Georgetown

It's a real city alright.

We spent a day flirting with hyperthermia and wandering by foot around the old part of town (now a UNESCO heritage site). The natural place to start was the original fort, built in the late 1700's by a Brit, with the noble goal of opening up the Straits of Malacca area to trade. None of this explains the presence of 12' thick brick walls festooned with very large cannons.

The walls and cannons now protect a very tidy little gift shop, enforcing the strict 3 ringgit per person entrance fee.

We stopped at the "Christian" cemetery. Graves from the 18th and 19th centuries suggest life was rather tougher in the Malaria Belt 200 years ago. Example: of the twelve nuns who arrived from Europe to set up the "Church of the Holy Infant Christ" around 1800, the vast majority got much closer to Jesus before their 40th birthdays, the last apparently turning tail back to France. I also noticed life had a different time scale back then:

(click the pictures to zoom in and read the inscriptions)

Although there is a Cathedral and an Anglican Church in town (colonials...all about the Jesus), there are many more Mosques, both modest:

...and Large

...along with Hindu, Buddhist, Taoist, Krisha, and Sikh temples. The restaurant we visited offered "Jane" food (If you don't know about them, look that shit up!). A real crossroads of Asia.

The most interesting temples, of course, were the Chinese clan temples, dedicated to, for lack of a better term, "self-worship". These seem obliquely related to a "Clan Deity", but in essence are a family-clan's opportunity to brag. they are the most ornate temples by far, with intricate bas-relief wood and rock carvings, and a lot of gold leaf.

One room is dedicated to the ancestral tablets, essentially telling the family history, one ancestor at a time. Another has panels extolling the academic virtues of clan members.

I will go on more about Georgetown later. In the meantime here is a picture of Tig defending the Straits of Malacca:

And one of her defending her good name:

Interesting note: the Malay word for "Water" is "Air". Potential marine-rescue-confusion implications aside, that's pretty cool. Still doesn't explain the "deep fried water" we saw on a strangely-translated menu once.