Penang, Malaysia

Sunday December 17th, Penang Malaysia

Penang, with a population of 1.74M is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay Peninsula. These two halves are physically connected by the Penang Bridge and the Second Penang Bridge.

Miscellaneous information:

-There is normally a 70 percent or more turn out to vote.
-Malaysian govt. subsidizes petrol, sugar, flour, rice, and cooking oil.
-Electronics manufacturing is very high.
-Tourism is also a key industry.
-Penang is said to be a three and one experience. You can come here and experience Chinese, Indian and Malaysian food all in one place.

Our tour today was called " The Grand Tour of Penang." We stopped first at the Kek Lok Si Temple, home of ten thousand Buddhas.
The architecture of the temple tower is a mixture of three countries. On the top it is Burmese, in the middle Thai, and at the bottom Chinese. There was lots of incense burning (irritating smell to us after a while) and gold statues. It is one of the largest and finest temple complexes in southeast Asia. On our drive to the temple, we saw a large group of men with black robes walking along the road. We were told that these were monks who were going to have a ceremony to initiate them into the temple.

Our next stop was at a spice and fruit market. The stop was a perfect setup for a disaster. The road had only two lanes and the busses took up all of the one lane. That meant that the remaining lane had to be used for traffic coming both ways and all of us tourists viewing the fruit stalls. Don got bumped on the arm from a car coming from behind. The selection of spices was huge, and our guide did a great job of showing them to us, allowing for smelling and tasting.

We went to Entopia- The Voices of Nature. Entopia is divided into two distinct areas. The one area called Nature Land contained the butterfly building, the world ‘s first butterfly farm established in 1986, renovated and reopened May 2, 2016. It had about 15,000 free flying butterflies made up of 60 different species. They were everywhere, and the nice thing was that they had laid out blossoms on low racks and the butterflies would land on these blossoms and you could see them up close and take pictures. They even laanded on our clothing.There was also an area called the Cocoon with over 150 species of fauna and 200 species of flora on display in recreated open air natural environments, for all sorts of living spiders, lizards, frogs, snakes, and other reptiles in their natural environment. Fortunately, all of the exhibits had excellent descriptions in English.

On our approach to the location for lunch, Don noticed a sign that read Batu Ferringhi and he said, this sounds familiar. As we drove through the entrance gate, there was a sign showing the resorts name “The Golden Sands” and Lee said I think this is the hotel we stayed in 30 years ago! After arriving Lee found out that it was built in 1979, which confirmed it. Before we left, Don walked down to the beach through the swimming pool and children’s play area, and it was as fabulous as we remember only bigger. We were quite excited about the memory.

Our last stop was at the Chung Keng Kooi Mansion. Chung Keng Kooi was born in China, created a fortune and lived a wealthy man until he died in 1901 at the age of 74. It was believed that he held properties valued at 10 million dollars. He owned ten tin mines and several farms. His family continued to live in the house until it was requisitioned by Japanese officials during World War Two. No one lived in the house for more than 60 years and it fell into disrepair. Peter Soon, an architect by profession and also a very wealthy man bought it in 2000 and restored the home as closely as possible to its original condition. It is filled with priceless pieces from the Victorian age.

We returned to the ship and spent some time on the deck, swimming and in the hot tub and then went down for wine and canapies in the Navigator Lounge before dinner in the Compass Rose. The show for tonight was a ventriloquist, whose name was Jerry Goodspeed. He was very good.Lue lisää