One of the big selling points for visiting Penang is the colonial architecture of Georgetown. Georgetown is where the British established one of their first settlements in the region. There are many buildings that have remained and were restored fairly recently. In fact, there are enough such buildings in the central area of Georgetown that UNESCO bestowed their increasingly meaningless favour upon the downtown area and it has become a World Heritage City. (UNESCO should just get it over with and declare the Earth as a World Heritage site of universal significance and of enormous cultural, social, historical, natural, futural, pastoral, biggial, smallial, masculine, feminine, primitive, advanced, and generally all-things-to-everyone importance to all members of the human race on the planet. Animals, too. And hey, why not plants and rocks and amoebas, and don't forget the slime molds and the seas and skies. Have I left anything out? There was a time when I thought it would be fun to visit as many World Heritage Sites as possible. Now there are too many to possibly visit.)
There are numerous brochures and pamphlets that show a bunch of the heritage buildings in the city and show them on a map, so they can be visited on a walking tour. The one I chose was fairly goofy. They were numbered in a way that like reading a page. So there were spots where the person doing the walking tour would reach the end of a “line” and then have to walk all the way back to the beginning of the next “line.” It wasn't organized very well. So I changed the order to better suit a normal sort of walking pattern.
I started at the old city hall building.
Right across the street from the city hall, was a war memorial.
The war memorial sits on a street that runs by the waterfront and is really quite attractive. And when I looked at the map later, I realized that this was actually the Esplanade, which was feature number 5 on the map. Oops!! I was out of order already.
Then I moved on to the town hall building. It was right next door to the city hall building.
Around the corner from the town hall was the Dewan Sri Pinang building.
Following this, I headed over to Fort Cornwallis. The fort was established by a sailor in the British Navy, Francis Light. And in a fit of humility, he named the fort after the British commander in India. The initial structure was made of wood. Later, Francis Light wanted to make it a more formidable fort and sought to procure funds to renovate it into a stone structure. The powers that be, however found the strategic value of the fort to be lacking and denied the funds that Light required. So Light used his own money to renovate the fort. It is a quite a nice structure to wander around in for a while and it has a nice set of reading panels showing the history, not only of the fort, but of the English presence in Malaysia.
Adjacent to the fort is the Queen Victoria Memorial Clock Tower. It looks nice lit up at night, but I had forgotten to bring my camera when I was out at night looking at it, so this more drab daytime view is what we have.
Across the street from Fort Cornwallis, are the state assembly buildings.
It was at this point that I realized how the walking tour was laid out and that I was now going to have to walk all way back to the “left-hand side of the page” and start reading again. I did this and got a good look at one of the nice colonial churches, the Cathedral of the Assumption.
Next to the cathedral stands the Penang State Museum. The walking tour map says that this museum “houses a plethora of Penang historic artefacts.” With a description like that I couldn't resist going in for a look. From the outside, it doesn't look like much, but inside... Wow!! There was indeed a huge collection of interesting things. The most interesting exhibit rooms dealt with the various ethnic communities and their rituals of marriage and death. It was really a very impressive museum.
And next to the museum was St. George's Church. I had actually looked at this church on my first night in Penang after the long day of travelling from Taman Negara National Park. It looked better at night.
The Goddess of Mercy Temple was around the corner and across from the Little India area. I have seen shrines to this goddess before. The best one I saw was on a hill in Macau. This goddess is the protector of mariners and so is an important figure in sea and ocean areas.
Across the street from the temple was the Mahamariamman Temple. This is a Hindu temple and is on the outskirts of Little India in Georgetown.
Around the corner from the Hindu temple was the Japanese Teochew temple. This temple didn't look like much from the street, but inside it had been renovated and was quite large. And it seemed a bit incongruous sandwiched in between a couple of other shabby buildings.
Around another corner from the Japanese temple and down the street a little bit was the Kapitan Keling Mosque. It's large and imposing and the architecture is pretty cool. And it was interesting to me that these four quite different religious beliefs were to be found only a few minutes walk from each other.
Next on the tour was the Cheah Kongsi. But the next three buildings after it led away from the waterfront and the final parts of the tour. So I went the other way and began with the Islamic Museum. The museum was said to house the heritage of the Muslim community in Penang. I would have liked to go in and see the museum, but it was Tuesday and, in a switch for usual museum days off, this museum was closed on Tuesdays. Oh well. It took a bit of searching to find it because the map made it seem as if it were in one spot, but it was actually on the other side of the block. Now given my natural genius for the misreading of maps, it would be natural for anyone to say at this point, well, it wasn't the map but the map reader. Oho!! I say. There were some other people that I saw, who had the same map as I had. They seemed to be searching for the same place and had ended up stuck at the same place as I was stuck. So, nyah!!! It wasn't me.
Next up was Khoo Kongsi. This was the clan residence and temple for a group of Chinese immigrants. It was tucked away inside a block that was presumably owned and maintained by the Chinese family/families that built it. I think it was being renovated. I didn't actually go in and see that one because they wanted around 10 dollars for an entry fee. The fort had been 2 dollars, and the museum had been 1 dollar. It seemed a bit out of proportion to me and, without knowing if it would be interesting or impressive, I wasn't willing to give in to that kind of extortion. So I left.
The next place was the Cheah Kongsi, another Chinese clan residence and temple. This one was free. So I felt vindicated in my choice not to pay to go see the previous one. Perhaps the Cheah Kongsi was less impressive, but I will never know. And I found it quite impressive enough.
By this time, the clouds had been building up and it looked like rain was on the way. The next building in the tour was way off in the middle of the area, quite a distance from anything. I decided to forgo it in favour of staying dry, and moved on to the waterfront. Once again, I did them out of order since I was arriving at the area of the final stop on the tour. This was the clan jetties area. A whole community built their residences out over the water on stilts. I wanted a good look so I started out onto this pier. As I passed the guard house, the guard came out and told me I couldn't go there. I asked him where I could get a good look and he directed me out onto the jetties themselves. And it was a good view. I'm not sure I would want to live like that, but it seems to be a nice little community.
Finally it was on to the ferry jetties and wharves. The ferry that goes between the island and the mainland seemed suitably old and historic,...
...but the jetties were all shiny and new seeming. There were posh restaurants and it seemed an upscale area that would be quite pricey. In the end the tour was a way to pass time. I didn't know what else to do on Penang, having visited the national park on the previous day, and not having booked a ferry ticket to Langkawi until the next morning. It was an interesting walking tour, though.
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