When I went home for two weeks back in January, I ordered six months worth of contacts. Maybe I should have bought a year’s worth, but since I usually buy 3 months at a time, I was cringing at the thought of dropping almost a grand on contacts in one go. “They’ve gotta be cheaper in malaysia, right?” says me with no research whatsoever.
Well, they’re not, and my particular model isn’t even available in Malaysia. As someone who has kinda very poor eyesight but hates glasses, the thought of finding a new contact lens to wear gives me uncozy insecurity. With my supply dwindling, I finally made an optometrist appointment with a recommendation from Ken’s cousin. Apparently, similar to the US, a prescription is required to purchase contact lenses. Sigh. (Mine hasn’t changed in almost 20 years, please just let me buy them 🥲)
Ken stayed home with Minato, so I headed to Georgetown after a pumping session to tide me over a couple hours.
The optometrist was nice, although kept saying my “astig” had gotten much worse in my left. No… I don’t think so and please keep my prescription the same. She seemed determined to solve my left eye but then realized that no daily contact lens existed with astigmatism correction as high as mine. Yeah… that’s what my two optometrists concluded back home as well.
Eye exam done and trial contacts in, I checked my Touch n Go balance: 300 some ringgit. That wasn’t gonna be enough for a contact lens order so I quickly transferred 1000 ringgit from my Wise account while my bill was getting prepared.
Much to my surprise, the bill only had the contact lens order and no charge for the eye exam. Unfathomable in the US, where you get charged extra for a contact lens prescription separately from a glasses prescription.
After calling Ken to check in, I decided to check out a fabric store on Campbell Street that had been pinned on my Google Maps to do-list, a short 3km 10 minute drive away. On a Thursday midafternoon, Georgetown traffic was not that busy and Chinatown and Campbell Street were relatively quiet. I lucked out on a street parking spot on the famous historical shopping street.
Located in Chinatown, Campbell Street is a 500m portion of a road running NNW-SSE through Georgetown. Doing some research online, Campbell Street in Chinese is called “New Street 新街” since it was put in in the mid 1800s and was newer than the nearby Chulia and Buckingham streets. Apparently it was a red light district pre-WW2 and in the 70s was the shopping district in Georgetown. With the rise of malls, Campbell Street storefronts are now mostly wholesalers, but there are still several Chinese-owned jewelry shops (lots and lots of 24k gold) with security uncles sitting at the threshold on plastic chairs with actual guns.
The sidewalk you see in the above photo I believe was part of a revitalization effort of Campbell street in 1999, which I guess consensus is that it was a failure and I’ve seen a couple articles calling for removing the “bottleneck” caused by the narrowing of the road.
However, there are cute coffee shops (less cute perhaps, an Egyptian cat cafe that just opened 5? days ago and a dachshund cafe right next to each other) and restaurants and some shopping on this street. Even on a quiet Thursday, I saw plenty of both locals and gwailou tourists strolling around. Penang city council (MBPP): please keep the sidewalk!!
I arrived at Boon Wah Chow Chong and was greeted by the grandpa (owner?) sitting at the threshold of the store. I say threshold because many of these stores don’t have AC, just have garage door-like entrances that are left open. A smell of musty dusty fabric filled the air.
I was enthusiastically waved inside by the yeye and was surrounded by thousands of bolts of fabric with an impressive line up of Chinese brocade along the back wall. The storefront is not super big but the aisles are so tight I had to step through them sideways at times. I was the only one in the store. I don’t see too much DIY interest in Malaysia in general.
I didn’t have a particular project in mind, maybe a mistake. One of the staff followed me around (the daughter?) and did not let me browse in peace. They interestingly had different motion activated greetings placed around the store, so you could track where a customer was. She asked me what I was looking for, I inquired after some double gauze which is always useful for baby stuff, which they did not have. She asked me if I was working on something specific, I said no, but hoping to make something for a baby. She asked if boy or girl, and I said boy, and she started pulling out some 100% cotton prints (16.50 ringgit/meter, about $3.5/yard). The cotton prints in general looked a bit dated, not as modern, but I decided to get the minimum (0.5 m) for a couple prints anyway to make a busy book. Up until I didn’t know what the Chinese for “busy book” was, my entire interaction was in Mandarin, which has been a nice bonus living in Penang so that I can practice on a daily basis. As soon as I said idk what [busy book is] called in Chinese, she switched to English, which had a British flavor to it.
She (unfortunately) continued to follow me around while I browsed, there were some really cool prints outside of the kids section, so hopefully at some point I will feel up to making myself a garment.
She rang me up and asked if I was paying in cash, which I said yes to, except I had used my 100 bill on stuffing a hong bao (red packet) two weeks prior. Oops. All I had were a fistful of 1s which was not enough. I asked if they took Touch n Go; they don’t!! TnG is a ubiquitous e-wallet, used everywhere from local hawker stalls, multinational corporations, road tolls, transferring friends money. Old school that they didn’t have it, but accepted credit card, which I don’t have. I gave up my Costco membership and with it the no international transaction fee travel Visa credit card. AmEx takers are rare.
Embarrassed, I asked if I could come back tomorrow, they said no problem, come between 1 and 5. So I can’t even show you what I got because I had to leave it at the store!
Leaving empty handed but hatching a plan for tomorrow, I headed back to Queensbay. Thankfully still too early for rush hour and got home in 20-25 minutes.
Bonus content:
Dinner was ken’s auntie May’s braised pork belly pulled out of the freezer turned lettuce wraps with some rice and lentils.
Back in October I bought a couple Minnesota themed things from Patina to bring with us: a pint glass, a dish towel and a 1000 piece puzzle. I haven’t done a puzzle in ages but I thought it could be cute in a frame for some artwork if I wanted later.
I packed it in our confinement bag but there was no time or surface on which to work on it so it came back to the apartment still unopened. We busted it out this week and have slowly been working on it during nap time. Small as it is, being reminded of the familiar landmarks is comforting!
Leave a Reply