Kimberley Street, Penang

Kimberley Street is in an inner precinct of George Town. It's a narrow road with a one-way flow of traffic from Carnarvon Street to Penang Road. I haven't been there for a while but I remember that there is good food to be found here, especially at night. I wasn't planning to take any photograph but at one stage, when walking towards Carnarvon Street, I took out my mobile to shoot a few photos. They are not of good quality, however, because this is just a 2.0-megapixel mobile phone camera. Anyway, here are some of the photographs.

In case you are wondering, this is the junction of Kimberley Street and Sungai Ujong Road. At this crossroad are some wonderful food stalls, all located behind me. I would come here to taste the fried beehoon, the fried koay teow and soya bean milk. Some say the Hokkien Mee is nice too but to me, there are better ones elsewhere. You see that red car that's just about to turn out? It was about there that I used to enjoy a wonderful bowl of ice kachang. The stall's gone, by the way.

This is the Hooi Lye Teochew Association. It hasn't changed a bit since the 1970s. It's still a pink building. I used to come here often until the early 1980s - twice a week, actually - not because I'm Teochew (heavens, no....I'm Hokkien) but because this used to be the meeting place of the Penang Chess Association. We'd come here on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons to meet with like-minded chess-playing friends and occasionally, we'd organise our tournaments. Ahh...those were the good old days of Penang chess!

Directly opposite the Hooi Lye Association is a row of houses belonging to the Bee Chin Heong. This company sells Chinese prayer paraphernalia such as joss-sticks, fengshui items and whatever else, and is now the largest of its kind in Penang. Do give the shop a visit. You'll be fascinated by the things they keep inside, including a tremendously large Lion Dance headgear. Outside the Bee Chin Heong, life-size or giant statues from Chinese folk-lore line the five-foot walkway. They are there simply because they are too big to be kept inside the houses, like this statue of Kuan Yin that towers above everything else! Of course, the shop is not afraid of people carting away the statues in the middle of the night. They weigh several tons.

And finally, I came across this car. There's nothing to suggest that it is part of the Kimberley Street landscape. Perhaps it belongs to a shopper or a resident. But it being an old car itself, I thought it was worth the effort to take a snapshot of it.

Oh yes, how can I forget? This building was once the tallest building in the country, before it was overtaken by the Maybank headquarters in KL. Unfortunately, the interior of the podium block is in terrible shape and many of the businesses there have relocated elsewhere. Still, there can be no denying that the Komtar tower block is the most imposing structure in the whole of the northern peninsula.