Travel to Malaysia
August 23, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Penang News, Travel
Since budget airlines started extending their wings with long-haul flights, you can get to South East Asia for less than £200 each way.
And with internal flights from as little as £35 and cheap accommodation, it’s perfectly possible to have a three-week holiday of a lifetime to Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam for just under £1,000. Here’s how I did it…
Days 1&2: Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia You can’t go to KL without a trip up the Petronas Towers, until 2004 the world’s tallest buildings. But get there early – there are limited free passes and people start queuing at 8am.
The other must-seeis the 400million-year-old Batu Caves 10 miles outside the city (Sri Subramaniam Temple, Selayang, taxi £4, entry free). The most popular Hindu shrine outside of India is home to mischievous macaque monkeys and the world’s tallest statue of Murugan, a Hindu deity covered in 300 litres of gold paint.
Eat: Cheapest – and tastiest – are the hawker stalls, where you can eat handsomely and still get change from a fiver. Try the pedestrianised Jalan Alor and dine with the locals outdoors on plastic tables.
Sample the famous Malay chicken satay or whole steamed fish with lime, chilli and ginger. Stay : Number Eight guesthouse (8-10 Tengkat Tong Shin, 603 2144 2050, www.numbereight.com.my) is a buzzy boutique style budget hotel with doubles from £17pp.
Days 3 to 6: Pangkor
After a long flight, me and my group of friends were ready to hit the beach – especially Coral Bay, a gorgeous palm tree covered cove with emerald sea and views of a pretty island that you can walk to when the tide is out.
Eat: At Daddy’s Cafe, right on Coral Beach, dine by candlelight on Malay chicken curries and fresh fish with fancy veggies for around £4 for a main course.
Stay: Splash out at the Anjungan Beach Resort and Spa (6610 Nipah Bay, 05 685 1500, www.anjungan resort.com, doubles from £30), close to Coral Bay.
Getting there: Pangkor is four hours by coach from KL. Take a taxi to Puduraya station and go to the Transnational counter (tickets around £5, call 03-20705044) where buses leave for Lumut several times a day. From Lumut it is a 35-minute ferry ride to Pangkor for £2 return.
Days 7&8: Penang
It’s worth heading up to Penang Hill for spectacular views of the island. Refresh your feet at a fish spa where garra rufa fish nibble away at the dead skin on your tired feet. Try Happy Feet Fish Spa (3a Jalan Sungai Emas, 604 229 6916).
Eat: Little India is a highlight with stalls selling snacks beyond the usual samosa and pakora. Also try out Woodlands Vegetarian Restaurant (60 Lebuh Penang, 04 263 9764), which is packed with local Indians all times of day and night enjoying the delicious grub for under a pound – rice, dhal, potato masala, raita and a sweet.
Stay: Cathay Hotel (15 Lebuh Leith, Georgetown, 04 262 6271, double rooms from £12) is an old Chinese mansion with bags of character in the centre of Georgetown, Penang’s “downtown”.
Getting there: Catch the ferry back to Lumut, a bus to Butterworth (five times daily, £4), then the ferry from the station there to Penang (20p) and finally taxi or rickshaw to your hotel.
Jazz For Everyone-G Spot Special
August 7, 2010 by MFA
Filed under G Spot Jazz, Live Music, Music, Penang News
Come and join the vibrant experienced jazz vocalist Cy Winstanley performing live at G Hotel from August 2nd until October 23th…
Penang: Riches of the Orient
When his father lived in Penang in the Fifties, it was an enchanting island. Alistair Fraser retraces his steps and finds that much of the magic survives.
Alistair Fraser
I barely noticed the tree stump. The wood was grey with age and the creepers snaking around its base were pulling it back into the forest. Then I saw a small sign, half-hidden in the undergrowth: on this stump, Allied prisoners of war were beheaded by their Japanese captors. I looked closer. The flat surface was marked by several deep grooves.
This discovery was typical of Penang’s open-air war museum. The site was originally built to protect the island during the 18th-century Spice Wars, then fortified by the British during the Second World War before they surrendered to the Japanese, who turned it into a prison camp.
There are no interactive displays or carefully curated artefacts here, just some crumbling buildings in a jungle clearing, a couple of rusting bed frames in concrete dormitories and a few faded, black-and-white photographs.
Visitor information is scarce. Instead, you’re left to wander along overgrown footpaths, sweating from the exertion, and imagining the horrors that took place in this stifling hell.
