Uncle Siew Kai is my second eldest Uncle on my father’s side. He is the only one of his siblings who never married, and in fact lives one of the most solidary lives I’ve ever known. His house is in what they call the “countryside”, (and what he told me was “amish country”) in the state past the Mainland of Penang. When he moved there it had little in the town but jungle and palm oil tree plantations. Even now the small sections of stores and food stalls do not creep too near to his street. He has been retired for decades and for the life of me I can not quite figure out how he spends his days, apart from tending to his many hand-planted fruit trees. He loves his home and his area, though, and remarked that all he ever wanted was “peace and quiet.” Luckily, in a little over an hour’s drive and a 3 mile bridge, he can join his family on the Island of Penang.
He came to take Kelly and I out to lunch, and walked in mid-sentence, pummeling for the table and summoning us as if we were late for his class. We took the seats beside him as he laid out two decade-old reader’s digests on the table, instructing that they were for us to read, then to pass on to others in Beijing, but never to be thrown out. Then he laid a tourist guide pamphlet for Thailand, ours to keep, and a map of Penang, which he must have back no later than Thursday. As we nodded in understanding and agreement, he stood up and declared it was time to go, but would we mind putting on jeans as the temples won’t allow it.
(This is only partially true. I’ve seen many shoulders and knees in Malsysian temples, but I recall a Church in the Philippines that provided scarves for coverage. Nevertheless, I compromised by putting leggings under my shorts and went out into the blistering heat.)
Instead of the promised lunch we were taken on a mini-tour of Penang. We hit the snake temple (which does still have real snakes, but has been largely commercialized since my first visit and now they rest in trees rather than crawling on the roofs and floor like my first visit.) We went to the heritage museum, a few more temples, and visited King Street, where my father was raised. After a walking tour of the heritage area and a stop into the tourist center to find another map of Penang (so that he could take his other back sooner), I was no longer letting my many subtle indications and requests for lunch go unnoticed. When he asked, “Do you need anything else?” I replied, “just food.”
Finally we went to an outdoor food stall for spicy, thick, chicken curry, whose deliciousness more than made up for the wait. My uncle proposed to take us back to his house in the countryside for two nights to show us an archeological dig site. I was…hesitant to expose Kelly to so many consecutive hours of my Uncle SK, but as we had no plans, and would be on the island the rest of the week, I felt it was the right choice to take him up on his offer.
Uncle SK’s humor is as subtle as a slap in the face. I had warned Kelly of his teasing, which he did relentlessly, but I was unprepared for his smothering. The next morning he brought us to the train station to buy our tickets, insisted on talking for us in Malay to the bi-lingual teller, and then had us purchase first class tickets that he assured us were economy. Then he walked us to the end of the ferry and made us wait for 15 minutes to watch the ferry dock and actually see with our own eyes the passengers as they walked on the clearly railed off path from the ferry back to the station. I am not unaccustomed to over-protection, but the Patience Award goes to Kelly, who has not only traveled the world without adult help, but also lived on an island and has surely taken more ferries than Uncle has seen in his life.
This over-parenting I can not pretend was only Uncle SK. The whole of my family in Penang was constantly calling, checking, arranging, and looking out for us. In fact, we were not left minute alone for the whole week. While we were out my Aunty Ann called to say she was arranging for my family in KL to pick us up from the station and drive us to our hotel (which is an hour drive for them) rather than having us take a 25 min taxi. It was so strange to go from Beijing, where I literally am helpless at times, lost on streets where I can’t read the signs and with no way of asking for assistance or directions, to being bombarded with assistance in this country where I could help myself in so many ways.
What I love about it, though, is that when I am here I am always better able to understand my father and his worrying ways. Here the family has a culture of worry and check, of looking after to the last detail. All of the families and all of the cousins except one, who 36 and in Australia, are in Penang or KL. I can only imagine how much greater my father feels he has to worry when he is the only one in a country doing so.
Best Part of Countyside with Uncle SK: drinking beers in his garden under the stars.
I Came Close to Saying But Did Not Say: There are about 50 ways to wake up a person more carefully than banging like a police sergant 2 hours before you told them we’d leave.
Biggest Adjustment in Countryside House: squat toilet bathroom with hose/bucket for shower.
You do strange things for comfort in foreign places. I used the kitchen sink to get ready in the morning, which I know was strange to Uncloe. After all, the water must be identical, but I’m just not used to brushing my teeth from a garden hose.
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