(Image courtesy of CoPilot)
by Soo Teong Chuan
I grew up in Penang Island and deeply loved the island, and my childhood friends.
Due to career commitments, I had to move away. But I still cherished my hometown and friends.
The sea breeze in Penang still tastes the same — salt and nostalgia, carried from the straits where our bicycles once traced the coastline.
Do you remember how we’d race down Batu Ferringhi, sand in our shoes and laughter louder than the waves?
At sundown, the sun would sink like a ripe mangosteen, staining the sky in hues we’d try to name – mas merah!
Penang was our endless playground. The alleyways of George Town, sticky with the sweat of afternoons, where we’d chase the clatter of ice cream carts and the sizzle of char kway teow on hawker stalls.
We’d pool our coins for cendol, slurping sweetness under the shade of rain trees, while the trishaw bells sang their lazy tunes. Even the monsoons couldn’t drown our mischief — we’d wade through knee-high floods, pretending we were pirates hunting for treasure, our backpacks stuffed with comic books and half-melted candy.
Our friendships were built like the Penang Bridge — anchored in the chaos of schoolyard games, scraped knees, and secrets whispered beneath streetlamps.
Friends taught me how to curse in Hokkien; I showed you how to fold paper boats to sail in the temple’s wishing pond. We grew up tangled in each other’s dialects, religions, and rituals, yet it never mattered. The island knitted us together, stitched by sunlit stitches.
Now, miles away, I catch fragments of home in unexpected places: the scent of frangipani in a stranger’s garden, the clink of kopi-o being stirred, a snatch of Tamil prayer from an open window. I close my eyes, and suddenly I’m back at the jetty, counting huge cargo ships and towering cruise liners with you, our futures as vast and uncertain as the horizon.
Time may have scattered us like rambutan seeds, but Penang remains — a postcard pressed to my heart. Somewhere, our ghosts still linger: in the shadow of Kek Lok Si’s now very glittering pagoda, the echo of recess bells, the grooves of our initials carved (but swiftly scrubbed) from a school desk.
I carry the island in my throat, a swallowed anthem. And when I dream, it’s always the same: all of us, whole and hungry, sharing one last plate of rojak at the night market, the stars above as bright as your laughter. For those who still hear Penang in their pulse — you’re where my “balik kampung” heart stays
(Teong Soo Chuan is a 60-something ‘Penang Lang’ who has thrived in the Klang Valley)
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