On my way back to George Town, the main city on the island of Penang, I passed the old harbour-side buildings where my father worked as a young man. After serving in India during the war, he came to what was then Malaya to take a job with a tobacco shipping company. He was a quiet man who rarely talked about his past.
But sometimes he’d reminisce about this faraway country full of charming people, lush scenery and the best food he’d ever eaten. I was intrigued by a place that made him so animated. Would its magic be passed through the generations?
Having accompanied me to the war museum, my driver and guide, Alan Chew, dropped me back at the Eastern&Oriental, a white wedding-cake of a hotel where British colonial types used to socialise when Malaya was still part of the Empire.
This elegant waterfront building has kept its traditional style and as I nursed a beer in its comfortable bar, I felt surrounded by the ghosts of a ruling class, sipping their pink gins beneath a lazily swirling fan, playing a few hands of bridge or making arrangements for a weekend in one of the cool hillside stations.
After dark, I left for town. Walking was the easiest option. George Town has a wide choice of cuisine and so many places to sample it, from fancy restaurants and noisy, neon-lit diners to street stalls, all within a few hundred yards of the hotel.
I stepped around a couple of men who were sprawled on the pavement playing dominos using a home-made board and bottle tops for counters, then passed a group of weary locals at a bus stop, and caught the eye of a beautiful woman, who smiled and said hello as she emerged from a gloomy doorway.
I can see why my dad loved this place. Here is a friendly, multi-cultural society that seems to work. Malaysians, Indians and Chinese appear to live together happily, their cultures and religions separate but respected.
In this spirit of racial harmony, I decided to have a multi-national meal. First, I stopped at a busy restaurant full of Chinese families, where a man in singlet and shorts was scurrying around and shouting a lot.
He could have been demented but was probably the waiter, so I asked him for a bowl of noodles. The other diners smiled, their children stared, and the noodles were delicious. For my next course, I walked a few streets into the Indian quarter and had a plate of tasty sizzling tandoori chicken at an open-walled restaurant.
Then I wandered for a while, taking in the activity and enjoying the warm night air and exotic smells (excluding the stinking open drains), before heading back to the hotel. The domino players were curled asleep on the pavement. And the same pretty woman was emerging from the same doorway as before. “Hello, honey,” she smiled. I looked at her stupidly. Hang on a minute. Surely not. In a Muslim country?
Next morning, Alan Chew took me to the vast temple of Kek Lok Si. The ornate and elaborate pagoda of 10,000 Buddhas is seven storeys high and visible for miles, yet is still dwarfed by a 90ft bronze statue of the goddess Kuan Yin. What a broad-minded religion, I thought, to celebrate a female deity with such extravagance.
And then we walked into a large chanting hall for reincarnation and guidance and there, in a corner, almost hidden behind burning incense holders and elaborate icons, a young, shaven-haired nun stood at an ordinary kitchen ironing board, smoothing the wrinkles from silk tablecloths. Judging from the pile still to be ironed, she had plenty of time to wonder what she’d done in a previous life to deserve this.
The chores of one woman reminded me of those being carried out by another the previous night. Her brazen manner puzzled me. They have religious police here. You can be locked up if caught in a hotel room with someone who’s not your spouse. As we drove to a restaurant for lunch, I told Alan I was surprised to see prostitutes openly working the streets.
He shifted in his seat. They are foreigners, he muttered, probably Indonesian. Perhaps it was rude to have mentioned it because an uncomfortable silence grew between us. To lighten the atmosphere, I said, with gormless enthusiasm, “She was very beautiful, though!” Alan glanced at me. “He was not a real woman, Mr Fraser.”
As we tucked in to a Penang noodle speciality of Char Koay Teow, I asked Alan how he socialised. In my wanderings I had seen plenty of restaurants and lots of specialist shops (mainly jewellers guarded by men pacing outside with crude-looking rifles) but nothing much to indicate that people engaged in other pastimes – no bookshops, or B&Qs, no cinemas that I could see, or sports fields. What do people do?
“I’m a workaholic and so is my wife,” he said evasively. Yes, I persisted, but you must have some time off. “Well” – he looked uncomfortable again – “… we eat a lot.” He explained that as dining out is cheap and the restaurants so plentiful, meals can last all day.
People move from one place to another for each course: soup here, noodles there, a main course somewhere else, a pot of tea up the road, followed by dessert in that place on Chulia Street. And that’s just lunch. Then it’s time to think about dinner, and the whole ritual begins again. The well-fed Mr Chew seemed to fit his name rather well.
