Penang Peter Discovers Eating and Pulau Tikus and asks: Will the real Pulau Tikus please stand up?

Y AND I MET IN LONDON IN 1977. She told me she was from Penang, which meant little to me at the time. Dutch people of my generation had been taught some Southeast Asian history in school, so I was more or less familiar with the Straits Settlements, but as far as I now remember only Malacca and Singapore were considered relevant to Dutch colonial history. This was because Malacca had been a thriving Dutch colony from 1641 to 1824, and Singapore had been founded by Raffles with the express aim of keeping the Dutch out of the Malay peninsula once and for all. That suited us fine, for it was our aim to keep the British out of Sumatra. As a result, in 1824 we traded our proud colony of`Malacca and all our active or dormant claims on Singapore, Penang and the entire Malay peninsula for a number of British possessions in west Sumatra, the most important of which was the dilapidated fever-ridden pepper port of Bengkulu. Dutch history is rich in incomprehensible swaps of this nature.  After the Second Anglo-Dutch war in 1667, during which we had actually destroyed the British fleet near Chatham, we traded New York for Suriname.  So much for ancient history. My own history with Penang began on Thursday, December 14, 1978, when Yiong and I travelled by train, the "Ekspres Rakyat", from Singapore to Butterworth. . The train was comfortable enough, no air conditioning but effective if somewhat noisy fans, and plenty of open windows which supplied ventilation proportionate to the speed of the train. I never saw the restaurant car if there was one, for Y. insisted that food would be fresher and cheaper if we bought it from hawkers on the platforms of the stations we would pass. So we fed ourselves on cha beehoon and nasi lemak, most of which was wrapped in a cone-shaped folded newspaper, the way fish and chips are, or used to be, served in England.

Eating spree The station where our eating spree started was Johore Bahru, and in retrospect it was typical that the first thing we talked about when entering Malaysia was food. It would remain the dominant topic during all my subsequent visits. After a 14-hour train ride we arrived at Butterworth, from where we took the ferry to Penang Island. These days I imagine most foreigners who visit Penang arrive by plane, or perhaps by bus or car across the bridge, but I had the good fortune to arrive by ferry, which made me instantly aware of the main characteristic of the place – the fact that Penang is a genuine island. Some islands are too large to give one the feel of an island, but Penangites are well aware of their status as island dwellers, even if they may not catch a glimpse of the sea for weeks. The Dutch always like to believe that being open to the sea - in other words, possessing a large coastline - warrants open-mindedness. This supposedly grants us a much broader view than the Germans, whose country has no coast to speak of. 'Continental' is a derogatory term in our language, suggesting a harsh climate and totalitarian politics, and nothing seems more horrifying to us than a landlocked state. This may be an interesting theory, but it does not help explain Penang's insularity. On the one hand, Penang is typically Commonwealth. Many inhabitants have relatives all over the Anglo-Saxon world and have travelled to Australia, Britain and the United States. On the other hand, these same people may barely be aware of what is going on in the rest of Malaysia, let alone the other ASEAN countries and the rest of Southeast Asia. My first visit to Malaysia (December 14-28) coincided with the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia, which was to put an end to the reign of terror of Pol Pot and Khieu Samphan, the most blatantly genocidal regime the world has seen since the end of World War II. I do not recall meeting anyone in Penang who was following the dramatic events in that nearby country. What I heard most often during that visit was that Penang was no longer what it used to be. I would not say that the people I met were gloomy (how could they be with all that delicious food?), but many somehow seemed to relish this atmosphere of past glory that had taken hold of their Pearl of the Orient. One of the first things I was told after arriving was that Penang had never quite recovered from the loss of its free-port status. Whenever I  expressed admiration for the abundance of impressive old mansions I was told that there used to be many many more, but as ever fewer families could afford their upkeep they were progressively demolished or turned into fast-food outlets. Everything I liked was not what it used to be, and everyone told me what a pity it was I had not come several years earlier.

