All the Way from 91 to 62 Love Lane!

What a well-travelled woman I am! Having lived at 91 Love Lane, Morden, Surrey, from the age of 10 to 21 (and it's still my family home, where mum and dad still live 53 years after moving in), I've now travelled half way round the world - to number 62 Love Lane. That's 62 Love Lane in Penang, Malaysia, by the way! This is the address of a lovely little art gallery, specialising in highly colourful 'naive' art produced by children aged 6 to 17, in a little lane in Georgetown, Pulau Pengang (Penang Island) just off the north-west coast of Peninsular Malaysia.


It's also the place where Andy and I had a lovely 'steamboat' meal on Monday evening (9 Jan), provided by our hosts, a young Chinese couple who run the art gallery - Joey (she a painter and illustrator) and Clovis (he a professional photographer), both of whom teach art classes too. We were also accompanied that evening by a young Belgian couple, Hans and Hannah, who are, like us, just travelling through. Earlier that afternoon, we'd wandered around the gallery, and Andy had commented favourably on a lovely, brightly-painted picture called 'Steamboat', and particularly the description which accompanied it, explaining how important it is for family and friends to gather round a table to eat and talk. Joey and Clovis overheard Andy's praise, and immediately invited us to join them that evening for just such an event: it's apparently something they do from time to time - invite 4 or 6 friendly-seeming gallery viewers to join them for an evening meal at their little table on the pavement by the gallery's front door. And so we sat eating home-prepared food from the steamboat (rather like a fondue, but with stock in which you cook a whole variety of vegetables, fish, meat, tofu and eggs), and chatting to the four young'uns about all kinds of things until nearly midnight.


We learned, for example, that many older Chinese and Indian people are nostalgic for the days of British rule, feeling that they were treated more favourably and equitably (with the Malay people) than they are now. We were told that it's quite difficult for non-Malay people to get into government/civil service jobs, that Malay people, as of right, get a more favourable interest rate for mortgages and business loans than others, and that some of the ethnic/religious minorities here feel that they are less well respected than the Malay Muslim majority. We also learned that the Belgian people hadn't really seemed to notice any difference to their lives from not having had a government in place over nearly two years. But we also talked about art, photography, wedding traditions, etc. etc., and it was far from being a wholly 'political polemic' debate. Indeed, it was a lovely, gentle occasion, and very relaxing after the previous 3 days of sight-seeing around Georgetown, walking our feet off in this 'heritage' part of Penang Island.

Georgetown, named in honour of our 'mad King' during British colonial times, is the fascinating historic capital of Penang state, of which the island is a part. It's a grid of trishaw-wide alleys and lanes with tumbledown Chinese storefronts, elaborate Chinese Perakanan mansions and Kongsis ('clan-houses'), as well as British Raj-era Indian/Malay/colonial architecture, colourful (nay, over-the-top) temples, mosques, and - particularly now in the run-up to Chinese New Year on 23 Jan - thousands and thousands of 'heavenly paper lanterns' casting the street hawkers and passers-by in a blood-red celebratory glow, through the joss-stick aromatic haze which lingers everywhere. Just beyond the 'heritage' part of Georgetown, there's a fair share of shopping malls, pubs, boutiques, cafes and traffic congestion that wouldn't be out of place in many Western city centres - but we're ignoring all that bit, and revelling in times past for now.


On Wed evening (11 Jan - the eve of my mum's 86th birthday, and a few days before my younger sister's birthday - so Happy Birthday Mum and Jacky!), we were once again the guests of some local Chinese/Malay people whom we'd met - for probably less than 5 minutes! - a couple of days earlier. Andy and I had been admiring a lovely old original Chinese building, recently vacated by the 'Old House Cafe', when we were surrounded by a group of about 10 locals (Chinese, Malays and Indians), who were themselves visiting Georgetown for the weekend as tourists, though being shown round by one of their number, who lives on the island. After sharing our views about this lovely old building, we were (as so often) asked where we were from, and a few names were exchanged. Almost everyone over here - of whatever race of ethnic origin - still seems to cling to an English name, and there was much glee and laughter over the fact that the 'senior' member of this crowd of friends was also called Andrew. And, in this incredibly friendly country, that was sufficient reason to cause Andrew to extend an invitation to eat together two evenings later, for some 'real home-cooked' Chinese Malay food. We had expected that we would be meeting up with them in a nearby restaurant for the evening but oh no! Andrew and his wife, Jenny, collected us by car from our hotel, and whisked us off to the house of the mother of one of the group of friends, Lee, who lives about half an hour's drive outside of Georgetown. There, we were given some delicious prawn/noodle dish with chilli sauce, some special steamed rice, a yam 'cake', also with chilli sauce, and some home-produced apple and carrot juice. The weird thing was that these dishes were made almost entirely for we two alone - Andrew and Jenny announced that they were part-way through a fortnight's gall-bladder de-tox regime, and were only taking liquid nourishment from a large jar of home-produced fruit and vegetable juice, and the rest of Lee's family (including his mother, who'd cooked the food, his father, two aunts, an uncle, a sister, a young cousin and another man who dropped in whilst we were there) only came to the table occasionally to 'pick' at the food. For the most part, they seemed more keen to watch us eating the food which had been prepared for us, each taking it in turns, with obvious pride which brooked no dissent, to ask what we thought of it, or to 'test' us on our knowledge of English nursery rhymes, the most popular of which seemed to be 'London Bridge is Falling Down'! A very bizarre experience indeed, if very hospitable and friendly. And all the food was delicious!

Between leaving KL and arriving in Georgetown, we'd spent three days/nights in the Cameron Highlands - named after our 14-year-old grandson, of course - which had been recommended by another Jenny - this time, our long-standing friend in Bromsgrove (thanks, Jen).

There, the temperature was a good 10-12 degrees cooler than KL, being some 5,000 feet above sea-level, and we even had to wear fleeces in the evenings, for goodness sake! But the scenery - undulating hillsides covered with layers and layers of tea plantations, strawberry farms and vegetable growers - was really beautiful. Hadn't appreciated until then that black tea, green tea, and Chinese tea are all made from the same leaves, just oxidised for different lengths of time. Nor that fruit and herb teas were invented purely to use up the most 'inferior' parts of the leaf after processing.

Amazingly, too, in Tedah Rata, where we were, unusually, staying in a pretty desolate, Marie-Celeste of a hotel, we bumped into a family we'd met in our hotel in KL the previous week - a Canadian couple, with FIVE children between the ages of 2 and 14, who are travelling all over the world during a year-long break after the 40-something-year-old father sold off his business in Alberta. Now that's what I call brave - all that home-schooling!!

Now, though, we've just arrived by ferry on the island of Langkawi, a 2-and-a-half-hour journey north from Penang, and fairly near to the Thai border. For the first time, we have a dull and cloudy day - though it's still as hot as it's been everywhere else, the Cameron Higlands apart, of course.   More in a week or so ....