Episode 8: A Luxurious Life—For Less—on the Island of Penang

This week, the podcast features International Living Malaysia Correspondent Keith Hockton.

Malaysia, even by Keith’s estimation, is a surprising destination for most North American expats and potential expats. It’s just not on the radar as obviously as somewhere like Costa Rica, Mexico, or Panama.
 
For Keith, that’s a tragic oversight, and he’s determined to make potential expats aware of just how perfect a destination Malaysia can be. A frequent speaker at International Living conferences, Keith lives on the tropical island of Penang, in the city of George Town. There, he pays exceptionally low rates for exceptionally luxurious beachfront accommodation, enjoys year-round warm weather, and lives in a community where English is an official language, where there are thousands of expats to socialize with, and where the local cuisine is considered some of the best in all of Asia.

Keith goes into detail about the beach, mountain, jungle, and city living options on Penang, the history and culture of the island, and the eclectic social life you can expect if you visit.

Settle in, press play, and find out as we welcome you to the latest episode of International Living’s Bigger Better World podcast.

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Music: Royalty Free Music From timtaj.com.

Transcript

Jim Santos 0:10 

Hello everyone. I'm Jim Santos and this is Bigger, Better World from International Living. In this podcast series, we introduce you to a bigger world full of communities that are safe, welcoming, beautiful and largely undiscovered. A better world. A friendly, warm, great value world where you can live richer, travel more, invest for profit and enjoy a better life. We talked with our writers and other people just like you who took a chance and followed our guidance to create for themselves bigger, better lives all around the world. Let's get to it. 

Today we'll be taking you all the way to Penang Island, part of the state of Penang in the country of Malaysia, known as the Pearl of the Orient. Penang is only about 405 square miles, yet hosts a population approaching 1.8 million. Our tour guide on this visit is Keith Hockton. Keith is International Living's Malaysia correspondent and a fellow podcaster co-hosting the popular show There's Always Tea. Keith, welcome to Bigger, Better World and thanks for joining us despite the 13-hour time difference.

Keith Hockton 1:17 

Thanks, Jim, thanks for having me on the show.

Jim Santos 1:20 

Now, I think the first question I want to ask here, most North Americans, Americans in particular, have only the haziest geographic concept of exactly where Malaysia is or the difference between Malaysia, Indonesia…it's just kind of all China in people's minds, I think. So could you give us just a thumbnail sketch of exactly where Panang is, and Malaysia?

Keith Hockton 1:43 

Yeah, sure. So if you think where Singapore is and then you think where Thailand is, Malaysia actually sits in between Singapore and Thailand. So to the east of us we have the islands of Borneo and the Philippines, and to the west of us we have the Indonesian archipelago. As you go further north, so if you think about south to north, you've got Singapore, then Malaysia, then Thailand, and then to the left and top of Thailand you have Myanmar, and then to the right of that you've got Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. So we're actually smack in the middle of Southeast Asia. Okay.

Jim Santos 2:32 

And Penang itself is very close to the equator.

Keith Hockton 2:35 

Yeah, we're actually two degrees away from the equator and a very long way away from China.

Jim Santos 2:43 

Yeah, when I lived in Ecuador, I was actually two degrees south of the equator.

Keith Hockton 2:48 

So you know exactly what the kind of temperatures that we have right now.

Jim Santos 2:52 

I guess also if you kind of draw a diagonal line between India and Australia, you're kind of going through the Malay Peninsula there.

Keith Hockton 3:01 

That's actually pretty true. So Australia, the closest port to Australia from US would be Western Australia, which is a five-hour flight from Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. And if we're going to India, that's basically northwest of us, which would take you approximately another four hours. So we're pretty equidistant.

Jim Santos 3:24 

And where are you from originally, Keith?

