Tuesday, June 18, 2013

Penang Toy Museum

Working through the list of places to see in Penang my finger fell on the Toy Museum on a recent weekend. I had heard a bit about it in the local papers as it had moved locations from the basement of the Copthorne hotel to a new location in Teluk Bahang. It was a bit hard to find as I thought it would be right by the roadside, but in fact it was set back from the main thoroughfare. My friend and I arrived around closing time and we asked if we could still get in. The owner told us it would take 30-60 minutes depending on how much we liked the things. We had about 45 minutes to the close so we thought we would go for it. The array of toys and memorabilia was amazing and we had a good time walking around taking photos of different things. It took us about 40 minutes to go through it all. When we finally emerged the owner chatted with us for a bit and told us that some people don’t last more than 10 minutes. I can see why this is. Though the toys are interesting, the best part was associations made to my childhood and toys that I may have had. If you are an American male between the ages of 25 and 40 this would probably be interesting for you. If not, maybe you should budget 10 minutes. At a price of 30 ringgit (about 10usd) for admission I was just satisfied with my experience.