Day 11.
So here we are, two expat Brits who have their abode in Hong Kong, taking the Australian-built ferry from the enchanted, but once-cursed, island of Langkawi and heading to Georgetown, Penang, the concession for British protection for the sultanate of Kedah and eventually the first British possession of the Malay States.
Georgetown, of course, takes its name after King George III, the reigning monarch at the time the East India Company set up this far eastern centre to better organise the trading of spicy commodities. It also became a fortified base to keep thum Frenchies out of the region.
On board are Malays, Europeans, Chinese and lots of Saudi Arabs. On the TV screens is playing John Carter, the recent Disney adaptation of the 1964 novel by the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs mostly set on the planet Mars. Next to us the Arab couple are reading the Quran (as are the rest if they're reading at all), the Memsahib is reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the obese resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico who is now very famous and presumably also very rich. I am reading A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1887. The Chinese, headphones firmly plugged in, are keeping themselves to themselves playing games on their iPads.
Some of the men are in shorts and some in long trousers. Some wear peaked hats or light trilbys -so-named after a stage adaptation of George du Maurier's 1894 novel, Trilby, in which performance the style of hat was worn. Some of the ladies (guess who?) are in stringy tops and shorts and some (guess who?) are completely hidden behind their burqas so that it is difficult to make out that they have clear, deep-brown eyes.
Outside the rainy swell is somewhat increasing and from time-to-time the ferry swerves left and then right, presumably to avoid obstacles in the sea ahead. We saw a lot of wood, great big pieces of timber washed down from jungle rivers, on our previous ferry journeys -it would not do a vessel, even as large a catamaran as this, much good at all if it were to make contact with submerged tree trunks at these speeds. I now know where the life jackets are. The crew recently came around offering grey plastic vomit bags: so-far I'm not aware of anyone using them.
At the very front of the passenger cabin is the little Arab boy, maybe three- or four-years old and the very apple of their young parents' eyes. He is singing inane and repetitive childish babble to a largely unresponsive audience. Dressed in a white t-shirt with green sleeves and shots, and completely without inhibitions, he mindlessly plays on the enclosed steps up to the fore-deck, quite a dangerous location considering the swell. He has already fallen over twice, but his parents are happy his attention is not directly on them. His t-shirt has a picture of the 1940s cartoon characters Tom and Jerry with the words, "Joy & Happy".
Penang emerges from the sea, first the mountains, then the taller hotels, then the whole city. Happy to leave the ferry, the confused passengers surge out with their luggage onto the cool Friday streets. Despite the ever-insistent taxi touts, it already feels like a pretty, antiquated, culturally-mixed town.
