FOUR nights, five days in Penang, Malaysia are enough to make you fall in love with, or become jealous even of this paradise island on the northwest coast of our Southeast Asian neighbor. Like I posted on Facebook a few days back, the place is clean, orderly.
Houses and buildings are mostly white. The system works. There are no beggars or dwellers on roads. Motorists obey traffic signs. Nakakainggit, despite talks of massive corruption in government, like you know where.
Scene in Penang
Penang is home to a flurry of renowned street food, a UNESCO World Heritage site, a bustling street art scene in Georgetown, where the British influence is strongest, evident in the architecture of its old mansions and buildings preserved by government. It is also home to a UNESCO-designated ancient rainforest that, at 130 million years old, is even older than the Amazon.
Penang comprises two halves: Penang island, where the capital city of Georgetown is located, and the other, a strip of land on the peninsula named Seberang Perai.
From Manila, one flies 3.5 hours to Kuala Lumpur, then another 45 minutes or so to Penang. You can also take a 4-hour train ride from KL to get there.
But, since we were travelling on limited time, not to mention, even more limited ringgit (Malaysian currency), we couldn’t afford the luxury of a train ride, no matter if trains are our favorite mode of transport. To this day, my fantasy is to ride the Orient Express, traversing western and eastern Europe, but with the line cut off, I will just have to watch the murderous movie bearing the name all over again.
Train rides make us love the idea of coaches speeding fast and furious through landscapes that shift from rice fields to lakes, from forests to towns and rural villages that allow us a glimpse into people’s lifestyles. Maybe next time.
Malaysia’s airports are amazing in their sprawling hugeness and modernity. KL airport itself spans 100 sq km of former agricultural land, known as one of the world’s largest airport sites.
Ready for implementation is an ambitious three-phase development plan that includes three runways and two terminals, each with two satellite terminals.
Malaysia’s immigration staff are polite, making entrance to the country easy as a durian-flavored smoothie, and with no fuss. By the way, as the Malaysia Airlines plane makes its way to KL airport, one is treated, down below, to hectares and hectares of seemingly endless stretches of green on the ground. I asked the flight attendant in her tight-hugging, exotic batik uniform what they were, and she answered, “They’re palm trees.”
Those wide, sprawling, almost endless patches of palm trees, it turned out, were mere toppings for greater discoveries on land. Winnie Natividad, our host, brought us the next day on a hiking tour of the island’s hilly center, home to the Penang Hill UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Hanging bridge at Moon Gate Trail 5 (Photo from Nestor Cuartero)
On a chilly morning after a filling hotel breakfast, we set out to take the Moon Gate 5 trail close to the Penang Botanical Garden. Together with the Youth Park, it is considered one of the more accessible trails going up.
The hike started out cool and easy. The paths were clear and clean, wide enough for people to walk side by side. On both sides of the path were tall, old trees of all kinds overlooking ravines in certain parts. Perched in some of them were monkeys, small, medium, and large, that thankfully simply stared back at us.
On both sides of the path were tall, old trees of all kinds overlooking ravines. Perched in some of them were monkeys, small, medium, and large
Our guide told us there had been occasions in the past when some of the monkeys would descend on passing tourists, asking for food. We had been warned not to show any food along the way to prevent any such incident.
Throughout the climb up, we were surrounded by sounds of birds either squawking or hooting, or insects chirping. Up and down, straight and curvy went the path. As we paused to catch our breath every now and then, or sip some water, our guide, sounding like a life coach, advised us to take things easy, to walk leisurely and not to hurry. “We are all ending up in the same destination, after all,” he said. Heavenly tip ba?
He was an elderly man, slim and slender, a trained man of science, with a doctorate yet, someone who knew his botany and who had sense of humor to boot.
Cecile, who’s a thoroughbred city girl, kept asking him about the names of plants we spotted on the way up, whose flowers looked every bit inviting. He had a ready answer for each query, with an elaborate explanation to boot, complete with certain histories and a bit of gossip on the side.
As we passed by an area called Butterfly Garden, we just had to pause and ponder. It called for a moment of prayer, of thanksgiving, just seeing all these wonderful creations, and paintings on wings that God has gifted us with. A swing in the middle of nowhere served as an ideal setting for a photo-op.
After maybe three hours of hiking, we finally reached the end of the line, where a golf cart took us to a cable car station. It was only then that we realized that we were located so high up there that a cable car had to bring us downhill.
The trip going down was smooth and seamless, zipping through rock formations, ferns, wild flowers, and other vegetation.
As we alighted, we looked upwards to admire and thank the hill that we had just conquered, grateful that our legs, body, and spirit could still maneuver such a starry, starry trek.
Now, let me just stick to food tourism, something that we can easily adopt in the Philippines. In every other street corner in Penang, there are hawkers’ markets, spread out in neat, orderly open spaces.
Tourists and locals flock to these markets where you can buy cooked food in a hurry. Lunch and dinner time, these markets cum food courts are teeming with hungry folk. Ready for the picking are such Malay staples as Assam laksa, curry mee, Hokkien mee.
These clusters of carinderias are also a fine showcase of Asian food, not just from hometown Malaysia, but also from other countries, like Vietnam, Thailand, and India.
Food is also priced reasonably. Cecile and I ordered a spicy noodle dish, mee goreng, similar to our pancit Canton but on the sweet side, that cost us around P140 each only. It was a full, satisfying meal in itself.
Malaysia’s hawker markets (and also those in Thailand and Vietnam) can be replicated in many parts of the Philippines to attract local and foreign tourists, many of whom may be travelling on shoestring budgets. They are also very good for small and medium scale enterprises that cry for government support.
But first, they have to be well-maintained. They have to be clean and sanitary, and also well lit. Is that quite a Herculean task around here, too much to ask?
We can all learn from the Penang experience. With our taste for the good life, design, and innate artistry, we can similarly inspire our neighbors, erasing the stigma of being listed among the 10 worst countries in the world for workers. When that happens, one day in the future, they, too, can say they envy the Filipinos.
