End of July I took use of this opportunity again and flew to Penang for a weekend. Thanks to a buddhist holiday we had the monday off from work which offered the possibility for a long weekend holiday. And thanks to the world's best low cost airline Air Asia, reaching different destinations is fast and affordable.
Penang is a lovely island and very suitable for a short holiday. For those who have never heard of it before - I hadn't either. I only googled it after I had already booked my flights there. So I found out I was going to Malaysia for the weekend. Malaysia - truly Asia, as the ads promise.
I don't know if Penang represents the rest of the country well, I doubt it, but it's definitely worth visiting. The most charming part of it is the variety of cultures in the streets of the capital Georgetown. Look right and you see India, look left and you see China, and in the next corner a mosque is sharing the space with a church. The people in Penang come literally from all around the world. It's a smelting pot of cultures and religions like I've seen no where before.
There was still one thing that the locals seemed to be having in common. Their age. A 60 year old would look like a teenager in Penang. No wonder the town missed night life almost entirely...
I don't know how it works out in practice but it seemed that Penang had found a balance within cultural and religional diversity. Conflicts and intolerance were nowhere to be seen. Hindu temples and mosques, chinese temples, churches and buddha altars seemed all to get along just fine.
No crowds, no pollution, lazy atmosphere and english speaking locals made the weekend very relaxing. A true escape from the queues, traffic jams and dirtyness that can't be avoided in Bangkok. And not only that basically everybody spoke rather good english, but we were able to read the signs and maps too!
The illusion of us understanding what was written in the signs didn't last long but was strong enough to show how secure a feeling familiar letters can give. In Thailand it's quite stressful that I can't read anything. I can't translate any street signs, advertisements or sms' received from the phone company. In Penang I realized I missed just that. Although being able to understand the letters isn't of much help either if one has no basic understanding of the language whatsoever...this was best shown to us as we had been thinking about visiting the much in various signs advertised "jalan sehala" - which we found out a bit later meaning "one way street"...(feel free to draw the conclusion that most of the streets are one way only in Penang).
I truly hope that my impression of Penang won't be revealed to be utopia and false hopes. I'd like to think that the pretty island with its charming capital-town has found the right combination of appreciating cultural diversity and different ways of thinking and believing, thus letting everything and everyone flourish and shine. This would give hope for the rest of the world to learn to see differences as richness. Please don't prove me wrong!
