So . . . we head up to Penang Hill, where Adrian’s Godfather, Tony Thurley, once ran an international school known as Uplands. The school was established in1955 as a safe place for British children to be educated during the trouble of the Communist insurrection. This, incidentally, was also the year Adrian was born and his parents ran the risk of bandits as they drove from Port Dixon to KL hospital with his mother in labour.
While the remoteness of Penang Hill gave safety to the children, it also gave the adults challenges. Fetching supplies up the hill on the old funicular and then a mile by cart over muddy tracks had its problems. Laundry was also tricky and the children routinely wore their clothes for a week before they were washed by which time, as an ex-pupil notes, they could stand up by themselves. But the buildings that once housed the school have long since become private dwellings. And the hill is no longer a remote place. Not remotely.
The size of the hanger-style Lower Station should have given us a hint, but I’m too busy people watching. Adrian is queueing for our ‘normal’ tickets, whatever that means – ‘only one person from each family may queue for tickets, M’am.’ Fair enough. There’s plenty to grab my attention as I wait and I’m noting the variation in muslim dress (not the men: they’re all pretty much dressed like Adrian) from hijabs to full burqas. I only see two other females, Chinese I think, who have bare arms and lower legs like me. ‘How do you keep so fit and trim?’ asks one of the nearby staff members, a male, so he’s noticed too.
There’s quite a queue to board the funicular, but the modern tram-like train is so capacious that it swallows up the crocodile line of families pretty quickly. At the top, we are slightly taken aback by the size of the noisy crowd but figure that this will probably disperse. It doesn’t. There are masses of people everywhere, in the double story warehouse of food stalls, by the train station, at the temple and the mosque. And we note that the queue for the descent is already snaking out of the building in a rather alarming fashion.
Happily there are fewer folk interested in the nature trail so we set off for a walk. But in no time, we’re hounded by buggies pushing us off the path as they ferry people around the ‘walks’ on wheels. Malay people don’t seem to enjoy their legs and the loaded buggies come by every ten seconds in both directions. To be fair, perhaps it isn’t surprising that Malays don’t like to walk much: cars don’t like walkers either. In George Town, I narrowly escape death as, with the confidence of a European, I stride out onto a zebra crossing only to discover that this does nothing to slow down the traffic. It does much to speed me up, however and I break into a sprint, then turn back to see Adrian’s look of horror. It isn’t the first or last time, I’m reminded that Malaysian streets are for motorbikes and cars. Period.
Meanwhile, having exhausted the fun on Penang Hill – the food stalls are full of brightly rainbow coloured sweet things that I’d rather paint than eat – we reluctantly join the now even longer queue for the downhill ride. With our overheated hearts sinking into our sandals, we realise what ‘normal ticket’ means and for an hour watch enviously as those with something called ‘fast track tickets’, smugly dodge the queue. The upgrade stall, we’re told, is now closed.
Then the murmur goes round: the ticket office has reopened and Adrian dashes off to join yet another queue. He’s gone an age but eventually returns triumphantly waving our upgraded tickets. Hoorah! We’re soon down the hill, back in our car, back at our apartment and back in the pool. This rather uninspiring outing has taken most of the day. We vow never again to do anything in Malaysia that sounds vaguely like a tourist attraction while the ghosts of Adrian’s childhood are shaking their heads in bewilderment.