Today we were able to rely on Jessica’s history having lived in Malaysia and previously visited Penang! We confidently walked off the ship and bypassed all the folks selling tours by taxi and went on a walking tour instead. We used paper maps that were handed out for free at the pier – and when necessary, we pulled up google maps on our phones.
In 2021, George Town was designated a Unesco World Heritage Site for “Creating public spaces through the revitalisation of backlanes in the World Heritage City of George Town”. One of the cool things we discovered was metal sculptures on walls of buildings all throughout the back lanes during our walk.
Our goal was to get to the Blue Mansion for our 11 AM English tour. We arrived with 1 hour and 40 minutes to spare – so we ventured off to explore more.
We bought 4 tiny bananas here as a fruit snack to tide us over till lunch.
We also found a shop that sold Indonesian clothing for really reasonable prices so I bought a cool ¾ sleeve cotton top for 39 Ringit ($13 CAD). I would have bought elephant pants too (and looked like an elephant in them too!) but they didn’t make them big enough!!!
Our tour was officially held at the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (or The Blue Mansion) and told much of the history of the man who built the home. The Man Cheong Fatt Tze was also known as Zhang Bishi 1840-1916. He has been called China’s Last mandarin and 1st Capitalist. Referred to as ‘Rockefeller of the East’ by the New York Times, Cheong’s death was marked by flags being ordered to be flown at half mast by the British and the Dutch in the East.
When he died in 1916, the mansion was left to his 7th wife (said to be his favourite of 8!) and was to remain in the family’s hands until their youngest son, age 2 at the time, died. The mansion came on the market in 1990. The son’s wife couldn’t afford the upkeep of the home, so she rented it out as a rooming house. It was in a severe state of dilapidation as it housed the Cheongs as well as 34 illegal squatter families. Conservation laws were non-existent, developers were hovering. The current owners purchased the Mansion with the sole intention of conducting a Grad 1 restoration exercise of international best-practice standards.
An unexpected learning was to hear that one of the final scenes of Crazy Rich Asians was filmed in the main foyer of the Blue Mansion. In case you have watched the movie, it is the scene where the main character plays Mahjong against her boyfriend’s unwelcoming mother and teaches her an emotional life lesson!
After the tour, we walked back to one of the Malaysian restaurants we had seen and ordered lunch. It was a tasty lunch with many flavours of lemongrass and aromatic herbs like cilantro. After lunch we started walking back the two km to the ship and it was dripping hot by that time.
I was glad we started back when we did – because I was overheating. J took a picture of Jessica and I and described us as two ‘hot’ women – and not hot in a good way! Ha ha!
Once back at the ship around 3 pm, we went straight upstairs for an ice cream! A little clean up and down time in our rooms was welcome.
Jessica and Lynn had a specialty dinner tonight and we all met for a game of 5 Crowns in the library. We have an early meeting time of 7 am tomorrow morning – so I best get this blog posted!
No comments:
Post a Comment