Just made it to breakfast with 10 minutes to spare, dont know quite what happened but it seems everywhere we go and stay for over 2 nights the 3rd one wipes us out. We decided to take a wander through the city in the opposite direction and discovered some of the many markets and bizarre shopping centres that sit next to and tower over this world heritage sight.
We had a number of key items to purchase which included Nutella and by lunchtime mission accomplished much to my relief. Then we both decided that we really should stop talking about waht to do with our hair and get it cut. We sat side by side whilst all sorts of language sprinkled with English went on and after 30 mins and £8 of scissor work we emerged impressed that they had taken the same time for each, concerned at what it really would look like in the morning. A meandering stroll back saw us take in Campbell Street, the place to get your Chinese medicines and we conducted an impromptu fashion shoot.
25th December - Georgetown
Breakfast was preceded with gift opening, one from the hotel for each of us and despite insistence on not buying pressies by both parties involved a gift for me from G!
I also opened the pressie and card I had carried from my mapa given to me on the 31st October which meant that I now had 2 Commando comics to read...
After breakfast we joined a tour of the mansion to learn more about where we were staying and what made this building so special. It is a truly amazing story of a Chinese Henry VIII type character but with none of the madness and all of the guile of a skillful trader and philanthropist. On the death of Cheong Fatt Ze both the English and the Dutch flew their flags at half mast. The mansion is designed to the laws of Feng Shui not that I had the first clue really of how until it was explained in terms of layout, heights, numbers of steps - 28 being the most prosperous of numbers (this led to much counting of number plates after to see who believed in this - surprisingly a great many). The mansion had been occupied until the late 80's by many families of workers who paid rent to the wife of the last owner. It was in a very sorry state of repair and the work done to restore the mansion is awe-inspiring. The tiles are original, imported from the Potteries and the steel structures and columns that underpin the main body of the building are from Glasgow. Water from the gutters runs through copper pipes in the walls, the wings of the mansion are identical in layout and of course the opening to the sky to be at one with nature is impressive, a feature that I now both understood and have seen many times since.
We had spoken about going to a beach on Christmas day as it would be a first for me so with that in mind we intrepid adventurers set off to the hire place for a scooter. Now Christmas day is not celebrated by all of the world and in Malaysia it is a public holiday. However after a few test runs my driver was ready. Now would you pick what is essentially a bank holiday, having never had a passenger on the back of the scooter, or been a passenger on the back of a scooter, or ridden/driven on the roads of a very compact one way system driven city to do all of the above for the first time... the roads were gridlocked I was given strict instructions on how to handle myself and G learnt as we went the difference when having a pillion passenger. Add in the hairpin turns, hill starts and you will appreciate that at my first sight of a stretch of sand I was mad keen to disembark and wring out my shirt!
It wasnt the best so, gritting many parts of my anatomy we continued across the top of the island to the big touristy beaches of Batu Ferringhi, rode down to the beach, off and without much clothing removal into the sea. Lunch at a beachside cafe was followed by a wander down the beach watching the parascending Santa distribute sweets from 50ft in the air along with much ice cream munching and many nationalities trying out water sports activities for what must have been their first time. Sitting on a banana being towed out to sea one guy looked as though he still had his suit on
Much quieter ride home although we did have 2 very near misses and then out to dinner at the 'Passage through India' which sits in the old servants quarters/stable block for the mansion. A feast of flavour marked this as one of the best meals I have ever had and it was back to the mansion to skype one and all. What a day.
Ok so this place does feature in the lonely planet and footprint but not necessarily on a shoestring and rightly so. We are not talking a fortune for bed and breakfast and a room the size of most people's entire apartments but it is not the same price as the grotburger hotel in Satun.
The 24th was spent touring the UNESCO part of Georgetown including Little India and Chinatown. The latter way smaller than expected and the former a wake up of Bollywood music, Indian sweets, sari's and salwar-kamese all explained in a way that I understood from my excellent tour guide on most things Indian. Georgetown still retains many of the footprints of those intrepid Englishmen and women who set foot here in the 1800's. It feels quintessentially English in one step then a world of colour, sound and smell the next. All good smells though from the many restaurants and hawker stalls on the side of the road, in the road and on every corner. Temples, mosques and churches co-exist alongside each other and after a feet pounding day we took to a chinese restaurant in the evening and then to bed awaiting a very different Christmas day. My thoughts were with my munchkins who along with their mum were in Norfolk with my parents for a no doubt sumptuous feast on Christmas Day.
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