Penang Festivals, Food, and Fun

The view from our windows at Penang’s Eastern & Oriental Hotel stretches across the pale blue Strait of Malacca all the way to the horizon. It’s early morning and still tolerably cool. Yellow-beaked mynah birds squawk, coconut palms whisper in the gentle breeze and waves break rhythmically below the longest hotel sea wall in the world. “Idyllic,” sighs a guest.

Legions have agreed. Playwright, entertainer, and wartime spy Noel Coward was among E&O fans in the 1920s and 30s. He notably appeared on the E&O terrace at dusk in his silk tennis whites. (His former suite is a few doors down the hall from ours.) Herman Hesse, Rudyard Kipling, Rita Hayworth, and more recently, Malaysian-born Oscar winner Michelle Yeoh have all enjoyed the hotel’s ambiance which manages to evoke what Penangites call the “British Time” (which ended in 1963 when the Federation of Malaysia was created). There’s also a sleek modern feel since the hotel’s 2019 update. Restaurants resemble the most welcoming London clubs and give travelers the feeling they belong.

Writer Somerset Maugham has a suite named for him close to Noel Coward’s. Maugham was besotted with Penang, spilling some juicy colonial scandals in his best-selling and salacious tales, based on confidences shared by colonial officials. One such tale became the hit movie The Letter, starring Bette Davis as a planter’s wife who shoots her lover stone-cold dead. That story, and the trial that followed, were based on fact. Today the island boasts a homegrown crop of literary stars.

In his recent bestselling novel, The House of Doors, Penang’s own Tan Twan Eng revisits both the murderer and the English writer who made her story famous. Intriguingly, Tan adds Chinese revolutionary Dr. Sun Yat Sen to his tropical brew. Near the end of his 16-year exile from China, Sun spent July-December of 1910 at 120 Armenian St, in downtown George Town, plotting with overseas Chinese supporters to raise money to overthrow the Qing Dynasty, which occurred in 1911. His house is now a museum. Hot Penang may be, but boring? Never.

Race for Riches

A few centuries back the Dutch and the British struggled for control of the spice islands of today’s Indonesia. Located between the Celebes and West New Guinea, the clove and nutmeg-rich island group became the most valuable real estate in the world and all the spices it produced for Europe traveled through the Malacca Strait. Dutch-controlled Sumatra was on the west side. The British desperately needed a base on the east side, which they found in Penang.

A few of the famed travelers who stopped here sniffed about the heat. “The air is like breathing steam,” quipped writer Aldous Huxley on his 1926 world tour. For those who chose to stay, the E&O was the only luxury hotel in town, akin to Raffles in Singapore and The Strand in Rangoon. All were designed and built by the three Sarkis brothers, Armenians who followed the expanding British Empire to make their fortunes.

Present-day guests enjoy cooling air conditioning while the bossa nova of Stan Getz wafts from the hotel’s soundtrack. They can only sympathize with Francis Light, former Royal Navy captain turned explorer, who signed a 1786 treaty with the Sultan of Kedah while wearing 18th-century gear: high leather boots, bewigged curls, and woolen waistcoat. The tropics could be noxious for the English, but Light did quite well, before dying of malaria at age 57. Suffolk House, the grand mansion he named after his home county lives on today as an exclusive restaurant.

Light’s monumental tomb dwarfs those of his fellow colonials in the Protestant Cemetery, a short stroll from the E&O. Among the grave markers you’ll find the name of Anna Leonowens’ husband, Thomas, an army paymaster’s clerk from County Wexford, in Ireland. His widow’s 1870 memoir about tutoring Thai King Mongkut’s 82 children eventually became the 1944 Broadway hit,  The King and I.  Today the cemetery’s weathered stones and fragrant frangipani trees open a peaceful window onto the city’s often turbulent colonial history.

When Francis Light first arrived the island was impenetrable, a jungle with only a few fishing villages. The legend persists that Light encouraged reluctant workers to clear the land by shooting coins of silver and gold from his cannons into the forest. Whatever the plan, it worked, and the British East India Company claimed a profitable new outpost for its rubber tree plantations, spice exports, and a transit point for opium. A drive along the Malacca Strait on the island’s west side reveals the rolling green hills, lush fruit farms, unspoiled landscapes and small villages that seem timeless compared to the bustling coastal communities in and around George Town, Penang’s capital, on the South East of the island.  Named for the mildly intoxicating pinang or betel nut, the island soon became a profitable part of the British Raj.

