Christmas in Penang

Looking back on Christmas Eve I really can’t remember what we did during the morning/breakfast hours. Elizabeth, my wonderful travel companion with a questionable memory, claims that we didn’t have anyone join us for breakfast and spent the time working on our computers/reading. I’m sure this is possible, I just really don’t remember. Whatever we did do, it couldn’t have been that great or else I could have remember – in which case I will now be carrying a small notebook around with me to take notes so I can have even more reliable blog posts moving forward.

After whatever happened over the breakfast hour we once again set out in search of the coconut tart man. So we heard about these coconut tarts from our guidebook of local merchants selling traditional products. This coconut tart man apparently makes 300 coconut tarts each day and they sell out quick. We had tried to find him the day before but based on the map and address we had been given in the guidebook could not, for the life of us, locate him. We had walked into many stores thinking he may be inside but he never was. At one point we wandered inside a building with swinging front doors (like what you’d find at a bar) and upon entering we simply told “No, Sorry” by the 8 or so older Chinese people playing various tile games. Clearly they didn’t want us there and it was clear to us they had no coconut tarts, so moving on. We recounted our search efforts to Sui, the wonderful Chinese girl who hosted our Chinese tea ceremony, and she gave us a few clues as to where it might be. The map was confusing and we may have been looking on the wrong street.

Now back to the 24^th. Armed with some hints from Sui and renewed energy for our search we set out from the café to find the coconut tart man again. After lots of searching, down main roads and back alley we finally, finally found him. His shop is on the ground floor of an apartment building in what appears to be a kind of private courtyard for the residents. There is lots of little garage looking sites, some of them stores, some of them not, that are tucked under the apartments. Most of them are not well marked with their addresses and have poor storefront signage. When we found the place the baker was in the back taking something fresh out of the oven. His son, who obviously mans the front of the store, was much more interested in his television show than in selling us coconut tarts, but after a bit of encouragement from his father he bagged up 2 coconut tarts for us, we handed over the RM$3 (US$0.90) and headed off. About 10 meters from the store we ran into a group of about 20 Chinese who were also in their second day of looking for the coconut tart man. We pointed them in the right direction and continued on our journey.

For some reason at this point we were hungry again – we must have spent quite a while at the café that morning reading and sending e-mails as Elizabeth claims – and we wandered toward China House, a local café that had been suggested by Sui based on our enjoyment of Mugshot café. Apparently the people who started Mugshot used to work at China House. When we found the place we opened the door, walked in, and it was packed. From the outside it doesn’t look like a really happening place. From what I remember the windows and doors are a darkened glass, and there wasn’t a lot of traffic through the front door, but once you walk in you realize just how huge the place is and almost every table was full. We were originally sat in the vary back room where the only empty tables still were.

On the way to our table at the back of the restaurant we were taken past a table full of cakes – there must have been 30 different kinds. I have never seen anything like it! And everyone in the café was a having a piece. We have noticed so many more sweets in this country than in Singapore – no wonder the people are not as skinny here! Every cake looked absolutely fabulous, made with love and care. I was tempted to order a piece but since Elizabeth cannot eat any of them being that she is vegan, and since I didn’t want to order a whole piece for myself, I never tried one. But they looked amazing!

We didn’t like the back of the restaurant much so we moved ourselves up towards the front, where it was better lit and where there was a bit more action. We settled in, had a nice light lunch, some good tea, and Elizabeth had a nice Facebook chat with some friends from America while I read my book, The Happiness of Pursuit. At some point during our afternoon of relaxing the owner of the restaurant made some comment about us working there – within earshot of us and the staff. The comment was very casual but Elizabeth and I took her up on the offer, filling out applications.

After handing them I our applications, we chatted a bit with the owner about what the job might entail. She said it would be living on Langkawi and doing “a bit of everything.” For those of you who don’t know, Langkawi is a resort-covered island off the west coast of Malaysia, about 2 hours by ferry north of where we currently are, very close to the Thai border.  Elizabeth would like to live out there but I’m not so keen about being stuck on a small island. I like the city. Also, the idea of doing “a bit of everything” doesn’t really appeal to me either. I know what I’m good at – customer service – I know what I enjoy – spending time with people – and if I cannot get a job that includes both of these I’m not interested. She will be getting back to us later but I definitely don’t have my heart set on it. I’m still hankering to get back to Singapore – the best city in the world! ;)

Later on Christmas Eve we returned to our favorite dinner restaurant, Sushi Tei, for a nice dinner of vegetables and fresh fish. Yum! Since by this point we have been traveling together for almost 2 weeks and have almost nothing left to talk about – I can’t imagine what married people talk about after 30 + years – we entertain ourselves by talking about/interacting with other people. This evening Elizabeth made it her personal mission to get one of the chefs working in the open kitchen to wave to her. Now they couldn’t just be anywhere in the kitchen either, they had to be in the part of the kitchen that was separated off by a glass wall. This might not seem like it would be too difficult, and in America it wouldn’t be, but despite the fact that we caught the attention of 5 employees and waved at them all, only the last one waved back at us. Most of them didn’t know what to do when we waved at them. Some of them couldn’t even believe we would be waving at them and turned to look over their shoulder for who might be standing behind them. Goal accomplished, we were finally able to leave and continue on with our Christmas Eve festivities.

