Back to Penang

After our visit to Chiang Mai we returned to our former island home of Penang to visit with old friends and see old haunts. It was kind of a good feeling coming back, though after a day with the heat we remembered how much we disliked the sticky humidity.

This time around we spent a few days in Batu Ferringhi, where we used to live, and then a few days downtown. Those days downtown certainly have a different feeling than the beach community in Batu and made us think that perhaps if we had lived in Georgetown when we lived there our feelings about Penang would have been different. 

Back in Batu we spent a day running the aquaduct, going to the Spice Farm, and evenings at Long Beach hawkers market. All things were nice and food delicious, but we did have a run in with that old "wtf Malaysia" feeling at the Spice Farm as they tried to cheat one of our friends out of 500usd.

 The scam was this; When walking the Spice Garden you are given a small device to play at each numbered station to tell you what spice you are looking at. Our group of 4 had two English, 1 Chinese and 1 Japanese language device. After two hours walking around the garden we returned our devices and headed to the adjacent gift shop. It was at this time that an employ came and asked a few times, to our Chinese friend, if she had broken her device. She denied it and the rest of us agreed as none of us had seen her doing anything that would damage the device nor noticed damage ourselves. The employee went away, but then as we were leaving we were confronted again, this time by the manager and two employees who demanded we pay 500usd for the device we'd broken. The device was clearly cracked, liked clearly, and there was no way our friend or the rest of us wouldn't have noticed if they gave it to us broken. What we suspect is that they had a device that was broken and waited until a chinese person came along (numerous reasons why they choose chinese). They tried negotiating with us for a lower fee, then tried to say we had to pay and that they were being truthful. Well, in the end none of it mattered. Even if we did break the device, there was no contract or waiver saying we were responsible for the device (certainly if it was worth 500usd there would be) We didn't pay but having people argue and try to cheat you doesn't lead to a wellspring of good feelings and so we decided that was enough for the day. We went back to the hotel, showered up and headed out for dinner, sunset, and beers.

 The last few days we spent bumming around Georgetown, gift shopping for a friend, doing laundry, and meeting up with an old colleague/friend of ours. 

By this point we had remembered that you can't really go out from 11am to 4pm and so we had a routine of walking, napping, and then heading out for dinner. All in all, it was a relaxing time and I'm very glad we went back again. 

"Wat" is going on in Chiang Mai

Having been through Thailand a few times, mostly in Bangkok, we decided to take a different path. A few people that we know had talked about Chiang Mai, Thailands northern and former capital as being a very relaxed place. Like much of Thailand, I think, this turned out to be true. We spent a few sleepy days here going to wats and temples, night markets, and just generally walking about.

Many of the wats here, especially Chedi Luang, Suan Dok, and Chiang Mang were really beautiful. It is hard for my very poor photography skills to capture how massive and ornate the halls were. Throughout the city of Chiang Mai and especially in the old walled city there were many wats and temples to visit. While I loved visiting these places there was one thing I found rather odd. There were a number of places that had statues of monks in or around the temples and halls. That is fine and all, but these were quite lifelike and individualized statues. The first few times I encountered them I thought they might be real as, you know, monks sometimes don't move very much. 

NOT my photos btw:

After a long (not really) day of walking around to temples we watched the sunset by the river and, of course, I had a nice big bottle of Singha to wash down dinner. 

Muay Thai

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Knowing that we would be in Thailand I decided that I was going to watch Muay Thai. Having lived in Malaysia and travelled through Thailand a few times I was curious to see a match as I had often seen posters or heard other traveler’s stories of what the fights were like.

In order to get a good seat bought tickets online(from Thaepe) in advance. While it wasn’t needed to secure a seat, as the place was about ½ full of patrons, it was a little bit cheaper. On the fight bill for the night there were 6 different fights. First, the kids rounds. Yes, kids. Ok, they weren’t toddlers or anything, but still I’d guess the boys we saw first were maybe 10 or 11 years old. They fought pretty intensely and their parents were in the corners cheering them on.

After the kids rounds were over next came the girls, then the women (with a fighter from Singapore) and finally the men. You could definitely see the fighting skill getting progressively better as the fights went on.

The whole event was pretty interesting. We arrived just before 8pm, when the fights were scheduled to start. That was way too early. There were a few other patrons, but mostly we sat there, sipping beers and talking to the dog in front of us until around 9pm when the child fighters started to arrive. 

Every fight prior to engaging the fighters had a ritual in the ring, a wai kru. Then they removed their mongkhon, or headband, had a final rub/slap from the trainer and walked to the center to have the ref speak to them before engaging. 

Rounds felt short (a couple minutes?), but you could see how intense the stamina needed for fights like this. It brought me back to my days in Japan doing aikido when we had to do routines for passing level tests, though I’m sure this was much harder never mind all the punches and kicks along the way. Fighters have a kind of kick boxing style, but use elbows, shins, fist, feet, etc. All 8 arms as they say (what are the other 4? No idea!) The main fights were around 10pm and by 11pm the whole show was over and we said goodbye to the dog and walked back to our hotel. A great experience.