Heaven for Food

As South China migrants began arriving, the number of Malay-Chinese families known as Baba-Nyonya or  Peranakan increased dramatically. An industrious few became “Kapitans China” or tin millionaires. Many chose Penang to build “wedding cake” mansions they staffed with the best chefs from the southern Chinese island of Hainan. A few remain grand private homes, but many have been repurposed as hotels, businesses, or upscale restaurants, like “The Mansion,” a flamboyant affair near the E&O Hotel.

One of the most striking repurposed residences is Cheong Fatt Tze’s Blue Mansion. Now restored to its former glory, it offers rooms, meals, tours of its exquisite architecture, flawless feng shui, and Chinese porcelain craftsmanship. Before its restoration, the Blue Mansion was sadly neglected, a tenement. In 2008, a passion for George Town’s history created a heritage movement that resulted in both Penang and mainland Melaka earning UNESCO World Heritage Status, forever protected from the development encroaching on island history.

George Town’s center is a patchwork of Chinese-style shophouses where business is conducted downstairs while families live above. Trades like decorative pillow-making, Chinese book publishing, and the fabrication of sailboat anchors continue in the old shophouses, although cafes, boutique hotels, photography, and chocolate shops have moved into the old town. Outside the heritage zone, you’ll find the high-rise center called Komtar, with clothing and electronic shops.

Most striking are the many temples and clan houses (khongsi) some very elaborate (the Khoo Kongsi). Others occupy wooden jetties that stretch out into the old harbor, where families live, operate shops and eateries, and honor the Goddess of the Sea.

Nyonya culture endures. The E&O serves colorful, chewy nyonya kueh or cakes, strikingly flavored with green pandan leaf and coconut. Nyonya ladies who typically wore lacy long-sleeved blouses called kebayas over colorful sarongs are grannies now, but there are soft sarongs for E&O hotel guests’ use. A high-end restaurant in George Town is called The Kebaya with a framed example on the wall.

Whoever put down roots here – Malay, South Indian, Chinese, Eurasian or any mixture of their descendants – continues to celebrate their heritage, often with food. Nasi Kandar, a local rice specialty, is named for market vendors who carried rice and various tamarind-scented curries in containers hanging from the ends of wooden poles. In Penang’s Little India, you’ll still find stall food and  “banana leaf” restaurants where rice and curries are served on plates of leaves, along with drinks of lassi, salt or sweet. Tamil music blasts into the night and you might be tempted to pick up a sari from the many clothing shops.

Batu Ferringhi, the island’s beach area, is thought to be a corruption of “foreigner” or “French.”  It’s possible to enjoy the area yet avoid the crowds by stopping by The Lone Pine Hotel, whose central section looks perfectly colonial and once was home to a British doctor. It has a vast green lawn, lined with casuarina pines and beyond them a sandy beach. Be sure to order the refreshing lychee and lemon grass juice or the palm sugar, sago and cream-topped sweet called gula melaka.

Perhaps Penang’s most renowned specialty is Assam Laksa, a sweet-sour fish noodle soup. The “best laksa in Penang,” so the sign says, may be found on weekends at the café near the foot of Penang Hill. The nearby Funicular railway takes visitors up 800 feet to cooler hilltop temperatures.

Among the many films that have been shot in these parts — with stars like Catherine Deneuve (“Indochine”) and Jodie Foster (“Anna and the King’) — is the addictive BBC series Indian Summer, which shows British misbehaving during the Raj. Dame Julie Walters bossed members of the faux-British Simla Club on Penang Hill. Stand-in for India or not, Penang was part of the Raj, evidenced today by nourishing English drinks like Horlicks and Milo that appear on local menus, along with creamy island kopi (coffee).

