Not sure why I called it thus but the title has a Monty Python/Monster Raving Looney Party feel to it. Maybe its bit of a Brexit influence too.
Anyway here we are on the beach at Batu Ferriggi in Penang, Malaysia. It's a bit of a time warp as far as I am concerned.
I was last here in 1982 with a chum, Neil Brown. We travelled to Singapore in the days of Boogie Street and Change Alley before taking the train to Butterworth via Kuala Lumpar. In those days you then got a ferry to Georgetown,the Penang main town, but now there is a choice of two bridges.
We are staying in the Rasa Sayang hotel which was here all those years ago. We stayed then in its sister hotel, the Golden Sands. That hotel was demolished to extend the Rasa, with a new highrise Golden Sands built further up the beach.
When Neil and I were here we were in the middle of a Holiday Superstars competition modelled on the cult TV programme of the same name.
Neil won the skyscraper race up 20 stories of our condo in Singapore. I won the swimming. Then in Penang Neil won the squash and tennis. We then played a game of chess using the giant hotel garden set which must have lasted four hours. I won that by a whisker. The other events have been lost to time.
We also guested in the nightly footie roll up at Fort Georgetown with the locals a couple of times, before getting up at 03:00 one morning to watch Englang v West Germany in the World Cup. The locals all chipped in so the match could be screened live by satellite. They were delighted two English joined them!
The old Georgetown is now a UNESCO World heritage site, sadly swallowed up by the new developments of 40 odd years building.
This visit is a bit of r & r prior to a trip to Hong Kong for the rugby sevens. It will be interesting to see the event prior to its debut at the Olympics in Rio later this year.
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