Before catching a ferry the next day to the island of Langkawi and the next leg of my trip, I strolled around Penang once more looking for Oriental objets d’art that would remind me of the pieces my parents had in their house. In tiny open-fronted shops along many of the busy streets, various artisans were at work.
I saw an Indian goldsmith shaping a wedding ring, a tray placed beneath the vice to catch every little shaving of his precious metal. Across the road, a grumpy Chinese calligrapher with alarming purple-black toenails was carving an elegant sign in Mandarin from a large block of wood. Farther along, in a hat-making shop little bigger than a wardrobe, I watched a nimble-fingered man make a fez, which he then boxed and added to a tottering pile behind him.
The Datai hotel on Langkawi was the very opposite of Penang: luxurious, wealthy – and dull. Everyone was there to relax rather than explore. It could have been anywhere. Malaysia was just an exotic backdrop. Guests dozed on sun-loungers or lingered over lunch in one of three restaurants. The more energetic strolled along the beach. In the hot, still sun, a silent torpor smothered everything like a heavy blanket.
This sleepy atmosphere was getting to me, and I had only been there half an hour. Fortunately, I soon discovered that even though everyone seemed sedated, the wildlife at least was living up to its name.
I was staying in an isolated villa several hundred yards from the main complex, down a path that wound through the rainforest. After dinner on my first evening, as I made my way back along the dimly lit route, I saw what appeared to be a discarded glove on a rock. I looked closer and jumped a foot in the air when the fingers began to wiggle.
Having barely got over the shock of seeing my first tarantula, I met a wild boar. I’d been told that one lived in the hotel grounds and would often rummage around at night, but I didn’t expect to come face to face. However, as I was closing my shutters before bed, there he was, about two yards beyond my porch. He eyeballed me for a moment, then snorted and bolted into the jungle.
Next day, I met the hotel’s resident naturalist, Irshad, whose passionate love of local flora and fauna and deep knowledge of birds in particular revived my childhood interest in ornithology. He pointed to a tall tree and whispered excitedly, “There!”
All I could see was a tree until I borrowed his binoculars and there in its upper branches were a couple of magnificent hornbills, large birds with black-and-white plumage and distinctive yellow-and-red beaks the size of lobster claws.
They lurched into flight and we clambered aboard Irshad’s pick-up to follow. But we lost them, partly because we had to drive very carefully, as everyone does on Langkawi, to avoid the macaque monkeys.
I was interested to find out about these creatures, having inherited from my father a beautiful tapestry of a macaque sitting in a tree, something he’d brought back from Malaya many years ago. The monkeys are everywhere and will often groom themselves in the middle of a road, indifferent to traffic (there are bigger hazards at night, when buffalo wander off the fields and sleep on country lanes that have retained the day’s heat).
Macaques look cute but are lazy scroungers. If fed, they soon stop hunting for themselves and pester people instead. They become aggressive and one scratch from their bacteria-ridden claws can put you in hospital.
These monkeys irritate the locals, but – perhaps for sentimental reasons – I liked them, and none more so than one particular macaque. It lives in some trees overhanging a beach where small boatloads of tourists stop for lunch. The tour guides know about this monkey and use catapults to frighten it away. But occasionally it escapes detection and then it will sit in a tree and, just for fun, urinate on the picnickers below. The cheeky monkey.
For a flavour of South-east Asia, eat local
July 25, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Penang News
Andrew Spooner
Sup noodles at a Bangkok market stall, devour rotis on a Penang street corner, or nibble on a buttery croissant in Vientiane. Adventurous visitors can embark on an epicurean journey of some proportions in South-east Asia. In fact, tasting the region’s street food isn’t just a delicious diversion, it also offers an insight into local life.
Just take the following tips. Look for the busiest places – the humblest back-street eateries can be packed to the rafters, queues forming with eager diners. Even if you don’t know what’s on the menu, get in line because you’re sure to find something tasty. Don’t be shy – lift up pot lids, poke about a bit, ask questions. Most Asian budget eateries are used to this and it can be a great way to communicate, enabling you to order food exactly to your specification.
Keep testing and tasting – if you’re in a food market just buy several small dishes even if you’re unsure what you’re getting. Most of it is so cheap that it’s not going to break the bank. And go seasonal and local. There’s a very good reason why most Thais won’t eat mangoes out of season – the ones on offer in season are so spectacularly good that the year-round varieties are just pale imitations. So if you’re in a fresh produce market, keep an eye out for what’s piled high.
The great thing about Bangkok is that the chances of finding good food in the back streets are high. But, if you want the full authentic Thai experience get as far away from the tourist spots as possible.
