We stayed on the outskirts of Georgetown, having found an Airbnb room in a house share. It would give us a better opportunity to see the more authentic life of people in the city, rather than focusing on the more touristic centre.
Miki had found a vegetarian buffet close to our accommodation, so we ventured out for lunch on our first day there. We both felt sluggish from the long journey to the city the previous day.
The buffet was popular, with a queue lining up every lunchtime. There was an outside area enclosed with a three-sided gazebo, leading back to two long, rectangular rooms. One was a seating area, and the other was a mixture of seating and the counter where we would pay and order drinks. The wall behind the cashier was laden with signs advising what was for sale, that food should be paid for before being consumed, and so on, the signs a mixture of Chinese and Latin lettering.
Our accommodation was a short walk from the coast, where a green park provided a place to relax and shelter from the sun or rain, whichever was filling the skies at any particular moment. Unfortunately, it was the kind of sea best seen but not touched, due to both industrial ships travelling through the water, and the larger number of jellyfish.
On our first evening, we found a local night market. We’d researched one vegetarian stall in a Google search and decided to give it a go, despite the fact there were buckets of water regularly falling from the sky. The market was full of life when we arrived, music booming from speakers amid food stalls and milling people. The stalls lit up the night, with colourful signs displayed by each vendor. After a walk around it became apparent the option we’d found in advance was the only one that served vegetarian food, this was, of course, the only one without umbrellas over their seating area! We had to purchase some drinks from a neighbouring seller to be able to use their shelter.
Despite being undercover, we ended up with a partial soaking. At times, the wind blew so much that a waterfall cascaded sideways, straight at us. Miki’s back got soaked and I lost a potential mouthful of noodles to the wind! An evening in the most simple surroundings made hilarious and enjoyable, experiencing all of this in the tropical warmth was a stark contrast to those stormy days in Largs, Scotland. Here instead, we were wet, but only momentarily chilly.
We soon learned that those downpours were a regular afternoon occurrence which luckily for us, often began around the time we settled at our desks for work.
The following morning we were in the kitchen when the owner – a local lady with Singaporean heritage – and another guest, a Malaysian man from Kuala Lumpur. We were offered a cup of tea and decided to stay at the table to take this opportunity to chat with locals. We soon discovered they were well-travelled, and had been to Leeds among other places. They were full of useful tips about what we should see, or where we should go, also telling us a little about the world of work in Malaysia, suggesting we would both be able to move there and find jobs in this growing economy, one of the strongest in Southeast Asia. A friend to all, as our host described it, a trading intermediary between China and the USA.
Miki had accidentally left his raincoat on the ‘to be packed’ pile at home, so we ventured out to find something to get him through the end of monsoon season. We learned that shopping centres feel impossibly big, and after getting lost for thirty minutes in one, found our way out and into the next. We entered the first ever Decathlon I’ve seen that has small sectioned-off areas for children to play a variety of ball games, and left victorious a short while later with Miki being the proud owner of his first ever poncho (apparently less of a necessity when you grow up in Italy).
On one of the mornings, we went to a cooking course, something we’d both been looking forward to after finding a lady (Nazlina) who offered vegan options on her menu. It started at 8 am, with a breakfast of dosa and some curries on a thali-style tray in an Indian restaurant.
We then began a tour of a local market (Miki getting to test his poncho mid-tour) where Nazlina explained what we were viewing as she bought the ingredients we would need for cooking the meals. She also made a few stops to purchase typical Malaysian snacks for us.
The market felt alive. People were cooking roti-style sweet, pancakes in clay pots; another stall made pancakes with peanuts and sugar inside; there were many fruit and vegetable stalls – we tried donkor fruit (similar to langsat); and we met a beautiful spice lady – so friendly and happy to explain the different spices – who had buckets mixed into pastes instead of having powders to sell.
After buying the ingredients and some sweets for our dessert Nazlina piled us into her car and drove the 1km to her place. She had set up a large kitchen in the garden with multiple cooking stations which, according to Nazlina, provided a much bigger space than was available inside and it would be okay if we made a mess!
We made a couple of dishes – a coconut milk pineapple curry, the sweetness of the pineapple a mouthwatering complement to the creamy, spicy curry sauce. As part of the sauce, we toasted grated coconut and then watched, amazed as through grinding with a mortar and pestle, the grains became a chocolatey paste. We also made spring rolls, these were less exciting for us as they felt less unusual.
During our two weeks in Georgetown, we explored our local neighbourhood; the city centre (which was, as expected, much more geared towards tourists though undoubtedly had many curious hidden corners we hadn’t the time to explore); and the botanical gardens, where we had a few unwanted monkey encounters (not to worry, we came out unscathed!) due to taking warm, obviously delightfully smelling pancakes to the gardens, not realising monkeys would be waiting in anticipation to see if visitors had brought anything tasty along with them!
We also visited Kek Lok Si – the largest Buddhist temple in the country, and one of the largest and oldest in South East Asia – whose architecture is that of Chinese Buddhist culture. On our way in we passed a pool with a large number of turtles, the species being a symbol of longevity, stability and protection within Buddhism.
Once inside it felt as though we were in a small town made up of many temples. Different vantage points meant at one time you could be looking down at some of the temples, at another, looking up. The highest points offered vistas of Georgetown and the sea beyond.
During one of our trips by bus into the centre, we attracted the attention of two men, one a local who had done a lot of travelling during his employed life as a hotel manager, the other a man who had lived in Georgetown for four years and was from Vietnam. He taught other Vietnamese businessmen English. Although the Vietnamese man was a contractor, he hinted that he couldn’t move away from Georgetown without approval from the Vietnamese government – luckily for him, he loves the city he now lives in. A city which, as I understood from our multiple encounters with locals, is very open, multicultural and accepting of diverse personalities and ways of life.
