Penang is the city I was born in. When growing up as a child, Penang used to be the site for our annual family vacation during the Christmas school holidays. Wherever my dad worked in Malaysia, our annual trip to Penang was looked forward to with excitement and anticipation. Today, Penang is still a favorite and nostalgic place to visit.
This year we took the fast electric train from Kuala Lumpur to Penang on July 10 and then ferried across to the island. The train left KL Sentral at noon and took a very comfortable four hours to get to Butterworth. Riding the ferry from Butterworth to Penang brought back childhood memories of my dad driving the family car onto the ferry and all of us inside watching Penang loom larger as we approached the end of our long car journey from Singapore.
Our base in Penang is always at a beach hotel. As a child I remember the family always stayed at the wonderful Spring Tide hotel, now demolished, and replaced by the high rise condominium Springtide Residences. When Rhonda and I were first married, we stayed at quaint and affordable places like the Lone Pine, Casuarina and Palm Beach. These have all since been upgraded into either expensive boutique hotels or rebuilt into 5 star hotels. For the past three visits to Penang we stayed at the Rainbow Paradise Resort in Tanjong Tokong. It is closer to the city – Georgetown – than the hotels up in Batu Ferringhi and has quite a few local restaurants around, including an Indian restaurant right across the street that serves curry on a banana leaf.
Rhonda and I were married 45 years ago at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Penang. We had our wedding reception and stayed at the E&O Hotel in Georgetown. Today, the church is still accessible, but the E&O has been completely refurbished and no longer the affordable hotel it used to me. We went into the bar for a beer and the bar captain was kind enough to take us to the old ballroom where our reception was held.
Penang has a lot to offer the tourist besides its beaches. There is the Botanical Gardens, Penang Hill, fruit and spice farms along Ferringhi and Balik Pulau, places of worship, as well as the very impressive Entopia Butterfly Farm. There are also a number of durian and fruit farms where one can feast on this king of fruit. This year I met some former classmates at the Bao Sheng Durian farm for such a feast.
In Georgetown, one can truly get a feel for the history of the island. There are beautifully preserved heritage homes and restaurants and hotels and museums to visit. One can see some beautiful mural art and visit the 3-D Art museum as well as the Food museum. The Penang museum was closed for renovation but we chanced upon the Catholic Diocesan Museum which we found very informative.
A visit to Penang is never without reunions with friends and relatives, many of whom return from where they currently live in Europe, Australia, and New Zealand to visit and keep in touch with their roots and relatives. Of course these reunions all involve local food dishes for which Penang is well known.
Finally, Penang is the place where both my parents are buried. A visit to Penang always include prayers at their gravesite at the Catholic cemetery in Pulau Tikus.
After ten days in Penang, we left for an overnight stay in Singapore before the last leg of our summer travel – a flight to Vancouver, Canada via Shanghai to visit my brother Charles and his family, before finally heading home to Tampa, Florida.
Educhirp 