Christmas is not a holiday here like it is in America. In America you spend Christmas at home with you family engaging in some tradition of another that your family has had for many years. In Malaysia, on the other hand, Christmas is a big holiday for going out and partying. It would be like Halloween or New Years Eve. Since Malaysia is a Muslim country most of the population obviously doesn’t celebrate the religious aspect of Christmas. And most of the immigrant population from other parts of Asia, China, is not Christian or just not that religious. When we went out after dinner to grab a coffee at Starbucks it was busier than any night we had seen so far despite the fact that it isn’t a “real” holiday here and it was in the middle of week – people would be going to work and continuing their lives as normal the following morning on Christmas Day. There were people everywhere, which made it fun for us in the people-watching department, but amazingly almost no white people (they must’ve all been at home celebrating Christmas like we are all used to).

There did happen to be a couple next to us – a white guy and an Asian girl- and since he was the only white person we saw all night we had to play “Where’s the white person from?” with him. I guessed that he was from Australia, in college, and they were here visiting his ex-pat parents who lived here, the girl being his girlfriend from college that he was bringing home. Elizabeth guessed something completely different, I don’t remember what, but it doesn’t matter – I was closest. He was born in New Zealand, lived in Penang most of his life, but had been in L.A. the last year at school and was home visiting for Christmas. He knew the girl, Amanda, from high school in Penang – they both went to International Schools. They apparently are “in the same friend group” – that’s what kids are calling it these days. It was pretty obvious from their body language they were more than friends but obviously unwilling to admit it. Haha!

Anyways, after our coffee Christmas Eve celebration it was back to the hotel and off to sleep.

On the bus home from town on Christmas Eve, between lunch at China House and dinner at Sushi Tei, we met a very interesting local woman. When we got on the bus it was very crowded. We were both standing up and there were people everywhere. I had a backpack with me that day and had taken it off and put it between my feet on the bus. Malaysia is a place where you are very likely to get pick-pocketed, so protecting your stuff is important, but I figured having it between my legs on a crowded bus no one would be able to make off with it without me noticing. FYI, this story is not going where you think it is, no one stole my stuff. After being on the bus for maybe 5 or 10 minutes this local woman (the one this story is about) leaned over and told me to watch my stuff and then pointed to the guy standing next to. This put me on alert. I grabbed my bag up off the floor and turned my body so my back was not to him but rather so I was facing him and could watch him. He got off the bus a bit later and then the woman came over to talk to us. She had said he had stood next to us because he wanted to touch us.

Now this is something we have to adjust to here in Malaysia – something that hasn’t been a problem in any of the countries I have been to so far – and something that is getting really old, really fast. The harassment that you receive as a woman here is never ending. Constant horns honking as you walk down the street, constant stares as you go anywhere. People are friendly, but a bit too friendly. You never really feel super safe. I don’t necessarily feel like I’m in danger, per say, but I always feel like I have to be on alert, especially when it’s just me and Elizabeth. If we were with a guy we would have absolutely no problems what so ever. The worst part is there is nothing you can do about it. We were discussing the difference between places like this and western countries and it is amazing. In a western country, within reason, men do not feel like women are there simply for their enjoyment. A woman is not walking down the street just so they can look at her, she’s not standing near them on a bus so they can touch her - it just doesn’t work like that in the west. Here they treat it as if your presence is for their enjoyment. They don’t treat you like another person out running errands, walking down the street to buy milk, or standing on the bus just waiting in traffic like them. It is just so repulsive; I’m not sure how women here deal with this day in and day out. I could never live in a country like this long-term, at least not as a single woman. And if I had a daughter here I would probably hire some guy to walk around with her – not to watch over her behavior, but to keep the men from harassing her. I am tempted to start a rent-a-man service for white women traveling alone that would like to go out and enjoy life without men bothering them constantly.

