Sunday, August 06, 2006

Penang Trip

Last weekend we spent 2 days in Penang, probably the most famous island of Malaysia, situated on the northwestern coast. It is very intersting mixture of nature, beaches and its colonial history in Georgetown. I shot with 6x6 and XPan, mainly black and white, especially the old shophouses (you find plenty of them) give a feeling like Singapore might have look like 20 years ago.
Penang continoulsy upgrade and clean up the place, so if you want to go for the ruins and the rindown stuff, better go soon. But even the upgraded version looks very nice (they dont try to create the mickymouse history style like other places do). Not to forget about the food, which is just too good !

One story not to miss:
On the last day we were going around until 6pm (flight back at 9.10pm), finally went for dinner at 6.30pm. Because we had all our stuff in the car boot I decided to leave the 6x6 there (not Hasselblad) and bring my "green" bag along. I even decided to put the already exposed films (about 10x 120 and 135) into it and bring it along to the dinnerplace in case the car would get robbed, then at least I still would have the films and the XPan. You know what happened ?!
Suddenly heavy winds came up and parts of the foodcourt flew around us, so we decided to finish dinner quickly to make our way to the airport ! At the airport: what was missing ? The green bag with the xpan and the films !!! Jaw dropping, sweating, heat, heart beats faster, apocalypse, all gone, gonna cry,..
My wife was more conscious and asked me to drive back (45min), ok-ok, during driving back try to call the handphone which was also in the green bag, and ...... someone pick up after a couple of attempts, the boss of the coffeeshop. Relief no.1.
Coming there pick up the bag (relief no.2), giving the honest guy (thank you!) a rewards and head back towards the airport, 8pm by now (at this time the normal traveller and passenger is checked-in already) ! I saw us already in a nearby hotel waiting for the next days flight, but we can try, nothing to loose ! We drive (Penang style!), drop the rental, run to check-in ! The checkin lady was about to close the counter, we checkin, go to the gate and get our flight (relief no.3) !!! Time to relax.....
First time ever I was on the edge to loose equipment ! Now the green bag is glued to me.

I have a slight backlog with scanning slides and bw neagtives, so gonna upload some pans soon.

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