Traffic revisited

Think I may have been a little bit ranty the other day. Prolonged exposure to stop-go traffic will do that to me! But, sitting in another jam, one thing that strikes me is how unaggressive the drivers are to each other. The horn is occasionally used but more in amused exasperation than aggression. Less 'cut me up and I will punch you' and more 'did you really think that 10' car would fit in that 4' gap?'. And surprisingly few accidents too, presumably because the level of craziness is expected by all. It reminds me of one of those 'ultimate fighting' bouts, where after 20 mins of trying to gouge each others eyes out or snap each others spines the bell goes and the two combatants slap each other on the back and walk away smiling.

I was also whining about the crush of crowds but generally the people are really friendly. Not just those working the tourist trail but the young lads at the station in KL who saw me trying to get my card to swipe and stopped to help, the three separate people who told me i'd dropped 20 sens or the old Chinese bloke on the bus who saw me use my tourist card and pulled out his travel card to show me, pointed, smiled, nodded and then fell asleep.

Temples

Today I decided to visit Kek Lok Si temple, the biggest Buddhist temple in Malaysia. Unfortunately the rest of Penang seemed to have the same idea which lead to a very chaotic bus journey - or maybe they're all like that?

The base of the temple is ringed by hawkers markets & traders, so you have to fight you way up narrow steps flanked by stalls selling t-shirts, bags & nik-naks.
The sun beats through the flimsy fabric cover and you're frequently balked by people randomly stopping to admire the latest Man Utd bootleg shirts. If you pause to allow this you're immediately swamped by people from behind - instead you should shift to stand in the way of people coming down and stare & edge your way through in whatever way possible.

Once you get to the top you see a turtle pond, which makes you realise that you weren't that hemmed in after all

This actually doesn't give the right impression as to how many turtles were in there - it was ridiculous. Although the big daddy of the turtle world had been isolated to a separate pond, where he was the target for good luck coins
That's a regular slice of bread floating next to him if you need some scale.

The temple itself was beautiful, and would have been very peaceful if you ignored the hoards of site-seers & tourists

and it's position on the hill meant that there were some cool breezes despite the heat
The main body of the temple was some sumptuously decorated halls containing a variety of statues of Buddha in his various guises





I'm not up with Buddhist dogma but I think I understand the basics - spoilt Indian prince leaves his home for a journey of abstinence & poverty, which eventually leads to enlightenment and teachings that you need to move beyond your immediate circumstances & lose attachment to your earthly possessions to be truly happy. Very revolutionary at the time, probably even more so now and you could argue leading to a passivity where to be involved is to be attached. What I'm not so sure about is how this leads to lavishly decorated temples, huge gold plated statues and a variety of different 'looks' in the same temple. I can understand different sects interpreting in different ways - as ever man gets in the way of god, and even the saintly Tibetan Buddhists have been involved in pogroms against rival groups - but it seems odd to me to see them in the same complex. I picked up a free guide to Buddhism which may help, and I have a few friends who are no doubt shaking their heads at my crassness and will fill me in on what I'm missing.

Anyway, there was one more statue to see so we squeezed into an 'inclined lift' for a trip up the hill
The main statue used to stand exposed to the rain - and still does in any postcards or pictures that you see - but has been given a gazebo to shelter under, a godly 'manbrella' to keep the sun off
To be honest I have no idea if this is a representation of the Buddha or not, but it's very impressive all the same.

In typical Penang style, there was also a Hindu temple at the base of the hill....

Out & about

Yesterday it was time to get out of Georgetown and check out some of the local area. First of all I took the bus out to Batu Ferenghi,a beachside town about 16km from Georgetown. I was thinking about staying here so was curious to see if I'd made the right decision and yes, I had. The town was a strip of shops, cafes, massage spas and tailors and the beach was pretty small, very grainy and the water was very murky (possibly due to the large number of jet-skis for hire). To be fair I was there in the middle of the day so a lot of things were shut, and I was also there for a tropical downpour
There's a night market there every night so I'll revisit before making any hard judgements.