Enough of that. The reason this woman on the bus was so interesting is because she was a lot like Elizabeth and I. Despite the fact that she is from Penang, she is very western in spirit. She is a strong woman who doesn’t let anyone push her around. She doesn’t take any crap from the gross men that inhabit this country and she does what she wants, when she wants to. She was obviously very successful in her job (whatever it was), has traveled extensively, and probably very well educated. For the majority of the bus ride she was telling us stories about her life and Elizabeth and I were just soaking it up. She was so honest and funny and her life felt a lot like it could have been ours, something I wouldn’t say I could say about many of the women here in Malaysia. Plus, she was talking about how she couldn’t stand all the immigrants from the neighboring countries – India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, etc. – just like people everywhere are about the immigrants in their country. This obviously isn’t a great attitude to have, but it’s amazing how just about everywhere you go people have something negative to say about the immigrant population in their area (although it’s always a different immigrant group) and the complaints are always the same. I guess people aren’t all the different around the world after all.

Okay, I am now finally going to move onto Christmas Day.

Christmas morning we woke up rather early but had a few errands to run before we could start our day. First thing first we had to get Elizabeth some soymilk. At our favorite café, Mugshot, they occasionally have soymilk but they drink sweetened soymilk here and I don’t blame Elizabeth for not enjoying it. The told us if we brought our own soymilk they would keep it there for us and would make Elizabeth’s drinks with it so we were off to find some unsweetened soymilk. We walked down to our local mall, Gurney Plaza, the same place we go for sushi and Starbucks, to get some unsweetened soymilk at the cold storage (grocery store). We found some – it was like 5 times the price of the sweetened kind but you gotta do what you gotta do – and then we were off to town to have our coffee and bagel.

When we got there we saw a guy sitting in the corner all by himself. It was Christmas morning and we just couldn’t stand for this so we invited him to join us at breakfast. His name was Joost (pronounced yost) and he is from the Netherlands. He has red curly hair and is traveling with other Dutch guys who also all have curly hair. And when I say curly, I mean really curly, like afro curly. We spent our breakfast with Joost during which I asked if he had plans for the evening, for Christmas evening. He didn’t and neither did we so I suggested we do a RM$10 gift exchange with him and his friends. He agreed and so we made it a date – gift exchange at his hostel followed by dinner in town. I came up with this idea totally on the fly but I mean it’s Christmas; none of us have family here, and why not do something festive, right?

After finishing our coffees, Elizabeth and I took Joost to the coconut tart man so incase he wanted a coconut tart at some time in the future he wouldn’t have to wander for days in search of the shop. To note, Joost did not ask us to take him here, we just suggested it and he agreed. Along the way we ran into pretty much all the white people Elizabeth and I had met in town to date and invited all of them to the gift exchange as well. I think Joost may have been a bit surprised how many people we knew – but when you have breakfast with a new person everyday you meet people rather quickly.

After our stop at the coconut tart man Joost told us he could bring us to an ATM since we had no cash and had had our breakfast that morning on credit at the café. He claimed to know where the closest ATM was but I am confident now that he was totally wrong. He did get us to an ATM eventually, but I just cannot believe that was the closest one. We must have walked at least 1km across town, there had to have been a bank somewhere else near by.  On the way we ran into any of Joost’s friends and invited them all to the gift exchange as well. Since we had invited so many people the details were now set – Reggae Hostel, 8:30pm, RM$10 gift wrapped, and dinner to follow. After getting money out of the ATM we had to separate from Joost, as he couldn’t know what our gifts were or vice versa and we were off on a hunt for a RM$10 gift.

We found 2 fabulous gifts for the gift exchange – a dress of the most ungodly pattern imaginable that would fit anyone who may receive it (man or woman – it was one size fits all) and a men’s tank top advertising Kuala Lumpur – our most despised city. Both of these items cost 10$RM (US$2.90) and we could make the person wear it to dinner after. Ingenious! With our gifts in hand we headed home for a rest and to get ready for our big Christmas night ahead.

At 7:30 we headed out from our hotel to catch the bus into town. We had to wait maybe 10 minutes at the stop before the bus arrived and when it pulled up it was full – and full of men. We would not be able to sit down and we would not have much for personal space. Before we got on I turned to Elizabeth and said we’d need to be very careful – of both our belongings and ourselves. Onto the bus we climbed, found a spot near the front where we could have at least 2 sides of our bodies to a wall, window, or other woman, and got our bitch faces on. “Don’t mess with me” is the best message you can send, and I like to send it from the very beginning. There was one guy standing very close to us (it was crowded but he was standing closer than necessary) and I was watching him the entire time – his body, his hands – and I’m sure every other guy on the bus knew how much I was watching him. He never tried anything but I was ready to backhand him across the face if necessary. I don’t want to make it seem like it’s extremely unsafe here, because it isn’t, but as a white woman you just attract so much attention for so many reasons (you’re white, you likely have money/valuable things on you, you are usually showing much more skin than the local woman, etc) that on a crowded bus full of men at night you cannot let your guard down for one minute.

