Kuala Lumpur (Malaysia) - Penang (Malaysia) - Melbourne (Australia)
06 July - 13 July 2024
Penang, Malaysia
There’s a common trap we’ve
fallen into many times when traveling—one that can unintentionally become a
burden and diminish how a destination is experienced. It lies in the constant
pursuit of experiences and the anxiety of not having done enough with the time you have set to
fully embrace what a place has to offer. In what becomes the inevitable rush to
create meaningful memories, we fill every free space in our mental calendars with
must-do activities, hoping they’ll become valued memories, overriding the inevitable
exhaustion and vestiges of anxious moments that underpin what it actually takes
to make their attainment a possibility. Certainly travel can be exhausting,
that’s to be expected, and its not always moonshine and mungbeans. And to add,
there is some sort of virtue in pursuing the journey for the sake of the challenge
which resolves in a beautiful, powerful end objective. But there’s also a lot to
be said for slowing down and embracing movement minimalism.
After writing that line on
minimalism I was intrigued as to what the great Google guide would say about the
term, espousing the following piece as a reference; movement minimalism in
travel is ‘lightening the load, both physically and emotionally, to place
the main focus back on the destinations visited and the people with whom you
share the experience’. You see, even the almighty Google knows that there’s
something to be said for slowing down, being present and consciously embracing
your existence at that location in the moment. So, on this occasion, for these
days, Penang was to be just that type of holiday for us. Not for the fact that
Inga & I had all of a sudden found importance in practicing travel mindfulness
but certainly we were looking for a place where we really didn’t want to force
ourselves to do much of anything. Our prerequisites were to find a location
that was almost certain to be encumbered by sunshine and warmth, boasted beach
access, had great happy hours and included a variety of options for simple lounging.
The Hard Rock Café Hotel –
Penang had exactly what we were looking for, now all we had to do was to
get there.
A relatively short flight out of
KL (just on an hour) and we were landing on the Malaysian West Coast island of
Penang. As flights go, it was unremarkable (which is exactly what you want),
and as for airports, Penang international was equally as exhilarating. The best
supporting adjective I could associate to it was that we found it to be
functional, without too much complication.
The Hard Rock Hotel is located on
the north-west coast of Penang Island, whilst Penang International is on the south-eastern
coast. It’s always of mild amusement to me that when you arrive at your destination,
wherever that may be, you’re never truly there. You still need to navigate
domestic connections via road, rail or sea and then add the additional transit
time until you’re really there. Getting to the Hard Rock Hotel was no
exception, with the road transit being equivalent to the flying time between KL
and Penang. What’s more, the ride was once again unremarkable, with little ado
about anything until we finally hit the north shore and witnessed its beautiful
coast line for the first time, but when that happened, it finally did make it
feel like we’d reached the starting line of our holiday.
…And then it appeared. The beaming
Hard Rock Hotel sign, the bronzed Hard Rock Hotel guitar, the magnificent statue
tribute to Michael Jackson….(what now….???).
Aside from maintaining a tribute to
the ‘King of Pop’, I would really like to know when MJ’s music snuck into genre
of rock? When did that happen? During the 1980’s when MJ ruled MTV, his music
was always classified as pop, and we all seemed to be fairly clear that. We all
knew what metal was, what rock was and what pop was. Fast forward 30 years and now
you have the of Justin Bieber straying into the capture trove of domain rock,
how? How is that at all possible and how in the world have we so diluted the
meaning of rock that its just becoming a carry bucket for all things that aren’t
Rap or RnB? Honestly, I think we’ve just turned into a bunch of soft xxxx(s)
and anything that can be rhymed or doesn’t contain a bunch of stunning random
ad-libs like ‘yeah’, ‘uh-huh’ or ‘oooh’ gets thrown into genre rock. As us
Aussies would say, ‘Yeah….nah’.
The charming illusion of relaxation
Walking through the foyer, the
world of potential rest, relaxation and recuperation opened up to me. I saw
bars filled with ambition and ingenuity, I heard the sound of water falling
into a pool of magnificence which I could see wrapped itself around the entire beach
side of the property. I felt the balmy warmth of the breeze making its way off
the waters of the Straits of Malacca, palm trees swaying, children laughing,
adults holding cocktails. This felt like the right place. This felt like the
start of a vacation.
This felt like someone was being
way too naïve.
Let me tell you. In the parenting
guidebook that they never hand out at the hospital on day one, there’s not a
single person that clues you in on your parenting duties and obligations for
all remaining years of your existence. Nobody tells you that disrupted sleep
will continue eternally, nobody tells you that whatever it is was that you knew
yourself to be the day before your child arrives is wiped off that carefully
crafted canvas of who you were creating because you now become known as ‘Dad’ or ‘Mum’ and with that bestowed
upon you, everything changes, and therefore nobody tells you that when you’re
on vacation with a 5yr old their needs and demands supersedes any misplaced,
naïve idea that you may have conjured up in your dumb brain that this holiday
was going to be a relaxing break from the world. Still, I was about 2hrs
away from fully realising that notion, so before we get to point in time where
reality kicked down the entrance door to my conscious self and made itself comfortable,
lets talk Hard Rock impressions.
