BEST FOR THE SOUL: EMPIRE DAZE
By Neel Chowdhury
TIME Magazine
s/article/0,28804,1988463_1989006_1989000,00.html
May 13 2010
Before the ascendancy of Singapore and Hong Kong, Penang, a 285-sq-km
island off Malaysia’s northwest coast, was the fulcrum of trade in
Asia. It was extracted under a spurious offer of military protection
by Captain Francis Light, a British merchant looking to get rich,
from the sultan of Kedah in 1786. By the time the sultan realized
he’d been hustled, it was too late. Penang was declared a British
crown colony, and some 34 years before modern Singapore was founded
its harbor was where China clippers could repair their sails, stock
up on hard tack and grog, and catch the monsoon winds that blew them
between Calcutta and Canton with hulls full of tea and opium.
Penang grew so prosperous that in 1885 two Armenian entrepreneurs
built the luxury Eastern & Oriental Hotel, e-o-hotel.com, along the
promenade of Georgetown, the state capital. Based on its success,
the duo founded Raffles in Singapore two years later. In architecture
and history, the onetime sister properties — and that other great
colonial hotel, the Peninsula in Hong Kong — have much in common,
but there is one poignant difference. While Raffles and the Peninsula
are in thriving centers of commerce, by the early 20th century Penang
had been eclipsed as a trading force. A late burst of investment
in electronics manufacturing in the early 1980s has also sputtered
out. For travelers, though, that’s a good thing. It means that guests
of the 101-room E&O can enjoy genteel pleasures, like breakfast on
the seaward veranda, at prices a fraction of those in hotels that
are in luckier locations — and without any diminution of romance.