We made it town without a hitch – no back handed slaps needed – and went straight to the hotel. There we found that the Joost and his friends had recruited others from their hostel for the gift exchange, we couldn’t have been happier. (I couldn’t have been happier that this impromptu gathering I had initiated was working out). We all had a few beers together first and then got right into the gift exchange.

As I’m sure none of you will be surprised, I had everything organized quite well. Although we had all introduced ourselves earlier I had us start the official gathering by going around saying our names, country of origin, and favorite color. After the first guy went it was suggested that we follow with true AA style and after someone says their name i.e. “Hi, I’m Paul” we all follow with “Hi Paul” in unison. After they are done speaking we all say something along the lines of “Thanks Paul” or “Thank you for sharing.” This attracted much attention from other hostel guests who had declined our invitation to join the game. It was clear at this point how much fun we were having and they were sad they hadn’t taken the invite more seriously earlier. After we all shared a bit about ourselves we moved into the game.

Here I need to give a shout out to a Mrs. Allyson Dardis for the idea. Two years ago at my book club Christmas gift exchange Allyson had brought along a fabulous story where we every time the story says “Right” you pass the gift right and “Left” you pass the gift left. The story lasts about 5 minutes and at the end you get the gift you have in your hand. There are two rules, you pick a gift that isn’t yours to start with, and if you get your gift at the end (or any gift you know what it is) you have to trade for another gift (while they are still unopened). Elizabeth and I had an additional rule for our gifts: you had to use them as intended at dinner (we didn’t want to day you have to wear them at dinner because that would give away too much information about what the gift was). I read the story, we all passed the gifts, and with the exception of one person, Moniek, no one ended up with their own gift/a gift that they knew. It worked out just splendid – thank you Allyson! Everyone loved the game –what a success.

So now I’ll tell you about who was there in order around the circle starting to my left. (I was at the head of the circle since I was in charge!) I will put their name, country, and favorite color if I can remember. If I can’t remember I will simply make it up.

Paul, Holland, Blue

Moniek, Holland, Red

Paul, Ireland, Red

Merijn (spelling?), Holland, Blue

Fabian, Switzerland, Green

Joost, Holland, Blue

Joe (Joris is his real name but we called him Joe), Holland, Orange

Koos, Holland, Red

Elizabeth, Australia, Purple

Me, America, Pink

I made a lot of those colors up but I got all the countries correct.

This is what everyone ended up with for gifts. In parenthesis is the person who I believe gave the gift:

Paul-Holland: Tin stocking filled with chocolate, some Arabic symbol that can be stuck on something, a small metal cup you use to feed a baby (Moniek)

Moniek: Kuala Lumpur male tank top (Me)

Paul-Italy: Learner chopsticks (Koos?)

Merijn: Super ugly dress/nightgown/Muslim gown (Elizabeth)

Fabian: Massager (Paul-Italy)

Joost: Cat earrings (Paul-Holland)

Joe: Jumping frog toy (Merijn?)

Koos: Farm animal toy set (Joost?)

Elizabeth: Horse head toy full of individual pre-made Jello packets (Joe)

Me: Empty tin that looks like an envelope (Fabian)

It was decided that since Moniek and Merijn would have to wear their clothes to dinner we all had to bring our gifts to dinner and use them if possible. Paul-Italy ate with his chopstick, Joe had his frog jumping across the table, Koos had his farm animals set up in the middle of the table, Merijn and Moniek were rocking their great new clothes. It was fabulous! We ate at an Indian restaurant, where we all had fully means with additional rice and/or naan bread, we each had one or more drinks and it cost only RM$166.50 (US$47.61). Can you believe that? 10 people ate a full dinner for $47.61?! That’s just crazy. After dinner was over we went back to the hostel, had another drink or two each, and then it was home for Elizabeth and I so I could Skype to the parents and their Christmas morning gathering with the neighbors back in Edina.

All in all Christmas was wonderful. We spent the evening doing a gift exchange with people from all over the world, enjoying the company of these new friends, drinking, eating, and laughing. And I’m just so happy it was a success. It was just so cool that everyone got into it. People did go out and buy gifts, many people wore something festive, and everyone generally just had a good time – including Elizabeth and I. I will now find a use for that tin so I can bring it around the world with me as a memory of this awesome Christmas gathering on 2014. Can’t wait to see what next Christmas brings!

P.S. For those of you who were featured in this blog, if I spelled your name wrong or got any other information wrong, please excuse my error and let me know what corrections need to be made. I try my best to remember but I just can’t keep everything straight all the time.