By Leslie A.K. James.

WE have lived in Pulau Tikus for six years. Friends overseas are puzzled by the name as we were at first.  Pulau Tikus? -- Isle of Rats, Isle of Mice? We thought you lived on Pulau Pinang, the Island of Penang, they say. We explain that Pulau Tikus is not literally an island although it is an island of sorts, a village in George Town, bordering a bay shown on old maps as Pulau Tikus Bay named for a tiny islet called Pulau Tikus.  That islet, nothing more than a rocky outcrop, lies offshore opposite the Penang Swimming Club. Perhaps at one time it harboured a colony of marooned rats!

Storied names abound in our Pulau Tikus.  We live on Cantonment Road although our stretch of Cantonment Road between Gurney Drive and Kelawei Road officially bears another name, an acronym, the contraction of the name of a Malay social club with its premises across the road from us. Although the road signs proclaim this name, the road is still Cantonment Road to everyone including the residents, the post office, Telekom and the other utilities, water and electricity.  We often wonder if the social club moved to new premises elsewhere whether it would take its street name with it. In any event Cantonment Road it is and Cantonment Road it remains, the name like Sepoy Lines suggesting the former presence of a military camp.  Evidently not everyone, however, is aware of the meaning of cantonment for an office building housing a major bank on Cantonment Road is called Canton Square perhaps because the developer (a Cantonese?) thought cantonment had something to do with the capital of a province in south China.

Sir Henry Gurney, High Commissioner for Malaya, murdered by communist terrorists on his way to Fraser’s Hill in 1951, is commemorated not only in the name of Gurney Drive along the north shore but in the name of a major shopping mall and the names of countless nearby buildings and condominium blocks (some not even completed), so many that the non-capitalised initial letter “g” suffices for the name of the newest hotel! The north shore, older residents tell us, was once an idyllic beach.  All trace of that has gone, replaced at low tide by vast expanding mud flats, sprouting mangroves and created by ill-considered land reclamation for a massive housing development along the shore to the west, referred to ominously by locals as “Tsunami Court”.

Other Pulau Tikus names – Jalan Brother James, Leandro’s Lane – recall the once thriving Catholic Eurasian community that surrounded the institutions of the Roman Catholic church that were a feature of the area – the College General, St Joseph’s Novitiate, Pulau Tikus Convent School, St Xavier’s Branch School and the Church of the Immaculate Conception which this year celebrates its bicentenary amid controversy over plans to demolish the church’s historic presbytery or parish house. Lorong Serani leads off Kelawei Road to the Penang Eurasian Association with its reputation for Eurasian cuisine and music, a sometime haunt of the much loved Rozells musical group. The Malay word Serani is a corruption of “Nazarene” (a reference to Jesus of Nazareth) and was in common Malay usage applied to Eurasians the majority of whom were Catholics. The quaint Eurasian bungalows combining features of English country cottages and Malay kampong houses are disappearing.  Several on Kelawei Road, including one that was the home of 1950s musician and songwriter Jimmy Boyle, have been converted into cosmetic clinics or up-market beauty salons (why so many?).

Much of the original Roman Catholic Church property in the area has been sold off to developers. The site of the once imposing College General is occupied by Gurney Plaza shopping centre. St Joseph’s Novitiate is endangered by the construction of monstrous tower blocks. Even Pulau Tikus Convent School has been sold although not yet vacated. The shops in Belissa Row on Burma Road and the Belissa Court condominium on Leandro’s Lane are all on former church property.

Pulau Tikus is the scene of a contest between the old and the new, the old infinitely more interesting and appealing, the new brash and boring represented by towering condo blocks along Gurney Drive each vying to be taller and emptier than the next. These are what the property market pundits tout as the future of Pulau Tikus.  Despite their over-weaning size, however, they pale in comparison to what was here before, elegant villas like the Loke Mansion built in 1924 and standing proudly if somewhat forlornly in the shadow of the ugly towers going up around it. On our stretch of Cantonment Road are several older houses still occupied by families or discrete businesses.  The oldest, a bungalow in the eclectic Malay style built in 1918, houses a tax consultancy. Opposite us is a 1930s art deco house and beside it a pair of outstanding 1920s colonial style two-storey houses, one a private club and the other still a family house.