Hard Rock Hotel Penang
We had booked ourselves into a
Lagoon deluxe room. This room had a back deck that gave direct access to the ‘largest
free form pool in Northern Malaysia’. So, I’m not sure if that’s quite a major
claim to fame but it certainly looked both impressive and inviting. What it did
mean however is that you could swim from your room to the pool bar (and back, ‘if
needed’) without needing to ever consider standard hotel etiquette of ‘drying
yourself off’ before entering common spaces.
Then there were the happy hours. Each
bar had its own carefully crafted specials, available at specific hours, which deliberately
engineered adult migration around the property to support its other facilities.
Not that we were too worried about anything else other than for what price we
could acquire several Margaritas for at midday and thereafter.
And then there were the kids
water slides. Man, they looked like fun. They looked like something that
Aiden was going to love! I could already see dozens of kids enjoying
themselves, running around freely, making their way up and down the stairs in their
relentless pursuit of carefree delight. They looked so happy…those kids
looked blissfully happy.
But then ….but then, I saw it.
Looking towards the bottom of the
slides I saw the milieu of youth, maturity and all those microbial
party crashers. I saw the pools’ edge lined by alcoholic drinks and those
associated adult fantasies of the promise of fun and relaxation, wiped from the
role call of reality, disappearing into the Batu Ferringhi sky like the smoke
of a magician’s latest illusion. I saw a veritable queue of grown humans, ‘these
adults’, were standing around and acting as nothing more than mature aged
EA’s. There they were, catering to the fanciful whimsy and incessant demands of
these energy infused torrents of misaligned purpose.
It was at that moment that I
truly comprehended what was to be my Malaysian vacay destiny.
Wading through the piss pool of collective
over excitement – I was going to be the designated ‘watch out parent’, tethered
to my son by the invisible tie of potential catastrophe. I was there to ensure
safety, prevent drowning, be a support for toilet breaks, mitigate emotional breakdowns,
act an ‘add-on’ to entertainment, become a transport mechanism from slide to
pool to any other form of entertainment, become a Mr-fix-it for all things thirst and
hunger related – that was my job. Dead-icated assistant. See what I did there?
And what of that other parent?
What happened to her?
In the mists of time that became
our escape to Penang, I recall faintly the following words of explanation
regarding how designated duties were decided, ‘well, you love the water, I’m
not a pool person, so please be with Aiden’.
And so it was complete.
From that moment on I did see
Inga on occasion. Much in the same way that family relatives in Tijuana look
through the walls that mark the line of delineation between Mexico and the US,
wondering what the ‘land of the free’ really feels like. For sure, you can see
it, you can even almost feel it. And in that space and time, the land where you
stand with your own two feet looks no different than the land on the other side
of that wall, and yet, you know full well the administrative, legal, political,
economic & social obstacle that the physical wall represents. That line to
me, especially the part that went ‘well you love the water’, turned into that wall
that Trump ‘tried to build’
And that my friends is the way it played out for the next several days in the good ‘ole bowels of the Hard Rock lagoon. Calls of ‘Dad, can we go to the slides’, ‘Dad, can we play basketball’, ‘Dad, where’s my best friend Louis’, ‘Dad, pee-pee’….’Dad…Dad’……and there I was, in the 5 yr old trenches, battling my way through laughter and occasional bouts of irrational emotive outbursts (and that was just me...I also had to deal with Aiden!! 😂😂😂). But I did have the one outlet, the fail safe – that little ray of sunshine that I could count on. And it happened at those moments as soon as I was able to lock into Inga’s gaze. All that I needed to do, all that was required from me, was a slight nod of the head, and that line of unspoken communication between husband and wife formulated into the internal muted scream of ‘where’s my margarita?’, which then echoed loud and clear in within our collective auditory cortexes…..because now that was her assigned role , she became both bartender and waiter, and she knew that to maintain this gravy train of endless sunbaking bliss, there had to be enough alcoholic lubricant for me in order to maintain a mild level of intoxication that would support the ongoing laughter of a 5 yr old. And so the wheels of this family holiday kept turning. A precarious and delicate balance of relationships, responsibility and love, all cobbled together within a framework of what was unspoken but clearly understood.
Batu Ferringhi
When I wasn’t strolling
aimlessly, no more than 5-10 steps away from Aiden, then we all had ‘the beach’
as an outlet. The beach was nice, unencumbered by rules and regulations. We could
walk as a family with the relative safety of knowing that both of us, Inga
& I, were on the beat. Two parent cops, enjoying Malaysian sands and
looking for a place to acquire additional alcohol to support the vacation of intoxication.
