Penang Funicular

In 1993 I was stranded in Penang, Malaysia. The magazine for which I had been writing a series of stories about SE Asia had folded without buying my return ticket to the States. I had enough money to stay at the Swiss Hotel $3/night, eat at the Chinese and Indian restaurants on Chulia Street, and drink beer at the Hong Kong bar.

In those days making a phone call to Europe was difficult, but I finally reached Sam Royalle, who said he would wire the money. A week went by and then a second. I couldn't get in touch with him. I was down to my last $100 dollars and thinking about shipping out on a tramp steamer when the wire finally arrived at the bank.

I celebrated by taking the Penang Hill Funicular to the summit. The tram ascended from the tropical city to the heavily forested mountaintop. The temperature dropped at every stage and on arrival I was actually cold. A difficult proposition near the equator.

The best attraction other than the view was the walk through the treetops on suspended bridges. Nothing like it in Thailand and I made a point of visiting the tram during every visa run to Penang.

But in 2009 this venerable funicular was threatened by renovation. Stations and trains were to be replaced by new designs, so that the travel time to the top is a mere 10 minutes rather than the luxurious 30 minutes of the original tram.

Outcry from sentimentalists and traditionalists had protested this move as unnecessary, contenting that refurbishing the old trams was economically and environmentally viable.

Personally I say, "If it ain't broke don't fix it." and I liked most everything the way it was and that goes for me too, since I was considering a neck tuck costing $6000 at a Bangkok Hospital. I intended instead to save the money for a motorcycle. That always makes an old guy look young, unless he wears leather. Then it looks like an old geezer on a bike.

Something very unnatural.

Protests aside, in Asia if something was planned and the money was there, then it was goodbye to the old.

In 2010 the renovations were completed on the Penang Funicular.

Progress, but more like improvements, so if you're in Penang head over to the Funicular, the best ride this side of the Staten Island Ferry.

Penang Gone

Sumatra was a lost world in 1990. Tigers prowled the western jungles of Indonesia's largest island, active volcanoes glowed in the night, and I drank Bintang beer with the ancestors of headhunters on the shore of Lake Toba 1500 meters above the sea and the night air was chilly after months along the equator .

Inside the traditional long houses skulls adorned the main beam of the roof.

Cutting off heads for the Bataks was an ancient tradition, until forbidden by the Dutch government in Java.

Sitting with several men around a fire I realized Jakarta was over a thousand miles away from the highlands. A hundred years ago I might have been a hapless victim of their deadly tradition, but they swore I was safe and the Bataks were renown for being true to their word.

After two weeks on Lake Toba I descended down the slopes to Medan, a Muslim city a little north of equator on the simmering Malacca Straits. The temperature and humidity were both in the 90s. Neither seemed to bother the residents.

That afternoon I booked a flight across the Malacca Straits to Penang in Malaysia.

I arrived there before sunset. I was back in the modern world.

Skyscrapers, telephones, air-conditioning and smooth roads.

I stayed at an old Chinese mansion off Chulia Street. The main travelers' drag offered good food and old navy bars.

Drinks were cheap.

The women were ugly.

.They liked a good laugh.

The architecture revealed a melting pot of culture.

I loved the call for evening prayers from the mosque.

I drank tuak or palm wine next to the Chinese temple.

The British had left their mark.

Beaches lay the the west.

Durians grew in the jungles.

The city was sleep-walking toward the 21st Century.

But that was then.

Chinese money had woken Penang from the past.

Construction was booming along the coast, as land was reclaimed from the sea.

Only the rich have rights to this dream.

And old Penang will never be old again.

Neither will I.

What a shame.

Malay Ban on Smiling Pigs

This weekend The New York Times published a small fluff story about how Switzerland has banned ownership of one guinea pig since they suffer from loneliness. This law is very protective of porkers, however not everyone loves pigs. Seal Beach in Orange Country has banned household pigs, which was directed at the one pet-owner in possession of a 240-pound pig named Bubba.

“We’ve had numerous complaints from citizens in the area about it making a lot of noise and odor."

No one in the City Council mentioned the pollution from the many oil rigs dotting the ocean.

This summer the pig ban hit England with an edict against pictures of pigs, since they were considered offensive to Muslims and Malaysia has joined Lesser Britain by blacking out two pigs in the International New York Times.

"This is a Muslim country, so we covered the pigs' eyes," a New York Times worker told the AFP news agency. "We usually do that for the International New York Times - also for pictures of cigarettes, weapons, guns and nude pictures."

