Penang - The Eastern & Oriental - Chapter 5

The meal at the Feast village was indifferent - shame really but you can't win 'em all!  We waved farewell to PLR and the ferry ride back to Lumut was a lot smoother than our outward journey.  A short wait in the heat and we jumped on the bus to Butterworth,  a 3 hour ride north on a road the resembled the A39 - single lane, very windy and went through every small town it possibly could.  Time to snooze and read up on Penang. 

Once we arrived in Butterworth ( a city akin to Portsmouth would be my guess) we struggled with our cases to the ferry that run every 15 minutes between the mainland and  Georgetown, the main town on the island of Penang.  Our destination for our very brief stay was the Eastern & Oriental Hotel which has been described as one of the classic grand dame of hotels in the world.

 Founded by the same Armenian brothers as Raffles Hotel in Singapore, this hotel has to be seen to be believed - it's like stepping back into the era of the Raj.  We were greeted out of the taxi by a porter dressed in a starch white shirt, white shorts, long white socks and a Pith helmet!  We were chaperoned to our suite by our own butler (on 24 hour call) who was dressed in a black trousers, a white tuxedo and a black bow tie!  When he opened the door we thought we were in the wrong room!  The Georgetown suite even had a pillow menu!!

Once we had got over the shock of our sumptuous surroundings we managed to recover our poise over a beer at Farquar's Bar, outside on the lawn, watching the cruise liners coming and going ! All very civilized.  As Air Asia had changed our flight time to Kuching the following day to 0710 it meant that we didn't really have enough time  to appreciate all that was on offer.  We did, however, manage the Chinese buffet dinner (wine included) which was superb and reasonably priced for such a plush hotel!  Our Butler, Salim, had made the necessary arrangements for our departure the next day - alarm call at 0430, collection of breakfast box from reception at 0500 and taxi ordered for 0515 - nothing left to chance. 


The down side to such a fantastic room was that it was at the front of the hotel and therefore subject to the comings and goings of the great and the good of Penang who had been attending a fashion show by some of the "top Malaysian " designers - Sue hadn't heard of any of them and my knowledge of women's fashion could be written on the back of a very small postage stamp.  Most of the departing guests appeared to riding very powerful Japanese motorbikes with loud exhausts, or at least that's what it sounded like.  By 3 am everything seemed to go quiet - just long enough for me to sink my head into the Norwegian Blue goose down pillow that I'd ordered from Salim!

 I was actually rather disappointed that Salim wasn't at revolving door at 0515 to wave us off - rather poor show, what?