I know that I’m making it sound
like we were constantly drinking, and perhaps in part that was true, but we were
always ‘clear’ and measured. The friendly Frandy Bar a couple of hundred metres
from the back door of the Hard Rock Hotel was an escape from our designated escape.
It was a place to relax, enjoy a meal, become mesmerised by the gorgeous sunset
and become bewildered by their nightly fire show which involved more dropping
of their torches of fire than English cricketers drop in an average test match.
%20-%20sunset.jpg)
The luxury we had was that we
could lock Aiden into a couple of YouTube videos whilst we sat at the bar. It’s
a simplistic way to divert attention, sure, but sometimes to be effective you
need to be basic in your approach.
I did enjoy these evenings. This
was my point of relaxation. Dad demands were subdued and extended only as far
as typing in search requests into YouTube. Otherwise, it was all about watching
the sun slowly drift down below the horizon and letting my mind drift to the
prospects of future holidays, on days where Aiden will be older….and I too will
be older. It’s a catch, isn’t it? Wishing time away now, and then as you get
older, wishing your time back. There’s a lot to be said for mindfulness and being
present, being locked into the moment. I still have a lot to learn and developing
to do in that area.
Georgetown
We spent less time in Georgetown
than expected. Which, if we consider are pre-departure edict of ‘not filling up
our schedule’, worked exactly the way we projected. Georgetown is certainly the
culinary capital of Malaysia and is one of the culinary giants of south-east
Asia. A point however which we did not get to experience – which on this
occasion was to be just fine. What we did get to experience was their
street-art, an element which they are also well known for. That certainly was enjoyable. Something that
you can only really experience by walking the town thoroughly, which we were
unable to do but which we did as much as we could. It’s a city that one day I’d
be happy to return to again.
Hard rocked and returning home
We did rock ourselves hard. We
had meals at the Hard Rock café, we dosed ourselves on Hard Rock merchandise
(clothing) and tried to imbue Aiden with everything rock music related.
I’ve said this in other posts, but
I’ll reiterate here. My like for the Hard Rock is of course the music, you know
what you’re going to get, and you know that you’ll like it. Also, I have a love
of geography and travel, which means that any place that I can check-off with a
‘check-in’ and an ‘I’ve been there too’ shirt, is something that I enjoy.
I find that these days people are
relatively easy to criticise, or characterise, or demean for whatever purpose
they need to ‘elevate’ their own standing or worth within the social media
realm. Honestly, these days I couldn’t give a stuff as to opinion on the HRC
that it’s just a cheesy has-been franchise that is was past its use by date. I
don’t give a toss. I like what I like and if it makes me happy, then that
works. Did I ever tell you that I like listening to the Backstreet Boys? Yup,
that makes me happy too.
Honestly, to wrap things up, I
can’t say that it was a thoroughly enjoyable trip. Certainly, I enjoyed the
Hard Rock hotel and the location but in many ways the trip felt like I’d walked
into a Michelin starred restaurant and walked out with a ham and cheese toasty
in my hand. It’s not typically what I would have ordered but it’s what I got
given, and I suppose that’s ok. Did Aiden & Inga enjoy the trip? I think
for both they certainly did, and by a fair margin more than me, and that’s
important. By the way, that’s another thing they don’t tell you when you become
a dad, when your wife and son are having fun or they tell you that they enjoyed
everything, then that means so much more than what you may personally walked
away with. And that’s not BS that I’m touting, that’s just the way that you
change as an individual. That sentiment means something, and it makes you feel
good. That’s a win.
Flying home
Our flight home was via KL, where
we were fortunate enough to book one night at the Sama Express Hotel near
terminal 1. For anyone transiting through KL and not wanting to head into the
city, do yourself a favour and stay here. Hands down, one of the best airport
hotels that I’ve stayed at. I could in all seriousness just fly into KL, book
myself in for a few days at the Sama and fly out, not even escaping the sounds
of planes taking off from the nearby runways. That was a treat.
Our outbound flight was with Philippine
Airlines that took us to Melbourne via Manila. Not much feedback on Manila airport
other than a long stay in one of their ‘pay to enter’ lounges where the scotch
and cokes that we poured ourselves set us up for a blissful ride back home.
…and that was that
Where to next? For sure Aiden and
Inga are heading to Europe in July. Predominantly Riga but with a short stop in
Copenhagen. As I can’t afford to take the number of days leave mid-year I might
try and make it to a city where I can work remotely for a few days. I’m eyeing
of cities that I haven’t really considered previously like Seoul or Jakarta,
but if I’m feeling the urge for something familiar then a could very well
settle into Kuala Lumpur of Canggu (Bali). We’ll see. It could very well be
that I simply spend more time on Errol St at the gym, lol.