I spent a lot of time in Malaysia throughout the 1990s.

The Chinese restaurants in Penang offered lovely pork dishes.

The Muslims kept their distance, but I never saw one eating babi, which is Malay for pig.

It is very haram or forbidden.

The same goes for Seal Beach.

Pigs are out, unless they are human and Orange County has plenty of them and I bet they're good eating for cannibals.

THE BLESSING OF THE LIZARD KING by Peter Nolan Smith

Monitor lizards are native to SE Asia. These carnivorous predators are related to the famous Komodo Dragon and varanid lizards are cooperative hunters like raptors in JURASSIC PARK. According to the Bangkok Post monitor lizards cluster in the city’s secluded water pipes and up to two hundred of the two-meter long beasts reside in each city district.

Many urban Thais regard the sighting of a hia or monitor lizard as the harbinger of bad luck in spite of the legend about warning humans of crocodiles. Down south on the Isthmus of Ka country folks keep the miniature monsters as domestic pets, for crocodiles still wander the mangrove swamps lining the peninsula.

”They keep increasing in numbers because these reptiles have few natural enemies, and their food is always plentiful,” a Thai reptile expert said, “Water monitors eat almost anything; fish, eggs, and even rotten meat.”

The only lizard in my hometown south of Boston was Jim Morrison singing 'crawling king snake', but in 1991 I stopped at Malaysia’s Tioman Island in the South China Sea, which the Lonely Planet referred to as a tropical gem. Jungles blanketed the hills and the sea was an invisible sheet of clear gin with beach sand gleaming white in the midday sun.

European backpackers overstayed their visits on this paradise. The beer was cold and the bungalows were cheap.

On my second week there I met a Swedish blonde traveler. She liked my poetry and we spent four nights together.

“This means nothing.” Velda was telling the truth. Nothing meant anything to devotees of the sun other than the next highlight on their world tour. On the fifth morning we were through.

“I want to sleep alone," the slim Swede announced on the fifth morning. Velda didn’t even kiss me good-bye and I expected that she would leave on the morning ferry for the mainland. I slept in late and hit the bungalow bar at noon.

“Beer for all my friends.” There were only three Germans at the bar, but I loved that line from BARFLY.

Before the beers arrived, a scream screeched through the trees.

Velda ran into the bar. Her long blonde hair was a Medusa snarl and her voice hit a soprano high on every word, as she explained, “There’s a lizard in the bathroom.”

The Malays working at the restaurant laughed about a lizard. Tioman was crawling with lizards and snakes, but I understood her fears, for my mother was scared of insects. If one got into the house, she would cry, “There’s a monster in the bathroom.”

I figured that Velda was just as hysterical as my mother and grabbed a broom.

“I’ll get rid of the lizard.”

“He's more bigger than Gecko.” The terror had stripped away her high school English.

“I’ll take care of it. Show me.” I followed her down the path to her bungalow. The A-frame stood in a palm grove perched next to a tidal inlet. Mangrove trees sank their roots into the brackish swamp water. It was good breeding place for lizards. The buzz of mosquitoes hummed from the swamp and Velda pointed to the bathroom door.

"He's in there."

"Don't worry, this will only take a second." I figure she had discovered a little gecko. Lizards were non-existent in Sweden.

“Be careful.”

“It's my middle name.”

I peered inside the room. The bathroom door was shut. I heard nothing and figured that the gecko had escaped through the ceiling. I tiptoed across the floor, broom in one hand. I yanked on the bathroom door expecting to find only a toilet, instead thick-chested monitor lizard bared slimy teeth with a hiss.

The broom dropped to the floor, as I slammed the door shut.

“That is a big lizard." I ran outside to Velda. "You want to stay at my place?”

“Yes, but no sex."

"None at all." I grabbed her bag and she moved back into my place for another week.

I thanked Jim Morrison the Lizard God for those extra days and nights.

I had seen the Doors at the Boston Tea Party in 1968. I didn’t tell that to the Swedish girl. Velda didn’t realize that I was in my late-30s. The twenty year-old's skin was as smooth as river-polished stone. After her departure to Koh Phi Phi, I spotted the monitor lizard lazing in the sun.

I bought a dozen boiled eggs from the warung and fed them one by one.

It was the least I could do for a cousin of Jim Morrison.

Anything else would have been bad luck.