After that I continued along the road to Teluk Bahang, a fishing village and national park. This was more like the Malaysia I'd heard about

There's apparently some good hiking in the national park, so that's down for one day of my agenda before I leave.

Traffic

No pictures for this one because I'm on a bus stuck in traffic and writing this on my iPod. Some of the busses here have wi-fi, some don't, and even if this one did I couldn't post pics due to stupid Apple lack of connectivity.

The bus system in Penang looks pretty organised at first glance. But when you come to use it reality strikes. The bus on the main tourist route is timetabled as 'every 7 minutes' - all well & good. But all bar that one route are timetabled as 'every 30 mins' or 'every 45 mins' and there's no indication of when that starts. So you sit & wait, knowing that as soon as you nip off to get a bite to eat one will arrive. That's if it's not full (in which case you get a cheery toot and wave as it sails past) or switching drivers (which generally leads to a pantomime of confusion, the end result usually being that you wait on one stationary bus as another one passes. At least they have aircon.)

Once you're on the bus the real fun starts. The traffic is bad here. Excruciatingly, teeth-curlingly, hair-grindingly bad. There's about a third more cars on the road than it can handle. I have no idea where all these people came from or where they are hoping to go, but I hope they're not in a hurry. Because everything is crawling at walking pace, people will pull out from sidestreets and create new lanes where there should be none simply through force of will. Merging looks to be simply a game of chicken. If one lane speeds up everyone in the other lane frantically switches over, creating space in their lane which in turn speeds up and leads to everyone desperately jumping back. And all the time a steady stream of mopeds hurtle past on both sides, weaving between all lanes and often on the pavement too. Alley cat racers on fixies looking to prove their manhood should sell their 'whips' and venture out here on a 20 year old 125cc step-through to prove their worth. Bonus points if you can do it with 2 kids on the saddle or a large propane cylinder strapped to the back.

You start off flinching at the near misses. Then you start to get agitated at the stop-go traffic, but you breath deeply and understand that it's just the way here and you have to go with the flows. Eventually you want to stand up and shout 'enough! Let me out! I'll walk from here!' You don't know where you are or where you're going, but it still has to be quicker. You want to punch the driver in the face, jump off the bus and throw rocks at the traffic. You want to clothesline passing moped riders. But you know that if you do that self-same driver will be coming back the other way, and although you've got lost and have been waiting for 90 minutes in 34 degrees of heat and almost 100% humidity, he will barely slow his empty air-conditioned bus as he cheerfully toots & waves.

Two addendums -
This was written on an IPod in the between two of the 'every seven minute' busses. And those of you that have seen me type on even a normal keyboard will know how slow I am, never mind one of these wee tippie-tappie things cursed with apple UI & predictive text.

Also - I decided to get a one week bus pass, which covers all busses on the island for 7days for around $10. I had to show my passport to get this, and the clerk painstakingly wrote my details and the cards expiry date on the card in marker pen. Which 2 days later has rubbed off. Couldn't think of a better metaphor.

Royal Wedding

Those if you that know me will be surprised to hear that I'm sitting in a pub watching the Royal Wedding. This is partly because I'm curious to see how the pomp & circumstance of the british monarchy is seen overseas, but more because they have free wi-fi and a 2 for 1 deal on Strongbow in celebration of the occasion. Yeah I know - Strongbow. But this is the pub with supposedly the largest range of draft beers in Malaysia and that totals 7 (Tiger, Heinekin, Guiness, Kilkenny, Strongbow, Carlsberg & Carlsberg Export). So when in Rome.....

Watching the wedding has been interesting - good to see 'the old country' in so much detail. But what strikes me is how the newsreaders, the journalists and even the people on the street are happy to call themselves 'commoners'. One of the things I love about Australia is how class is generally not an issue and you're judged on the person you are, not the people who beget you. Watching my 'pommie' brethren deliberately abase themselves to a lineage blessed only by luck and aggression still makes me angry. Viva la republic!

