George Town

The first Taoist temple we visited

George Town is the capital of the state of Penang. You might have heard of Langkawi, a popular tourist destination in Malaysia and George Town isn't far away from there. We set off our first full day there by checking out from our smelly Chinese guest house and started looking for a new one. It didn't take long before we found what we wanted: a clean and cheap room only some hundreds of meters away from the first guest house.

George Town and Malaysia in general hosts many different cultures and religions. There are Indians, Chinese, Malaysians, Thais, Europeans. There's Buddhism, Hinduism, Christianity, Islam, Taoism and who knows what else! And all this you can see and feel around you. They have temples and churches for worshipping almost any god you can imagine and the architecture varies from old European to ancient Chinese and back to modern skyscrapers. And all this is why we came to the town!

The seashell park

The day was cloudy but hot and humid as usual. The first temple we stumbled upon was a Taoist one. We didn't know if outsiders are allowed to enter but as we saw some other westeners doing it, we figured that it's not a big sin at least. The temple looked like one you could imagine seeing in China and the carvings all around it were absolutely gorgeous. Inside the temple there were two rolling cones full of something that looked like gold coins. A man inside told us that the coins were amulets of some kind to bring luck for their bringers.

We had plans to visit a famous sight in George Town, the Blue Mansion, but the entrance fee was twelve ringgits and we considered it to be too expensive for us. So we skipped the mansion and headed for the seashell park. The park is just an ordinary park with a few trees here and there but they've put big seashell-shaped boards around with a lot of interesting information on different seashells written on them. I for example didn't know that some of the shells can be deadly only if you touch them!

The Speaker's Square

When we thought we knew enough of seashells we continued our way towards the sea. On both sides of the street there were buildings from colonial times that could have been from any old city in Central Europe. It was a great change after two weeks in Thailand without seeing anything but Buddhist temples! Right next to the sea we saw a huge open area known as the Speaker's Square. The square is there to remind people of freedom of speech and I guess sometimes people actually gather there to give and to listen to speeches. The sign next to the square says: "The right to freedom of speech, assembly and association is guaranteed.". Strong words from a country that doesn't even allow its citizens to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Like I wrote before, it was a hot day and we wanted to relax for a while by the sea after walking for quite some time. We sat there, taking pictures, talking and checking the sea. I noticed something floating in the sea and thought it was just a small log or a piece of wood. As we talked Inna noticed it too and after a while we saw that it moved. Still I thought it was just a current moving the piece of wood but soon we realized that it was actually swimming! We didn't know what it was but I tried to take as many pictures as I could. The only thing that came to our minds was a crocodile :). In a while the animal had swum further and we noticed that it wasn't alone: there were at least half a dozen of them! Soon they were way too far for any pictures and I had time to check mine. From the pictures we were able to see that it wasn't a crocodile after all but a huge monitor lizard!

The swimming lizard!

The lizards helped us forget the fatigue and we continued our tour towards Fort Cornwallis. Fort Cornwallis is again one of the big sights in George Town and it's basically a small castle, or as the name says, a fort. The entrance wasn't free and to be honest I don't know if we had seen anything spectacular inside we weren't able to see from the outside. Quite close to the fort we found a few travel agencies and asked about visas to Singapore in them. They had absolutely no idea how or where to apply for them but at least they had air conditioners to cool us down a bit!

After eating a bit of ice cream we went on to visit more places: Taoist temples, Hinduist temples, Mosques...there's a lot to see in George Town if you're interested in different religions. In one of the Taoist temples a man of Chinese origin talked about his religion to us for quite some time. It was interesting to hear as it's not something you can easily meet in Europe. His religion made a lot more sense to me than many others and I liked the way he didn't try to force us to believe. He just told the way he saw things. In one of the Mosques another man told us about Islam in similar fashion. His religion didn't make that much sense to me but the man wasn't as persuasive as I had feared. Hinduism didn't show its best side as one of the true believers was lying on the ground in front of the entrance to one of their temples, screaming and yelling something we didn't understand. He was filthy and it looked like he could be on drugs. The locals tried to do something with him but with not much luck.

Finally after all the religious buildings and people we headed for the modern districts. There were shops for almost everything and we simply didn't have enough time to see much. We decided to leave something for the next day and went back to our guest house to sleep :).

Beautiful carvings in the first Taoist temple

A building from Europe

Inna preparing for her speech near the Speaker's Square.

A big flower near Fort Cornwallis

The Mosque where we heard a story about Islam.

A Hinduist temple

The modern part of George Town