was too dangerous for beginners and to come back later.

We did. The waves were still enormous. We decided to have a go anyway.

For those, like me, who have never been surfing before this is what happens. They give you an enormous board which you attach to one foot with a plastic cord and ankle strap. It feels like an floating ball and chain. You paddle out and then when a wave comes you try and jump up and stand on the board. Then you are immediately knocked off the board and have a washing machine experience of being churned around in the foam, swallowing mouthfuls of salty water and with only a vague idea of which way up is. Or you grip onto your board for dear life and are rocketed forwards towards the shore and the black rocks.

I didn't like it. It felt scary. I am usually, I hope, fairly game but after three attempts I told the DFP I hated it and went off to get a cup of tea. He was very nice about it and continued being tossed around himself but didn't make it to standing. Quite soon he joined me for a beer.

The sunset was amazing over the beach. We had a drink and something to eat but the whole of Balian, which is one street on the beach front dotted with guest houses and bars, closes down at about 10pm and goes to bed ready to be up surfing early the next morning.

We hired a scooter the first day but partly due to the long distances and partly due to my poor navigation skills didn't managed to get to the temple I wanted to reach. We also managed to fall off, adding to the surfing cuts and bruises. So the next day we hired a car and driver to take us around.

In touristy Ubud (see Eat, Pray, Love and Elizabeth Gilbert wittily finding herself) we visited the monkey temple and royal palace (which is about the size of our flat but with an impressively carved gate) and had babi guling (suckling pig with ginger, galangal, lemongrass and garlic fried up as a sauce) for lunch. Delicious.

Driving into Ubud you pass lots of carvers shops selling tantalizing wooden furniture, unfortunately too large for hand luggage. We stopped and the DFP asked one to make him four wooden blocks for doing handstands on, about brick size. When we came to collect them on the way back they had made them exactly to his specifications. Except in size. Tiny dolls sized blocks, perfect for Barbie to practise her handstands on. In the half hour it took to make a new set we wandered around and I bought a couple of Balinese masks.

When we moved to Asia I thought I would take the opportunity to learn about the famous forms of theatre - particularly Balinese mask. I haven't so far but had great fun in the shop checking whether the masks would play. The fat old lady in the shop even put one on and joined in.

A really good mask will change expression as the wearer changes head position and if, like these, it's a half mask and covers half the face, expression. It's amazing to watch an inanimate object come alive- one mask change expression from happy to sad to bashful to proud. I love mask work.

What I had been told about Balinese masks is that they are traditionally used for religious ceremony rather than theatrical performance.

While I was at Lecoq (physical theatre school in Paris) Julie Taymor (director of the musical 'The Lion King) who had studied there precociously at sixteen came and spoke to us. She talked about spending a month in Bali and living with the people in a small village there and eventually watching a mask ceremony. How they chanted and went into a trance like state where the masks inhabited them as they wore them. Later that day I had a chance to see Balinese masks at play worn by normal people rather than actors at Tanah Lot.

We reached our final stop of the day the temple, or pura, Tanah Lot for sunset. With all the other tourists. The guide book is extremely sniffy about the whole experience and while it wasn't particularly spiritual with all the sellers and tourists it was breathtakingly beautiful as the sun set over the water.

For our final night I had booked us into a posher beach front hotel in Legian or Kuta. Kuta is renown for drunken Australian tourists and it's amazing surf.

The guide book says the break is long and even. I don't actually know what that means except that the waves aren't enormous and frightening but small and friendly. We got a surfing lesson. 'You don't pay if we don't get you standing by the end of the lesson', they said. 'Are you sure? Are you sure you want to make that bet? Are you sure you can get me standing?' I said. I asked my teacher his name. 'Dude', he said.

I expect Dude is an extremely good surfer. His chest is toned. His tan glows. His hair is long and curly. Dude tried hard to teach me to surf. I tried hard to learn. As the lesson went on he became increasingly frustrated with me.
'Just stand up! I don't understand why you aren't doing what I'm telling you to. Just stand up!'
How to explain? Eventually I stood up long enough to ensure payment. His relief was visible. But his temper didn't improve.

We went out surfing again the final morning. So in the end perhaps I did, inadvertently, book a surfing holiday. Perhaps not what I had envisaged, but a beautiful, memorable and enjoyable holiday all the same.