Anyway, on the way in I passed an amusing traffic jam, where a bunch of flash cars were travelling (presumably) a wedding party. They had a police escort and there were lots of flashing lights, blowing of whistles, sounding of horns and suchlike. But they were still stuck.
and even parking presented difficulties
I think it's human nature to hope that someone gets it badly wrong. Either that or I'm a very bad person.

So - Georgetown, Penang. What a crazy place.
A mix of colonial & chinese architecture, a melting pot of cultures, a place that is intensely visceral in its sights, its sounds and its smells. And of course its tastes. It rained today, intensely, and certain parts flooded in shades of Brisbane.
But hopefully the weather will pick up over the next few days because I'm looking forward to wandering around a lot more.

Today I looked around Fort Cornwallis, designed to fend off attacks from sea in around 1800 and extended over time but never used in anger
The etching on the cannon says it was cast in 1798. I like the arrow on the cannon, maybe added in for particularly dumb bombardiers. 'Point it this way.'
I also visited the forts gaol, a picture that was hard to self-take because I had at least two offers to take it for me. Which is lovely and very typical of what it's like over here, but I enjoy the challenge of the self-shot. And that is very hard to explain in Malay or Japanese.

The only thing that puzzles me is why they put the guns in the fort in the first place. My hotel room has a much better field of fire
The national anthem has just played as part of the wedding, and I had a bizarre urge to stand. My Grandma, who sadly passed away 10 years ago, used to insist on watching the queens speech on Christmas day and it's nice to think about how excited she'd be about this event and how strange and yet natural that it is that I'm watching it here.

KL catch up

I've been practicing a form of 'extreme tourism' over the last few days - not jumping out of planes or white water rafting, but seeing everything I can squeeze in in the time that I'm there. This has meant I've not had much time to sit around updating blogs, so here's a snapshot view of Malaysia to make up for my neglect.......
KL tower from underneath


and the views from 250m up

Some of the best chicken wings I've ever eaten in the Golden Triangle
Grafa fixed gear bike shop & cafe - doesn't everyone check out bike shops when they're away? It's a pain to get to on public transport, but the owner is a good bloke.
View from the bottom of the 250odd steps up to the stunning Batu caves. Tourism & fitness combined, I ended up racing a Malaysian lad up. And we both regretted it at the top.
The caves were amazing though. Light streaming through the holes in the roof highlight temples built into the cave walls, and the monks use mirrors to scare the monkeys that live high on the walls.
It's like the gods have descended from the skies
although the locals aren't so impressed
and however the spirits move you you can't get too carried away on the train home.
Merdeka square, home of Malaysian independence
and also the home of the famous 'hash house harriers', who combine running & beer. Note to self - must look up the local branch in Brisbane.

After all that walking around I needed to relax, so tried a fish spa
At first you use the tank of small fish, and when you've got used to that you move up to the bigger fish
All a bit weird and a little bit tickly, but also very relaxing.

I left KL this morning and after a 6 hr train journey and a swift ferry ride I'm in Georgetown on the island of Penang now. Very different to KL - much less modern in some ways, and the local vendors have much less interest in tourists walking past. It's famed for its food but I'm going to need to step out of my comfort zone to make the most of it.....

Everyones got something to hide except....

Where's Mikey?
This is me at 9.00am yesterday, having flown a red-eye with about 3 hrs sleep and then wandering around for a few hours wearing a merino wool shirt in 30 degrees and 95% humidity
and again 36 hrs later, a bit less tired.

It's been a busy 2 days, including admiring the Malaysian approach to safe electrics in the rain

and the never-ending excitement of the monorail
Still, it's good to go to new places and make new friends - click on the image to see the whole picture....
More soon!