Start at Chok Chai Si night market on Lad Phrao Rd (Lad Phrao metro and a short ride by taxi or on buses 8, 92 or 44; open 6pm to 10pm). There’s also a daytime market here, renowned with the locals. Look out for spicy clam soups and excellent moo krob – crispy pork belly – at street stalls. For amazing handmade Yunnan noodles head to Smile restaurant (Suthisan metro, 302/38 Suthisan Vinijchai Rd) – the beef noodle soup is astonishing.
But the most popular street food in Bangkok hails from Isaan, Thailand’s vast north-east region: som tam (spicy green papaya salad), various larbs (spicy minced pork or chicken with roasted rice and mint), grilled meats and sticky rice can be found everywhere. If you’re a som tam virgin, the Som Tam Noir restaurant (Siam Square skytrain, Siam Square soi) is a good start, and you can book a table. The grilled beef with nam jim jaew – a chilli, lime and salty fish sauce – is recommended.
If you’ve visited Thailand before, it’s likely you’ve encountered some form of Lao cuisine – the Isaan food is very closely related. But what you won’t have come across is what’s just on offer in Laos itself – some of the most affordable French fare in South-east Asia.
Vientiane, the capital, has some excellent, very reasonable French eateries. One of the best is Le Silapa (17/1 Sihom Rd). The set lunch is a bargain, including everything from aubergines stuffed with goat’s cheese to excellent rosemary and garlic-enhanced lamb – the wine list is pretty good, too.
For superb croissants, coffee and pastries, make sure you call in at Le Croissant d’Or (96/1 Nokeokumane St; croissant-dor.com). But to sample authentic local flavours, try the family-run Nang Khambang (97/2 Khoun Boulom Rd). The food here can be seriously spicy, but makes for a perfect introduction to Lao food. If you want to dine with a conscience, Makphet (behind Wat Ong Teu in downtown Vientiane; friends-international.org) is a non-profit restaurant that helps raise money for street kids and also serves up premier Lao grub.
The ex-Portuguese enclave of Macau is one of Asia’s best-kept culinary secrets. Here, in this minuscule Chinese city-state, Cantonese and the far-flung flavours of Portugal’s former colonies in Asia, Africa and India combine to create the unique Macanese cuisine.
Quintessential Portuguese egg-custard tarts, Pasties de Nata, are available everywhere – Lord Stow’s Bakery on Coloane island (1 Rua Do Tassara, Coloane Town Square; lordstow.com) is a superb place to sample them. More complete and pricier Macanese dining can be had at Henri’s Galley restaurant (4G-H, Avienda da Republica), where you’ll find an incredible African Chicken in the shape of an entire bird slow-roasted in paprika, chilli, coconut, peanuts and garlic. Nam Heng, opposite the Sofitel on Rua das Lorchas, offers tasty plates of steamed siu long bao, a delicious pork meat and soup-filled dumpling, and the side streets off nearby Rua de Calderia are packed with budget Cantonese eateries.
Georgetown, a Unesco World Heritage Site on Penang Island in Malaysia, is a foodie favourite, with the beautifully preserved shophouses, chai stalls and vibrant markets creating the definitive exotic backdrop.
Don’t miss roit canai, a flaky flatbread. At Sup Hameed (48 Jln Penang), it’s served with a variety of soups and curries. This place is famous for its bull’s penis soup, “Sup Torpedo Lembu” – which, amusingly, one guide book refers to as “squid”. The restaurant also serves up several Malay nasi lemak bungkus – small pockets of coconut rice mixed with anchovies, peanuts and chilli paste, wrapped in neat banana leaves – which you can find everywhere in Georgetown. For North Indian food, Kapitan (49 Lebuh Chulia; penangnet.com/kapitan), on a corner in Little India, is a Georgetown legend. It has fantastic set menus, and serves delicious tandoori meats, chais, and nan breads. Tuck in.
Andrew Spooner is the co-author of Footprint books’ Southeast Asia Handbook (£10.88, amazon.co.uk)
Penang top group to storm into last eight in water polo tournament
July 20, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Penang News
PENANG topped the stiffest group in the preliminary stage at the third Tunku Abdul Rahman (TAR) College water polo tournament at the colleges swimming pool in Kuala Lumpur recently.
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Penang Police Dispose Off Pirated DVD Worth RM1.4 Million
July 13, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Penang News
PENANG, July 13 (Bernama) — Penang police disposed off 208,143 pieces of pirated DVDs and VCDs worth RM1.4 million, here Tuesday. State Commercial CID chief, ACP Roslee Chik said all the DVDs and VCDs were seized in a series of operations codenamed ‘Ops Cetak Rompak’ since 2005 until now.
