Wednesday – April 8, 2026 – Penang
I have heard the word batik but I never took the time to learn what it meant – I knew it had something to do with cloth and art. Today’s featured photo shows the application, by hand, of color to a design on cloth.
Today we docked at George Town on Penang Island. I have heard of Penang for years due to my association with semiconductor manufacturers. Penang is a major manufacturing area for semiconductor products. This industry was brought to Penang when a change in their government eliminated free trade zone status and Penang needed a way to replace the lost revenue. Representatives from Penang traveled the world (heavy emphasis on the United States) offering land on which companies could build plants and personnel to staff those plants along with substantial tax advantages. US companies jumped at the chance with Intel opening a facility in 1972. As we began our excursion today we drove by the business park near the airport that is the center of this semiconductor manufacturing. Lots of well-known names were visible on the sides of the buildings. It was nice to see the area that helped the vendors I represented supply product to my customers.
As we drove, we stopped to view a bridge that has made a difference in the life of this island. The Penang Bridge was the first to connect the island with the mainland. It opened in 1985 and is over 8 miles in length. Jan took a photo when we stopped. I tried to add a photo when we returned to Magnifica later in the day, but a cruise ship docked at our stern so the video I took lacks the image of the central portion of the bridge.
Next, we followed a narrow road leading West across the island. On the way we could see fruit stands and the area that is considered the best farmland (flat near the ocean). We stopped at a small stand in the forest where the owner works and lives. He offered fruit and spices for sale. There are a couple photos of his stand in the gallery.
Our bus took us to a business which began as a supplier of the larval form of butterflies. It is now a major attraction in Penang and is called Entopia. It is a combination teaching museum and butterfly farm with several large, enclosed areas where butterflies are teased to land and feed on butterfly-liked liquids. I’m not sure what those liquids are but they really attract the pretty winged creatures. We also found that bright cloth colors attract butterflies. Several of us had these creatures landing on us – you’ll see several photos of this in the gallery. I don’t remember ever seeing a collection of butterflies as large as this – even at the San Diego Zoo. The gift shop had mounted varieties for sale with over $1,000 price tags – but they were truly unique and beautiful.
After making sure we didn’t leave the enclosures with any butterflies on our clothes, we got on the bus and traveled to Craft Batik. We were led to the workshop area and given a short course on the art of batik using stamps and hand painting. Each product is one of a kind in that it is individually created. Jan, Kelsey and I wanted to buy some pieces of clothing to remember this stop so we went to the sales floor to begin looking at the shirts and dresses. After less than 2 minutes in the showroom the power went off and the only light was what came in through the front windows. We were using our cell phones to light up the material to get an idea how each looked. We each found clothing we liked and went to the counter to check out. Fortunately, their point of sale equipment was on a backup power system so we had no problem spending money. You can see the clothes we bought in today’s gallery.
The last area of our excursion today was a Thai Buddhist temple. The drawing card of this temple was the large reclining Buddha which you can see in the gallery. Something we noticed with this temple was that remains were included in the temple both in walls behind the reclining Buddha and below it. All were cremated with jars in square niches with a glass front, a photo of the person and writing in a language foreign to us. We had not seen that in other temples.
Across the street was a Burmese Buddhist temple. The primary Buddha in this temple was standing with the right arm palm out as if greeting someone. There appeared to be several thousand of smaller Buddhas with the same positioning adorning the walls behind the main Buddha. There were also 12 other Buddhas that appeared to be life sized lining the wall behind the main Buddha. We were running out of time so didn’t have a chance to explore further. You can see photos of this temple in the gallery.
Tonight was Malaysian Night in the restaurant. We decided to wear the batik clothing we bought at Craft Batik. There is a photo of Kelsey and Jan in their dresses with the decoration in the restaurant and one with all of us and Yogi in our cabin. Yogi had asked for a photo so he would have a memory of our family.
The gallery for today is here.