Commercial competition and property speculation underlie the contest between old and new. The area already has two shopping malls, the one at Midlands falling into decline as Gurney Plaza has expanded.  Meanwhile a mere stone’s throw from the latter, piling has begun for yet another shopping centre on the former site of Uplands School.  One wonders what kind of market survey was conducted before the developer decided to build a new shopping complex almost next door to an existing one.

Undoubtedly the most attractive road in Pulau Tikus is Bangkok Lane linking Kelawei Road and Burma Road. Running behind a Thai temple, Bangkok Lane is lined by two rows of forty outstanding two-storey semi-detached houses built in 1928 by entrepreneur Cheah Leong Kah for his family. These handsome houses are still owned by the Cheah family trust and those not occupied by Cheah descendants are rented to tenants. Although some tenants have opened businesses in their houses in recent years their signboards are discrete and regulated by the trustees. The houses are maintained according to a uniform colour scheme with no modifications to either the exterior or interior design permitted. Several tenants are clearly in competition to present the most beautiful display of shrubs and flowers adorning the front of their residences. The street is a delight to walk along and three days a week one is rewarded by a hawker selling satay babi from his trishaw stall – a rare treat indeed.

Kelawei Road and Burma Road run parallel with each other forming the east-west axis of Pulau Tikus. Where they cross Cantonment Road is considered the centre of the village. Two local banks on Cantonment Road have recently been joined by a branch of the Bank of China thus creating a mini-financial district. The post office is here too and next door is a kedai tuak.  This is the official state-run toddy shop where fermented palm liquor is sold and consumed on the premises by Tamil working men in unbelievably grubby and inhospitable surroundings.

Burma Road (sometimes with the quaint spelling “Burmah”) is more commercial than Kelawei Road, with shophouses dating from the 1920s and 1930s in the area near the police station.  There in plain view of the blue-uniformed men and women of “Malaysia’s finest”, motorcycle repair shops extend their activities not only into the five-foot way but into the kerbside traffic lane as well!  Behind Burma Road is the famous Pulau Tikus market, reputedly one of Penang’s more expensive wet markets but nonetheless a magnet for shoppers from all over Penang. Illegal double and even triple parking often brings traffic to a standstill on Burma Road and Cantonment Road in this area, a problem that led recently to the posting of “Clamping Zone” signs.  Failure to take action to clamp offending vehicles, however, has made a mockery of the regulations and the signs.

Pulau Tikus is the site of two mosques. On Burmah Lane just off Gurney Drive is Masjid Lama Jamek with its frangipani-shaded cemetery and a sign in Malay that warns: “Pray before you are prayed for.”  Nearby on Kelawei Road is Masjid Al-Munauwar which is under extensive renovation. Behind this mosque a lane leads to Burma Road winding through Kampung Syed past another old Muslim cemetery, old Malay houses and gardens of fruit trees -- limau, mango and chiku.

Elsewhere on Burmah Lane, between Kelawei Road and Burma Road, tourists and worshippers alike flock to two 19th century Buddhist temples, one Thai and the other Burmese, facing each other across the road. The Thai temple, Wat Chaya Mankalaruam, on land granted by Queen Victoria in 1845, is dominated by a golden stupa. The temple also boasts a 33-metre reclining Buddha, one of the longest in the world. Behind Wat Chaya is a Thai village and cemetery. Each year the Thai community celebrates Loy Krathong with a parade along Cantonment Road to the sea where candles are floated out with prayers from the Isle of Rats.

** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the PHT Newsletter Issue 97 / March 2010. Please click here to visit PHT site. The opinions expressed herein are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of PHT or iGeorgetown. 

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