Rebecca Ann Marck

Rebecca (known to her many friends as Becky) settled in Penang in 2011. Born and raised in the USA, she has much of her adult life as an expat, most recently in Japan where she taught English at a University. You can catch up with her at one of the many events she helps to organise with the IWA and on her blog http://musingsonpenang.blogspot.com/

I’ve lived here just over a year now.  My husband and I had been coming to Penang for a month each summer on business, so I thought I had a good idea of what I was getting into.  But living here on MM2H is somewhat different, and mostly better. We’d stayed in an upscale hotel next to a busy shopping centre during those previous visits, so there was some adjustment in terms of actually living here.  But we soon came to love the complicated, cheerful chaos of living in our bustling community of Pulau Tikus.  Once you’ve visited a shop a time or two and answered all the queries about your personal life and origins, you’re accepted thereafter and welcomed as a regular.  I love getting to know Penang and discovering all the little nooks and crannies that you only come to know about when you actually live in a place.

I’d describe Penang as “visually intoxicating.” Picture postcard views at every turning and it’s all so accessible.  Those famous coloured tiles Penang is famous for?  Right there in front of my supermarket!  The enthralling wet market is just a block or two away.  The famous hawker stalls?  Just down the lorong (lane).  I have only to look up to see the stupa of the nearby Buddhist temple, and the Catholic church school is right under my window.  The diversity is mind-boggling.

See Also: Lonely Planet’s Top 10 List of Street Food Includes Penang

I love the friendly, inquisitive people and the wide variety of things to do as well as the easy accessibility of what I need for cooking.  I came to Penang after two dozen years in Japan, where it was sometimes tough to get Western ingredients; I’m delighted that so many items are available here. 

On the less positive side I wish the pavements were smoother and kept up better.  When British relatives came to visit, the first day here one of them fell into a damaged open gutter and hurt herself—luckily not too badly!

The ‘must sees’s are the architecture, particularly of George Town.  The 1881 Chong Tian Hotel is one of many.  The E&O Hotel for Afternoon Tea to take you back to a colonial period most of us have only read about in books. The night market at Batu Ferringhi for gift buying and for your own entertainment needs.

See Also: Top 8 Tourist Attractions in Penang

My favourite restaurant is Ferringhi Garden Restaurant in Batu Ferringhi, where you can eat in a real longhouse surrounded by exquisite water features and tropical plants.  I love Kapitan for quick, delicious Indian food.  China House for seeing-and-being-seen over scrumptious desserts. And the famous hawker stalls, of course.  I love the apom manis there!

We started out renting in Bellisa Court in Pulau Tikus, fell in love with our unit, and just had to make it our own.  With the stunning pool it’s like living at a spa hotel full-time.  We appreciate the fact that our condo complex is low-rise and part of the community around it. 

Most of my friends are expats because of my involvement with the  IWA (International Women’s Association of Penang).  But we have good friends at St. Nicholas’ Home for the Visually Impaired, too, where both my husband and I have done volunteer work.  Because I ride a motorbike to get around, I think I’m more in touch with the local community than I might otherwise be.

There are things I miss about home though – the rolling green expanses of lawns and the incredible variety of fast food and family restaurants.  But the portions are far too large for any normal person!  Oh, and I miss the so-called “big box” retailers that are so maligned but where everyone flocks to get all their shopping needs met under one roof. 

Warren and Anita Rooke

Warren Rooke and Anita Lauder have created a fascinating home in the heart of George Town, a three year project that saw them flitting backwards and forwards from their base in the former Portguese territory of Macau.  For nearly 20 years Anita ran a successful antique shop in Macau while Warren was the news editor for Radio Television Hong Kong. You can meet them at the Expat/IWA Mingles events or just in the streets of George Town.

We both love travelling so when AirAsia introduced direct flights to Penang from Macau, where they have lived for 18 years after moving from Hong Kong, they were on board the third flight to leave Macau for Penang.

“Both of us had visited Penang separately but many years ago” said Anita, “And friends of ours kept emphasising it was a relaxing and interesting place for retirement. Warren has spent the past 48 years outside his native Australia and felt little compulsion to return there, and I have lived outside the UK for nearly that long as well so we were keen to check out another lifestyle for ourselves”.

We bought a shophouse in the centre of George Town and renovated it. A year later we bought the neighbour’s place and have since joined the two together. We applied and were granted MM2H status soon after committing to buying property.

“Anita has been a collector all her life and has had her own antique shop in Macau since 1994 so furnishing the shophouses was merely a matter backing up a 40′ container up to her shop and transporting the lots,” said Warren. “She has promised to stop buying antiques now as we are fully furnished, but I don’t think she is telling the truth”.

 “I think the friendliness of people in Georgetown must have rated highly in our decision to set up a base here”, says Anita, “Penang has such an amazing mix of nationalities living, seemingly at least, in harmony in such a small area”, says Anita.

The buzz of living in George Town itself has to be experienced first-hand to be appreciated, or otherwise. During the morning the town is slow to unfold, the clatter of steel shutters indicates  another business day is about to begin.  In our street this is accompanied by a gentle tap, tap, tap, as as an ageing Indian man with an unpronounceable name, and nick-named Mr Singh, begins carving up huge ice blocks into manageable size pieces which he delivers on an equally ageing bicycle to local coffee shops and restaurants  By afternoon the pace of commerce reaches its peak with seemingly hundreds of  motor cycles delivering and collecting goods, often driving down footpaths if the road is one way or too busy, and of course parking wherever they wish. By six o’clock the first of hundreds of hawker stalls magically appear to begin serving a fascinating mixture of Asian dishes that have contributed so much to Penang’s reputation as a “foodie paradise”, and George Town takes on a completely new identity.

See Also:

• US News Ranks Penang’s George Town and Kuala Lumpur among Best Cities in the World for Retirement
• Kiplinger Says George Town is Best Place to Retire Abroad

Anita and I travel a lot so it is easy to accept the quirks of living in George Town, truly a place that time passed by while developers focussed on Batu Ferringhi and Tanjung Bungah and whole new towns to the south of the old city. We love exploring the old city by foot, checking out the shop house businesses that have survived, seeing how others are refurbishing their buildings, and firmly putting down anyone who dares criticise the town. Privately, however, one has to have sympathy for the more mature tourists as they try to negotiate five foot ways blocked by shop owners’ goods, haphazardly parked motorcycles, opportunistic hawkers, or simply blocked full-stop by steel bars or illegal structures. Add to this the challenge of negotiating over and around open drains and it becomes obvious Georgetown is far from a pedestrian paradise.

Every now and then it is important to stop and reflect on what we have done and whether it was the right decision. Our choice to live in Penang and, more specifically, in George Town is one of the decisions we have never given a second thought. That speaks for itself.

Read more:

• 5 Tips for Renting a Home in Penang
• Choosing Penang as a Retirement Haven
• Penang, an Old World Charm in a Tropical Climate

Source: Penang International August-September 2012
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