Penang - Tourists

This is a view of a very Fitzroy/Newtown bit of Georgetown, from the hotel window. The streets are wider, and the cooking smells are more pervasive and not at all trendy, plus the whole place is a little battered - the tropical climate is hard on buildings.




This is the entrance hall to Cheong Fatt Tze's favourite house - he sounds like Penang's answer to one of the great English colonial rogues. Born poor but respectable (family of school teachers) he ran away to Java, married a rich man's daughter while still a water-carrier (guess he had great charm) and parlayed the inheritance into a massive trading fortune and considerable influence and respectability.

This is a very traditional rich trader's house - not dissimilar to the Chen family mansion in Guangzhou, although significantly smaller. I don't really have the photographic technique to capture the features I like about these kinds of houses - internal courtyards, huge amounts of natural light, timber and paper construction (he used Scottish iron too), the constant cool breeze generated by the architecture without help from fans.

They say it's his favourite house because his favourite wives were housed here - but I gather he had a house and wives in most of the trading cities in South East Asia, and how they know his favourite was here, I don't know. He certainly wasn't their favourite - his heirs lost all the money and pretty much trashed the place before it was bought for preservation by a private trust.

It's now an upmarket B&B - about $50 AUD per night. Well worth it if you are in the neighbourhood.

That's the outside - it's very blue. I'm not sure if the wrought iron is clearly visible, but it's the same pattern you can see in any inner city in Australia. There was a film being shot there while we visited, so I couldn't get around to a lot of the front garden.

Other European features are the wooden shutters and french windows.





The old protestant cemetery is really about as picturesque as cemeteries get. Moss, dappled light on aged marble, people living in the mausoleums, syringes and old beer bottles on the paths.

But cool and pleasant, for all that. Trees, nature's answer to the lack of outside air conditioning.






These two stones tell a probably not uncommon story - Harriet Scott died on May 21, 1864 at the age of 25, two weeks after giving birth to twins, John and Harriet on May 7th.

John Jr. only survived 5 months, and his sister 16 months.