Feb 5 - Take a morning walk to see the diversity of architecture in Taiping. I was told the town is 70% ethnic Chinese, but if that is true, a large percentage of the remainder must be ethnic Indian. Sometimes I wonder where the native Malay influence can even be felt.
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Even though the Taiping train station is a 10 minute walk, the way there is totally not for pedestrians. No sidewalks exist and the street is full of traffic with no designated crossings. We get a taxi for the two minutes it takes to drive there. This is our first train in Malaysia, and it is a slick, clean, organized affair. In a few hours we’ve arrived in Butterworth, a coastal city that faces the island of Penang. This is one of those glorious travel situations where the train, bus, and ferry terminals are all connected and well-signposted. We can’t fail to find where the ferry leaves from. It costs 1 ringgit/person for the 15 minute ferry ride across the channel. Once across in George Town, stand around confused like everyone else, trying to figure out which buses go where, and from what stop. Eventually we make our way out to the general vicinity of our hotel on two CAT buses (this type stays in the downtown area, and is free to use).
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The island of Penang, and specifically George Town, has a unique history in the peninsula. The settlement was founded by Captain Francis Light of the East India Company in 1786. It began as a free trading port, and was later brought into the British colonial system. The older part of the city, near the ferry ports, is a mix of British, Chinese, Indian, and Malay influence. To the British, this region became what was later called the Straits Settlements (’straits’ refers to the Straits of Mallacas, the body of water between the Malay Peninsula and Sumatra).