Penang is a world-renowned travel stop, so we decided to check it out while we were in the neighborhood!
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| Street art - very professional! |
Penang is an Island off the west coast of Malaysia.
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| About 4hrs north of KL |
The drive is beautiful but leaves you wondering why there are so many palm trees in Malaysia. our wondering lead us to asking folks about it... and discovering a major contributor to global warming.
You see, Malaysia's jungle is part of our planet's lungs - apparently accounting for 4% of all
greenhouse gas reduction capacity on the planet... and 8% of gaseous pollution reduction capacity on the planet.
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| Jungle stripped in favour of palm trees |
Did you know south-east asians cook mainly with palm oil? Did you know they fry almost everything? Well... that creates a load of demand for palm oil... and Malaysia is a major producer of that crop and its derivatives. So - the jungle is being deforested just when we need it most! So we can fry our way into oblivion - yay!
Orang Utan Island
The ride from KL to Penang was long enough to break up, so we stopped at a tourist attraction called Orang Utan island. The operators started out with 3 Bornean Orangutans in 1999... they now have 16.
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| Adam - a grumpy 30yr old |
Why on an island, you ask? Well... cause it's hard for them to escape! The island is 35acres.. our genetic brethren get to use 10acres of it. The island is setup "in reverse" - visitors are the captives and Orangutans roam free. You observe them from within a human cage - like a shark cage.
If you're like us, you're thinking: "that's cool"... and it is - in theory. From a quality-of-visit standpoint, it results in handlers feeding Orangutans right beside your cage so you can see them up close, or even cooing to the animals to entice them to visit. Cool but ultimately defeats the goal of "keeping-it-real"
On the upside, the Orangutans get more space and freedom, so I guess it's a good compromise?!
You park in a tourist complex and then grab a ferry across a big lake to get to the island.
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| Tourist complex |
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| The lake and boat jetty |
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| The ferry ride |
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| The island |
Now, I'll bet you'd like to see some Orangutans, right? Again, a drawback of the people-in-a-cage approach is photography - it's hard to do any interesting photography behind a double fence!
I guess I'm bellyaching a bit - we saw 6-10 Orangutans doing their thing. We loved their facial expressions, dexterity, playfulness, territorial nature and the kids especially loved their human-like mannerisms. Darwin's theory was talked around and the kids learned a ton about genetics and natural selection.
Cooking in Penang
We enjoyed Malaysian food, but mainly the more Indian-leaning dishes... so we decided we had to learn to cook some Malaysian - when in Rome... We booked a cooking class, but the well-reputed school's star chef was in North America cooking up a storm there... so we got a stand-in who did her best. Unfortunately, the class was more of a demo than a cooking class... but we enjoyed it nonetheless.
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| Cooking class! |
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| Chels stirring the proverbial pot |
The cooking class started with an extensive market tour... which was a highlight of the class. Our market tour guide was a bright and smart architecture graduate! She gave it to us raw and real... from economics to education, spices to hygiene. We learned a ton from Ming!
Learning About Islam
A big part of this trip is about broadening our understanding of the world. We live in a multi-cultural society... but truth be told, I don't know a ton about Islam... so where better than a mosque in a 60% Muslim country to find out more?
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| Getting dressed appropriately... |
Cheryl and Chels had to cover their hair, shoulders and legs to enter the mosque - no surprise.The elderly gentleman who showed us around was warm and enthusiastic - happy to share his faith with us.
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| The mosque was at an incredible seaside location |
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| On the steps of this floating mosque |
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| The floating mosque |
The kids learned about the 5 pillars of Islam. They learned about prayer - facing East and praying 5x per day.
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| The daily prayer board - a scoreboard of sorts, for the sports fans reading this post ;) |
We didn't know that Muslims prayed 5x a day and that the schedule for that prayer was very rigid. Indeed, so rigid that there is a daily prayer calendar... the time for each session shifts daily!
We learned about Islamic traditions and beliefs and spent some time debating, comparing and contrasting them with our own. Another great school day!
The Spice Garden
No trip to Penang is complete without a trip to the Spice Garden! This is a lush jungle escape where the owners have planted every manner of spice that will grow in the Malaysian climate, with particular focus on Malaysian foods or food influences.
We got a guided tour and boy are we glad we did! We learned to identify ginger all its relatives (Galangal, turmeric and another one). We saw Nutmeg trees, Cardemom, Ceylon cinnamon and its copycat Chinese equivalent... and so, so much more.
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| Getting our feet munched on |
The site also includes a stream with fish that will give you an
all-natural foot scrub along with some tube slides down the steeper
slopes in the Plantation. It was a great day.
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| Resident gigantic Monitor Lizard |
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| Pendan - used to flavour and colour rice |
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| DIY reflexology - they actually recommend you take your shoes off! |
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| Banana tree family - some varieties produce inedible flowers... like this one! |
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| More garden inhabitants... |
A plant that whithers when touched - like in the movie Avatar!
Street Art in Penang
One of Penang's claims to fame is its ubiquitous street art - sanctioned graffiti.
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| Parker trying to be as serious as this monkey is |
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| Parker made a new friend... and got to ride his motorbike! |
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| Militant minion - 85dB |
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| Nathan gave this girl 'mad props' |
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| Chelsea riding the getaway bike |
You get the idea!
Anyway, Penang has it all - from glitzy indoor shopping malls to beaches to wild jungle and a noisy, eclectic mashup of foods.
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| Quaint old city streets |
Thanks for reading and see you soon for a post on Ipoh - a mountain town in Malaysia.
Hey gang! Our trip through Seoul, Bangkok, Phuket, Singapore is coming up. Josephine and family would like to know how the flu situation is based on your expiriences? Looking good out there!
ReplyDeleteIt's a mix of panic, laissez-faire and ignorance. Airports are 90% masked. The issue isn't so much that you'll get Cov19... it's more that they won't let you leave the country or town you're in if there's an outbreak or that your next country won't let you in because you were in an infected country. They are taking people's temperature in many public venues - like museums and airports. You can't buy a bottle of purell - they're 100% sold-out, EVERYWHERE - bring a ton - like 1L. Some places are anal-retentive, others are seemingly unaware, generally corresponding with public wealth. I'd watch the situation closely - not for your health risk, but for the inconvenience of being quarantined in a city for 2 months.
DeleteSafe and happy travels!
DeleteYou know you're in a cage when an orangutan hands you a banana and sits there watching you!
ReplyDeleteSeriously, how does it feel being the caged one, to use your words 8-)
Bah - it feels just like when the animal is the caged one... you're in close proximity with an animal that needs to be separated from you by a fence for various reasons. Again, the concept is cool, but the reality is much like a zoo and, in some ways better and in other ways worse.
Delete