Thoughts, forts and temples

View from the lighthouse at Fort Cornwallis - the first bastion of colonial times

Today has been simply divine.

The hostel we're staying at, The Blue Dragon, is mental. The owner is permanently drunk and so surreal you can't help but love him. They have a live band playing every night - think Dan, Kyo and Alex but forced to play American wankrock exclusively, despite their obvious talent. If I have to listen to Hotel California one more time, I'm going to spit roast someone. They only play to about 1.30 in the morning each day though, so it could be so much worse and as we're now planning to stay a couple of extra nights before catching a ferry to Sumatra on Friday, we've decided to switch to the Stardust cafe and hostel down the road.

Stardust is run by a simply lovely Thai family who have taken a particular shine to us (I think they're amused by the delight I take in being able drink rootbeer in the evenings) and it's a lot more luxurious than the one we're currently staying in, by which I mean that the bath is clean and your sleep isn't likely to be disturbed by waking to find a cockroach on your face.....

The fact is though, that by the time evening comes around, we're so tired we could sleep through the Apocalypse, although my saga of outrageously vivid dreams courtesy of my Malarone continues....

Today we visited Fort Cornwallis, occupied by the British in colonial times. I have a nasty feeling that Kate intends to post on her blog a particularly horrifying picture of me in a military hat and holding an old fashioned rifle - it wasn't my fault, the guide just wouldn't take no for an answer and it seemed rude to insist that I hadn't come this far to look like a re-enactor of colonial England.

The fort was lovely although quite surreal as they were blasting out classical music at full volume for the entire duration of our visit, but the fort is right by the sea and the breeze was so welcome, that I soon found a swing seat in the shade and drifted away to a bit of Beethoven's 5th. Well, until Kate discovered me, cut my toe in her eagerness to swing us into the branches of the tree the swing was suspended from and then nicked my swing while I went off to administer first aid to my foot. If I didn't know better, I'd think she had planned the whole thing.

From the gunpowder room at the Fort, with the Lighthouse in the background (from which I took the first photo above) - climbing that thing was seriously scary and I didn't make it the whole way. Mum, it was perfectly safe, I promise.....

The heat, the heat, the heat. It's damn hot. This place makes Hades look like it has air con. But you get used to the sweat dripping from your brow (as well as in other, less pleasant places) and it cools down as the day goes on until by evening it's perfect for sitting outside and sipping on a nice cool iced Milo or a Tiger Beer. Lawrence, I think I'm getting the hang of the toilets now, too - I haven't sprayed on my self once!

Most of all, I love the way the heat forces us to take things at a different pace. We do a lot of our walking in the late afternoon and early evenings and this is ideal as it's when the island comes to life. Mosques call prayers on the evening breeze, the bars start their music and the tuk-tuk drivers come to a rest at the side of the road and wait for people to approach them for a change. Actually, the tuk tuk drivers seem to find the three of us hilarious as we prefer to walk everywhere - we just don't want to miss anything. On our way to the Banana Bar where the three of us are hitting the internet tonight, an old Chinese man in a tuk-tuk laughed at us and pointed, miming walking with his fingers, and calling "Jalan, jalan!!" - not sure about the spelling of that, but it means walking.

One thing I can't get over is how friendly everyone is. We spent today in Little India and Chinatown (the Chinese and Indian populations here are really substantial), and wherever we go people stop and say hello and ask where we're from. When we tell them, some people shake their heads and say, "Cold!Cold!" and today a policeman spent a while telling us about his experiences in York a few years ago in the snow. He was horrified at the memory, which had him shivering while we soaked up the TIC's aircon!

The doors to the Chinese temple - enter if you dare.....

After Fort Cornwallis, we took a guided walk (courtesy of a leaflet from the local TIC - how handy these places are when you're abroad) on The Road of Harmony, where all sorts of religious temples and mosques co-exist. Words can't describe how beautiful some of these buildings are and the welcome we received in each was so humbling, it almost moved me to tears. To think how we treat foreign people back home makes me feel very sad being here, where everyone is so keen to help and so interested in whether you like their country. But having visited Chinese temples, Hindu shrines, a mosque, a Tamil shrine, a Confucian temple and a Tao shrine today, I had a real insight into the role religion plays here in ensuring and maintaining a sense of community that just does not exist in my experience back home. And everyone we meet is so proud of Penang and so keen to tell us where we should go next (fortunately, home has not yet been one of the suggestions!).

In the Chinese Goddess Temple, incense was burning in huge brass pots outside - bigger than me by far - guarded by large stone dragons. Inside, worshippers were taking sticks of incense and walking to each corner of the temple, raising a dozen or so little sticks above their heads then to their chests, over and over, before placing them before each individual shrine. The statues of the Gods were dressed in brightly coloured cloth as they gazed down at us with unreadable expressions. Everyone greeted us cheerfully, as always.

Stone dragons at a devotional Chinese temple on the Road of Harmony

In the Hindu temple, statues of Lakshmi abound and four women sat in stillness before a shrine to the goddess, where maybe twenty or more oil lamps burnt fiercely. The women stared fixedly at the shrines, mouthing prayers to the goddess in silence. There was a stillness amongst them that I could not take my eyes from and I watched them for a long time with something between admiration, awe and aspiration for a spirituality of my own that could offer even half as much focus and comfort.

My favourite place today was without a doubt the mosque we visited. We arrived just as prayers were being called from loudspeakers on the tall minaret outside, and so many of the men arriving to worship stopped to talk to us. Although we could not go in tonight (it was almost 8 o'clock and visitors are only allowed til 6pm), everyone we spoke to invited us back tomorrow for a proper visit. Amazingly, the prayers calling from the minaret disturb a flock of bats (James - collective noun for bats? New challenge!), who fly so low to the ground that they whistle past your ears the whole time the prayers are sounding.

The sun was setting in a silver blue sky, with the lights of the mosque shining above its brilliant white walls, bats wheeling and prayers sounding. I sat on a marble bench in the gardens where we were told we were welcome to stay as long as we liked and just stared and stared. I even felt in harmony with the rats scampering happily around my feet.

This truly is a different world. I love it here. Although we are obviously strangers in a strange land, the welcome we receive wherever we go is awe-inspiring. Malaysia is definitely the right place to start a trip like this, and I think I could happily spend three months here alone. There's a paper here called The Star (known as the Paper for the People), so who knows, maybe one day I'll come back again......

We've discovered a ferry to Sumatra that leaves on Friday and takes us to Medan. From there we can travel a short while to the jungle national park, where we can hire a guide to take us out to meet the orang-utans. I imagine I will be out of circulation for a while, so don't worry, I'm fine (barring adoption by a gang of - James, collective noun for orang-utans?). I'll write as soon as I can.

In the meantime, I think of all of you so often, whenever sights strike me that I know you would love. My feet hurt. I am bathed in sweat. I think the back of my neck might be ever so slightly burnt. But rest assured that the last time I felt like this, the experience I'd just had was x-rated. I love it here. Miss you loads x

The cats here are EVERYWHERE - in temples, on the streets, in the courtyard of the hotel - these little kittens were fighting with each other in the lighthouse at Fort Cornwallis. The little black one had kittenkat eyes - I kill you.........!!!