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Second Unesco Anniversary of George Town
than 50 trishaws (pedicabs) participated in the procession of celebrating the second anniversary of George Town’s as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, in George Town, Penang, Malaysia.
The Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng was among the participants involved in the procession started at Municipal Council of Penang Island Building.
On 8th July 2008, two historic cities of the Straits of Malacca: George Town , Penang and Melaka had been in scripted as UNESCO World Heritage Sites based on their importance interchange of human values, over a span of time or within a cultural area of the world, on developments in architecture or technology, monumental arts, town-planning or landscape design.
It also bears a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilization which is living or which has disappeared
Melaka and George Town have developed over 500 years of trading and cultural exchanges between East and West in the Straits of Malacca.
The influences of Asia and Europe have endowed the towns with a specific multicultural heritage that is both tangible and intangible.
Featuring residential and commercial buildings, George Town represents the British era from the end of the 18th century. Penang and Melaka towns constitute a unique architectural and cultural townscape which is unparalleled anywhere in East and South-east Asia.
Audio slideshow: Penang’s melting pot
Georgetown, the capital of Penang Island in Malaysia, was once a centre of world trade and a magnet for people from all over the world. British, Indian, Chinese, Armenian and many more peoples joined the Malays to create a fascinating mixture of cultures, buildings and cuisines.
The city’s rich physical heritage is now protected by Unesco, sparking new interest among visitors. But activists say it is also important to look at ways of refreshing the communities that built it.
The BBC’s Vaudine England has been visiting Penang since the 1970s.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8745325.stm
MICC Penang to appeal against deregistration
July 6, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Penang News
GEORGE TOWN (July 5, 2010) : The Malaysian Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, Penang which has been deregistered will submit an appeal to the Registrar of Societies (ROS) on Wednesday.
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Penang Invites Foreign Investors
July 6, 2010 by MFA
Filed under Development
SINGAPORE, June 30 (Bernama) — The Penang state government on Wednesday offered Singaporean and international investors an opportunity to participate in building and developing some of the island’s landmark projects and historical sites.
Top on the list is the high-end integrated development of a 24-hectare site in Bayan Mutiara, comprising prestigious offices, specialist medical facilities, commercial blocks, residential enclaves, retail and public spaces.
Another project is to build the 70,000 sq metres Penang International Convention Centre (PICC) in Bayan Baru, and upgrading of the existing Penang International Sports Arena (PISA) and Aquatic Centre nearby.
For historical sites, the state government wants the iconic, British Fort Cornwallis at the Esplanade, and the Crag Hotel on Penang Hill to be restored, refurbished, redeveloped and managed as unique and prestigious tourism products.
The request for proposals was made by Chief Minister Lim Guan Eng during a press conference held on the sidelines of the ongoing World Cities Summit at the Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre here.
In addition, Lim also requested proposals to build and operate a gold and jewellery bazaar on a strip of 0.4 hectare land near Komtar, in a move to revitalise the area.
The plan is also to promote the city as a regional gold and jewellery centre.
Lim said the projects are in line with the strategy to unlock state assets and capitalise on the sizable heritage value, adding that, it was also to fulfil the desire of the electorate who wanted to see concrete developments taking place in the state under his leadership.
The Chief Minister also said the promotion of the projects is being made here, as he believed Singaporean investors can offer quality proposals and of international standard, looking at what has been undertaken in the republic.
Moreover, local investors are more familiar with the state as Singapore and Penang had an identical history, and the people shared a similar social and cultural background.
However, Lim said the five projects would be given to any investor who could offer the best proposal, regardless where they came from.
He said many Malaysian investors, especially government-linked companies (GLCs), had also shown strong interest in the projects.
Earlier, Wan Zailena Noordin, Managing Director of PDC Properties Sdn Bhd, which is coordinating the projects, said only companies with a minimum paid-up capital of between RM100,000 (US$31,000) to RM50 million (US$15 million) are eligible to participate in the respective projects.
The request for proposal documents for the Bayan Mutiara and the gold and jewellery bazaar projects, can be obtained from the Penang Development Corporation office, while documents for the PICC project is available via the Majlis Perbandaran Pulau Pinang website at http://www.mppp.gov.my.
Documents for the Fort Cornwallis and Crag Hotel projects can also be obtained online at the state government website at http://www.penang.gov.my.
