I know I know, some of you are already complaining, why is there no new post!! Well you see last week was rather an eventful week, there are weddings, birthday, farewell and etc … … all of which I did not participate. Errrr … So what am I busying about? Nothing much really but I was rather weak, coughing, sneezing … my usual package deal.

Ok let’s jump to the interesting part, Penang Heritage Trail – Take 2. In this episode, I will cover Fort Cornwallis, State Assembly Buildings, City Hall and Town Hall.

Just as a disclaimer before I begin, I am not a historian or archaeological type of person. I am also not the type that knows a lot about culture, well yeah; sometime not even my own ethnic culture. Sad isn’t it … well not ~~ luckily I am the type of person that likes to see things, learn new stuff. So what you read here is only my P.O.V (Point Of View) and sometimes my P.O.V may be a little eccentric, you may or may not agree but feel free to share your opinion.

Now let’s start the journey. The 4 places that I’ve mentioned got to be the most boring-est (if there is such word) part of the trip. I know it was nothing interesting from the start but I just wanted to give it a chance and at the same time practice my photography and hopefully through the viewfinder I may find a different perspective. Unfortunately as a rookie, my ‘eye’ is not fully developed yet, hence “see-no-road”.

After an early dim-sum breakfast, we set off to Fort Cornwallis. We arrived roughly around 8.30 am; however it opens only at 9 am (I should have done more research). Anyway without wasting any precious ‘premium-photography-hours’ (after 10 am, the lighting may be too harsh), we visited the near by State Assembly Buildings, City Hall and Town Hall. On the way there, we walked along the esplanade and came across a … emmm they call it the Millennium Plaza. I have no idea why they call it a plaza, I always had the impression that a plaza is like a shopping mall (a smaller version) but according to the dictionary it could mean a public square or an open area in a city – still it doesn’t sound right. Anyway according to the sign board, it says that it was erected to mark the millennium celebrations worldwide at the end of the 20th century. FYI, The RM 500k ‘Plaza’ was sponsored by BHL Bank. I stood there for about 5 – 10 min trying to figure out what is the monument suppose to be, looking at the picture again, I still do not know what is the RM 500k ‘object’ suppose to represent. Also, I suppose they forgot about the maintenance part, some of the tiles on the drive way is starting to or is already flaked off and strange rock partition is used to prevent cars from parking in that area.

Next, moving on towards the 3 buildings, we took shots of the various sides and composition of the historic building. The day wasn’t all that pleasing as there were heavy clouds hovering above. Anyway what can I say … it’s just a building, there were no sign board or no information hence it’s just another old looking building … to me at least. I was actually wondering why do they consider this as a heritage site, the building was heavily renovated with coarse light bulbs hanging from one corner to another – how do I tell the story of the building in my pictures when it looks like a mock up site?. Anyway it should be well documented or labeled at least to make it a little tourist-friendly.

Coincidentally, it was also White Cane Day (an awareness day for the visually impaired). There were marching band and other various activities. Seizing the opportunity, I took pictures of the event too – some of the organizers mistaken us and thought that we were from the press. It wasn’t a huge event but it’s nice to see a mixture of ethnics both local and non-locals took part in the event as a helper, organizer or even as a first-aider.

Now that the Fort is finally open (yes finally, they are a little late), we paid RM 3 each as the entrance fee and my troop split and conquered the place. For some non photography folks, they looked at us with a little queer look, as we were either climbing up and down and taking pictures in ‘non-standard’ angle. As far as I know, I will try not to be conscious about them to avoid distraction. Usually when we talk about Fort Cornwallis, canons pops into our mind, hence I’ve decided to take a couple shots of it as an association else I might get hung up with other non-related inanimate object. As I was walking around, I almost stepped on a ‘land-mine’. Yes a ‘land-mine’ still rather fresh and they have not ‘deactivated’ it yet – I guess the ‘land-mine-detector’ was not effective enough. The TNT that I was referring to is horse droppings, it was everywhere, and even on the staircase (must be a bad stomach). I was wondering, don’t they clean it up or was it intentional to make it look original and fertilizing the grass at the same time. There were also displays in some of the bunks / barracks but the place was poorly lighted and ventilated. Hence the artifacts or information panel was a little difficult to see / read. After much complains, we did enjoy taking pictures in the mock up camp site – we even pretended to be camping around the fire place.

Next, we went up to the light house. It is right beside Fort Cornwallis, however to access the place, we had to walk out and around the Fort (Strange!). This is not considered as a heritage site thou, but we still climbed all the way up for a bird’s eye view of the place. It wasn’t really a bird’s eye view but rather a bat’s EyE view, there were a lot of guano and a mixture of bird’s dropping (their public loo I guess ~ hahaha).

Next destination, to be continued …

P/S: Have you visited those places recently? Feel free to chip in a comment or two …

Check out the “Penang Heritage Trail - My take 1“