Georgetown, Malaysia
March 17, 2024 - Happy St. Patrick’s day to all. Today we visited our last port in Malaysia, Georgetown. We docked right near the old district of town, so the included tour that Ann Marie took, was short 3 hour panoramic drive around the area with 3 photo stops and just a bit of walking. Cathy opted for a tour that allowed her to create her own Batik fabric.
The Craft Batik place was so amazing. We spent our first 30 minutes there watching the Batik artists at work and learning about the process of making this very special material. The artist showed us the different methods of creating Batiks, the first is they use one of the hundreds of metal stamps of flowers or patterns they have, dipping it in hot wax and printing it on plain white tightly woven cotton. The other method was that the artist draw flowers, birds, butterflies or anything else they want onto the cotton using a small metal pen that they dip it in hot wax. The wax dries almost instantly, and then the design is turned over to be colored in with by other artist. The finished work is then dried and washed and ready to be made into clothing, tablecloth’s, scarf’s ties and much more. It was now our turn to create our own masterpieces, we were lead over to frames where we each needed to find our our piece (36x36 in) then what had our name on it and a design already drawn on it. We then had an hour to color in our design using paints provided. Many of the staff were there to help us in painting the background if needed. The women were lovely and showed us all different technics to do to help blend the colors. We were told that once dried that our works of art would be mailed to us; to all our surprise we received them the next day when we returned to our cabin.
We met again in the afternoon and had a very hot, yet enjoyable traditional Trishaw tour, that included time walking through the old town to admire the murals which the town is known for. It was definitely hot walking around, but for the sake of the “captains” we had pedaling our trishaws, we were glad they weren’t driving us for the full three hour tour. It was only, in total, about 20 minutes that we were in the trishaw “cab”. In addition to seeing the murals, we visited a temple and a Penarken Mansion — and got to hear about that culture - which you may recall we didn’t learn about as expected in Singapore.
One of the most striking things about Malaysia is how well all the cultures and religions coexist. The ethnic mix is Chinese, Indian and Malay and the religious mix includes Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism, Muslim and Christian. Yet all appear to respect and accept each other and live in harmony. If only the whole world could be that way!
Once back onboard, we enjoyed a BBQ on the pool deck and a night of “Dancing Under the Stars”. The weather was ideal, and it was a lot of fun. The band played two “Irish” songs they learned in honor of St. Patrick’s Day. The first one was “Peg O’ My Heart”, which is not actually an Irish song (not sure where they got that idea) and the other was, of course, Danny Boy. Despite the lack of authentic music, we had a great day and hope those of you that did get to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in the way we are accustomed to, had a fabulous day.
