Brought to You Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue: George Town, Penang, Malaysia

I had some time on my hands about ten days ago, and took advantage of a cheap airfare to Penang, Malaysia, for a couple of reasons: I visited Kota Kinabalu last year, and it rained every day. Through some personal idiocy I won’t get into here, I ended up with a bunch of Malaysian currency, the ringgit.

I will give you just a few observations, my four cents. I’m an easy traveler. I just want a clean hotel. I seek out nature, especially monkeys. I like the hypnosis of walking long distances. I like meeting people.

If you’re brave enough to get on a Malaysian airliner, you can get there fairly cheap. (With transfers, I flew Air Asia four times during this trip.) It’s a chintzy airline, so you have to pay for things like food, water and any baggage over 7 kg. The carry-on baggage compartments had advertisements pasted on them. Still, the onboard meal of vegetable biryani I ordered was good, and the iced coffee was the best plane coffee I’ve had. The nicely-uniformed crew were cordial and patient, and a wispy cool vapor floated through the cabin.

I should’ve filled out the visitor’s arrival card online before arriving, but the site never worked for me. In Malaysia, it took about an hour to fill in one page of information when I arrived at my transfer in Kuala Lumpur. It took nigh thirty minutes to walk from the international terminal to the domestic terminal. Never had such a long walk in an airport. A fella can really “get his steps in” in this airport.

If you see the Malaysian flag in your periphery, at a distance, drunk, or with macular degeneration, you might think you’re seeing the U.S. flag- blue field, red and white stripes, pink hearts, orange stars, green clovers and blue diamonds. A closer look reveals a big yellow sun, too. But yeah, there’s an homage to Old Glory there from the early days of Malaysian independence. The national flag flies EVERYWHERE.

So much of England is still there, including scores of English visitors, the name George Town, streets named after Brits, the buildings. There's even a Fort Cornwallis, named after the guy who blew the big game. They don’t erase their history - they’ve embraced it, colonialism and all.

Most big chains, Starbucks, Coffee Bean, and the like, are cashless. My gruntledness became disgruntled. And I noticed something interesting at establishments that grudgingly accepted cash: the cashiers had trouble with the simple math of making change. These were not the “Math Asians” we have always hailed and sang about around the campfire. I blame tech. (By the way, inside the largest Coffee Bean I’ve ever seen, “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” played overhead. It was, in fact, NOT cold outside. At the Lucky You coffee shop, where I spent about fifteen minutes, a jingle played incessantly: “Lucky, lucky you!” I can’t imagine it not driving both workers and customers to the brink of madness.)

The restaurants were hit or miss for me. I’m a lot leery of street food, and I don’t much enjoy eating spicy food in a hot, humid restaurant, so I chose places with doors. (Come on, guys, is it biryani or briyani? Make up your minds. And why are the Danes mixed up in this?)

You need a prescription to buy aspirin in Malaysia. I found this out after a hike in the jungle gone wrong. I had not only fallen down a few times, but also bonked my head on a tree. All of this in pursuit of Monkey Beach, where macaques frolic (and I suspect over time might learn from us how to build sandcastles). In the jungle, I took pics of countless big lizards, macaques and even an imperfect shot of a Dusty Langur, which I had been seeking:

Masks and social distancing signs are still prominent in George Town — but mostly ignored. Plastic bags are discouraged everywhere, yet there were no recycling bins anywhere. I guess they’re lukewarm when it comes to the “Green Agenda.”

The last night of my stay (in a hotel on a quiet street) was interesting. Jackhammers and all manner of industrial road destroyers fired up at 11:30 pm and continued through the night. I wasn’t in a hostel. I wasn’t in a hobo shelter, venturing out to steal pies from windowsills. I suppose they wanted to work at night because it was cooler, not because it was a neighborhood where no one would care.

My Grab (SE Asian Uber) driver picked me up at 4 am and attempted to watch TikTok videos while driving me to the airport. The cat was scrolling! The roads were mostly empty, so we didn’t veer off the road to a mutual doom.

It was time to head back to the R.O.K. and say goodbye to Malaysia, probably for the last time. Everywhere I went, the people were friendly. From the Russian at Fort Cornwallis (doing the jobs Malaysians won’t do) apologizing, hand over heart, and explaining why the fort was closed; to the National Park official who took my cash for admittance even though he wasn’t supposed to; to the lady at the Air Asia desk, who, with a smile, gave me a straight-pin from her hijab so I could open my phone to change my SIM card.

Nice people, nice attitudes, and pretty good English.

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Bonus pic - Happy Macaque family