Sons on the Beach

The Blue Mansion

 Our good friend Virginia and her son Gino just visited us in Singapore and since we are always looking for an excuse to take a trip, Christopher and I traveled with them to Penang, Malaysia. We wanted to focus on the George Town area which was the first British settlement in Southeast Asia (founded in 1786) and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Hotel Courtyard 

We stayed at the Blue Mansion, aka Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion. It was built in 1897 and was the home to a merchant named Cheong.  If you saw the movie Crazy Rich Asians, it was the scene of the mah jong game at the end of the movie.  Today it is now a boutique hotel and there are daily tours that are very popular with tourists.

Afternoon Snack

We got a kick out of staying there, our rooms were behind the ropes that the tours weren’t allowed to pass. The rooms are large and filled with beautiful antiques and also modern bathrooms. Our first night we had dinner there and each morning had breakfast in the courtyard --the food was delicious. We were also served an afternoon local snack at our rooms with a note, very sweet.

On our first day we arranged a tour through the hotel to take a trishaw tour of the area.  There was a light rain all day which helped cool the city down. We saw much of the street art that George Town is famous for including a wire sculpture honoringJimmy Choo.  He is a native son who was born and started his career making shoes there.

One driver/guide was in his 70's,
the other 85

Jimmy Choo Sculpture

After our tour we took a Grab car (so handy in Southeast Asia) to a café our guide pointed out and were treated to yummy snacks and beautiful art. From there we wandered and ended up on one of the Clan Jetties called the Chew Jetty. The Chinese Clans were important to help their people to settle in Singapore and in George Town the Chew Clan helped their people settle on the jetty.

One of George Town's 3D Murals

The next day we checked out of our hotel and visited Penang Hill before checking into our next hotel. To get to the top we used the Penang Hill funicular, one of the longest and steepest funiculars in Asia. At the top were beautiful views, lunch at a food center and a bright colored temple. Part of the allure of going up there is the cooler temps but it still was pretty hot up there.

Clan Jetty

View from Penang Hill

We then checked into our hotel for the next 2 nights, the Park Royal on Batu Ferringhi beach in Penang.  The temperature was cooler at the beach and the hotel was lovely. We enjoyed the breakfast and lunch buffets where we (especially Gino) could sample all of the good Malaysian food.

We rented a boat and captain to take us to Monkey Beach and we lucked out--there were about 15 monkeys hanging around eating bananas when we got there. You can only get to this beach by boat or a walk through the jungle, no roads there,  so we guessed another boat captain brought the bananas because we noticed a sticker on them so the bananas hadn’t just been picked from a banana tree in the forest.

When we got back to the resort, we had to make a quick decision whether or not the boys would go up parasailing because of changing weather. They did it and had a great time.  It was Gino’s first-time parasailing, while Christopher is getting to be an old pro at it.   There are all sorts of different types of parasailing, but launching and landing from a boat is our favorite.

Penang is similar to Singapore in many ways except one, the prices for almost everything are much less. The private boat for 1 hour to Monkey Island was about US$50, and for the 2 boys to parasail it was about US$100-- significantly less than what we paid for Brian and Christopher to parasail in the Maldives.

It was a great little side trip during Virginia and Gino’s trip to Singapore.  It was good to be able to share a more typical Asian airport and city.  Singapore is so pristine that they might have thought everywhere in Asia was like Singapore.  Singapore is a special place, but so was Penang—just in a different way.