Festive Times in Penang

The moon rules the dates of many Penang festivals, like the Chinese Lunar New Year, that draws many celebrants to the island. There are lion dances and fireworks nearly every night. Throughout the year the Teuchew Chinese hold an opera-with-puppet show on Saturdays. Famous for its religious diversity, Penang’s old “Street of Heaven” (now called Masjid Sultan Kapitan Keling) features a Temple to the Goddess of Mercy, Kwan Yin, the elegant old Kapitan Keling Mosque, and St George’s Anglican Church. Walking past these architectural gems leads to sometimes quiet but often raucous lanes where tourists knock back Tiger Beer before strolling to shops and temples on sidewalks shaded by “five-foot-ways.”

When Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic came to Penang in 2012, he was struck by the empty white walls on many old buildings. So, he painted them. His interactive portrayals of the warmth of the society he witnessed grew in number and popularity, becoming a street art phenomenon, complete with maps showing where to find and photograph his pictures. Other wall art shows wiry cartoons of local characters and historical tributes to famous business leaders, like international shoe designer, Jimmy Choo. The street sketches, markets and handicrafts filling the old Hin Bus Depot all can be reached by air-conditioned tourist buses or the fleet of local Ubers. 

Thaipusam    

Under a full February moon in the Hindu month of Thai, more than a million people come to Penang for the Thaipusam Festival—a religious extravaganza of music and dancing by tranced and often pierced devotees.  Supervised by a priest, the pierced participant first enters a trance as friends and relatives stand around chanting “Vel! Vel! Vel!” referring to the lance (vel) given to the god Murugan to vanquish the evil demon Soorapadman. It’s an unforgettable scene.  Although eye-catching, not everyone is pierced. Many devotees carry brass jars of milk, considered a purifier.

Proceeding from downtown with the encouragement of family and friends, the Tamil faithful trek, often dancing in place at roadside temples blasting religious music, up to the Waterfall Temple, where tiny hooks and vels are removed by priests. Some carry kavadi, wooden semi-circular burdens, or just as common, jars of milk. Everyone has observed a strict vegetarian diet a month in advance as well as praying to the god Murugan, to grant their wishes—the birth of a child, or healthy recovery after surgery.

Despite the noise and obvious effort involved, the atmosphere is curiously joyful, contrary to first appearances.  There is no pain, scarring or bleeding, and a day or two later participants return to work or the office, quite their usual selves. After the pilgrimage, families enjoy picnics and girls in their best saris may catch the eye of boys their age. A debt has been paid, a prayer has been answered. Speaking to a young mother whose family carried milk in this year’s Thaipusum, I asked her how long she intends to give thanks for the healing of her son. “For the rest of my life,” she said with a smile.

Chap Goh Meh

At the end of the Chinese New Year celebration comes Chap Goh Meh. If you’re lucky you may see ladies in sarong-kebayas dancing, holding paper umbrellas while old men play traditional Chinese instruments. During February evenings usually the seafront Esplanade to the padang is full of children playing soccer. But during Chap Goh Meh Central George Town has a festive air as jovial Malaysians sip fresh air tebu (sugar cane juice) before walking to the seafront to watch fishermen catch … Yes, floating in the water there were oranges. Girls had written their phone numbers on them and thrown them over the seawall where boats scooped them up. A flirtatious old Penang custom that remains popular in an age of digital dating.

As the sun set, we headed down to 18^th century Fort Cornwallis, to enjoy dinner at Kota, a restaurant within the fort’s thick stone walls. Typical of the new Penang-style eateries, Kota’s seabass with ginger and lemon grass was perfection, as was the chendol, a layered drink made with ice, green worm-shaped jellies, coconut and palm sugar.

Driving to the airport the next morning, our teksi headed toward a roundabout encircling a distinctive clock tower built for Queen Victoria in 1897 to commemorate her Jubilee. It was a gift from local millionaire Cheah Chen Eok. The colonial world hasn’t vanished from this former outpost of Empire, despite the modern buildings all around and the wide highway to the airport. “Endearing” is how a local friend describes her first impression of the island when she arrived in the 1970s. Some things never change.

Nancy Wigston is based in Toronto. Her most recent stories for the East-West News Service examined river cruising in France,  espionage in London and the travels of Agatha Christie.