Goreng pisang I am sure that in 1978 Penang was no longer what it had been before, but Penang today is no longer what it was in 1978. I still have a photo I took from the revolving  restaurant on top of the Merlin Hotel in December 1978 facing west, in the general direction of Tanjung Bungah, and the only building with more than two storeys in that picture is Sunrise Tower at the end of Gurney Drive. But all over the world development involves both creation and destruction, and in every country older people are inclined to feel that in this process the loss is greater than the gain. Penangites, however, make things worse for themselves by imagining that this tragic development-driven decline only afflicts their island. In December 1978, I visited two very different hotels, the Lone Pine Hotel and the Rasa Sayang. I was deeply impressed by the latter - there was no hotel of comparable luxury in the Netherlands at the time -, whereas I could not bring myself to be sentimental about the Lone Pine. The trees in the garden  along the waterfront (no beach) were attractive to be sure, but the building was clearly not representative of Penang's architectural heyday. Faced with a choice between the two, I would have opted for the Rasa Sayang's modernity any time. However, I would not have opted for the subsequent development, which has resulted in all of Batu Feringhi west of the Rasa Sayang now being filled with a solid string of huge hotels. Penang probably knows what it is doing, but all over the world tourist resorts are slaughtering their geese that lay golden eggs by building more hotels than their infrastructure can handle. And it is not only hotels that can overburden a city's infrastructure. If a town feels that it must strive for the fleeting honour of possessing the tallest building on the continent, it should make sure that it does so with a building that is likely to be found beautiful by generations to come, and not with a structure that is generally considered an eyesore from the outset. I consider the construction of Komtar the most regrettable development to have befallen Penang Island since 1978. But I resist the notion that renewal equals decline. I do not believe that new developments cannot be improvements. Parking your car at the Penang Swimming Club today is a civilized and safe operation, whereas in 1978 it was pure Russian roulette. The debate about progress vs. decline also applies to food. I agree with those who bemoan the decline in quality of Penang's hawkers' food. But don't blame the hawkers! One cannot expect them to do their best if so many new customers do not really care. If hawkers' food is no longer what it used to be, the main cause may well be the gradual disappearance of a discerning clientele. It is probably inevitable that due to rising living standards more Penangites now eat at proper restaurants, but I continue to be amazed that in a place with such an abundance of superb Chinese coffee shops there can be a market for American fast-food restaurants. What I found most intriguing in 1978 was that people could indulge in endless discussions as to whether the goreng pisang sold  by the hawker on Burma Road near Pulau Tikus was indeed superior to that sold by his competitor in an entirely different part of town. In most cases these discussions would not lead to a consensus, but if they did, one of us would inevitably suggest making that dish our next course, and we would all jump into someone's car to go and get the superior goreng pisang. This procedure was sometimes repeated for three courses in a row, and we would be driving for miles, crisscross through the city, because only one supplier of a given dish could really be the best. I remember once queueing with other people who had had the same brainwave to obtain eu tja kuei. It was being prepared in the backyard of a block of flats off Campbell Street. We had to wait so long that I suggested we get the same delicacy from another supplier, but this was immediately dismissed as a defeatist proposal. I owe most of my geographical knowledge of Penang to wild-goose chases for hawkers who were deemed to be the absolute masters but could not immediately be found that particular evening

Georgetown? or George Town? Nevertheless there are still gaps in my knowledge of  Penang's geography. I know that Penang's town is officially called George Town, not Georgetown. At first I wondered whether everyone really wrote it in two words. I am sure no one pronounces it in such a  halting way. But then it occurred to me that the name is hardly ever pronounced anyway, because there is simply no need for it. People who travel to it from outside the island simply say they are going to Penang, and those who go there from, say, Bayan Lepas or Balik Pulau probably say they are going into town. But by all means, let us continue to write George Town in order to distinguish it from all the Georgetowns in Guyana, Gambia, Colorado, South Carolina and Washington, D.C. A more troubling gap in my geographical understanding is that I am still not clear about Pulau Tikus. Where is it, or rather: will the real Pulau Tikus please stand up? Pulau Tikus is, of course, the busy neighbourhood around the intersection of Burma Road and Cantonment Road, a vital hub of its own in the greater George Town. But it also seems to be the little uninhabited island one can see from the Penang Swimming Club. How can it be both one and the other? The explanation may well be that Penangites do not really know what an island is. The Pulau Tikus of Cantonment Road is clearly not an island. Whether Penang itself is one may even be questionable. The classical definition of an island is land completely surrounded by water. When, centuries ago, it was discovered that the entire land mass of our planet was surrounded by water, the definition needed to be refined. So today an island is any land smaller than a continent that is completely surrounded by water. As Australia is considered a continent, Greenland is the world's largest island, followed by New Guinea and Borneo. The latter should be of special interest to Penang because part of Borneo is part of Malaysia. Borneo is more than twice the size of Germany, comprises both Sabah and Sarawak as well as the four Indonesian provinces of Kalimantan, and is still undisputedly an island. These are, of course, not the kind of islands with which Penang likes to compare itself. It sees itself more on a par with blissful places like Hawaii, Bermuda or Tahiti. But what all these places, big and small, have in common is that they are completely surrounded by water. Can land still be considered completely surrounded by water if it is connected to other land by means of a spectacular13.5-km-long Korean-built bridge – or an invisible Channel Tunnel for that matter? If you ask me, the construction of Penang Bridge has made a dent in Penang's island status. I enjoy the comfort of being able to drive to Kuala Lumpur in less than four hours, but whenever I cross that bridge I am sadly aware there has been a price to pay. Peter van Walsum [Peter is a retired Dutch diplomat.] Go to the top

Women's Centre for Change  34D Jones Road  Penang Counselling for women and children Telephone 228 0342 Website: www.wccpenang.org

______ INDEX Point to the article that you want to read, and CLICK Index page   Baba words   Book review   Food guide   Peace pact (2)   Letter from Pulau Tikus   Letter to the editor   Pulau Tikus discovered    Prince of Wales Island Gazette (5)    Road names

_____________________ The Penang File Issue  33