Keith Hockton 3:28 

I'm Australian. I was actually born in the UK, but my parents, I'm a typical expat kid. So my parents were actually traveling in the UK. I was born in the UK and we stayed there until I was four. Then we moved out to the Bahamas, then we moved to Samoa, then we moved back to Southeast Asia. And I spent the rest of my formative years growing up in Malaysia, Brunei and Singapore. And then when I finished uni, I went to uni in the States. And when I finished uni in the States, I ended up working in Hong Kong and Singapore. So I've been in Southeast Asia pretty much all my life.

Jim Santos 4:08 

Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask how you ended up there, but it sounds like you almost started out there.

Keith Hockton 4:13 

Pretty much.

Jim Santos 4:15 

And you've been living in Penang now about 10, 11 years?

Keith Hockton 4:20 

Twelve years now, coming on 13. And I first actually came to Penang with my mum and dad when they were living in Malaysia. So I was seven years old at that stage, and that was the first time we traveled from Kuala Lumpur up to Penang. And then because I was working in Hong Kong, I knew Malaysia as a child, I got to know it as an adult, and then when it came to retire, I kind of knew what I was moving into. So I knew Malaysia quite well at that stage.

Jim Santos 4:50 

Yeah, I saw in your October 2021 article and International Living feature article, as a matter of fact, called ‘Extend Your Summer in Malaysia's Colonial Jewel’. You mentioned that you were surfing there in the ’70s.

Keith Hockton 5:03 

Yeah, one thing Australians do is we we usually take a well, actually, a little bit later, for me, it was probably in the late ’70s, early ’80s. I first came to Bali, and then I moved from Bali across to the Malaysian archipelago and I was kind of surfing my way around. So yeah.

Jim Santos 5:23 

Did you meet your wife in Malaysia also, or were you already married when you decided to move there?

Keith Hockton 5:28 

No, I was already married when I decided to move here. I went to Brown in the US. And then out of Brown I worked for a company called Drexel Burnham, which is, probably no one remembers who Drexel were, but they transferred me to London and we met in London. So she was working for the same company at that stage.

Jim Santos 5:50 

How does she feel about the move to Malaysia?

Keith Hockton 5:54 

She loved it. She was actually the one who suggested it. She'd been subscribing to International Living for years. Years and years and years, and embarrassingly, I'd never read a single magazine. And then finally she said to me at one stage, because we were taking holidays, three or four holidays a year in Asia, and finally she turned to me and said, ‘look, why don't we move there and then holiday back to Australia?’ And I was like, yeah, that's actually a really good idea. So that's what we did.

Jim Santos 6:23 

So you went from not reading the magazines at all to being the International Living Malaysia correspondent.

Keith Hockton 6:30 

It was actually funnier than that. I went from not reading the magazine at all to suddenly when we moved here, thinking I was like, ‘Why didn't we do this sooner? Why didn't I pick up that magazine five years ago?’ And then while we were here, we moved here initially in 2009, we started having these amazing experiences and I noticed that there was no coverage of Malaysia. So then I wrote to the magazine and said, hey, guys, I'm actually based here, if you guys want me to write for you. I'd actually love to do it, so I just wish I'd done it sooner.

Jim Santos 6:59 

Yeah, I hear a lot of expats say that they wish they had picked up the magazine sooner, or they wish they had taken that step sooner to another country.

Keith Hockton 7:07 

It's one of those things that you making the leap of faith is the hardest thing to do, making that change and deciding you're actually going to move somewhere. I think it's a very brave thing for people to do. I didn't feel that way, but I think it is now that I'm actually here. But I think most people, when they make that move, they wish they would have done it sooner.

Jim Santos 7:28 

Well, you had the travel background and had been to the area before, so you don't have as many issues with culture shock or just the idea of being someplace completely different.

Keith Hockton 7:39 

Actually. Yeah, that's true. It was instilled in me. And I think once you get the travel bug when you were a kid, it just continues. It's in you.

Jim Santos 7:46 

Then once an expat gets past the first year and two years, especially two years is probably the make or break point. If you can make it past two years, you're probably going to be a successful expat. And looking back then, you wonder what the big deal was, why it took you so long to do it, and why you thought it would be so difficult.

Keith Hockton 8:04 

It's exactly right, and I think the problem with moving to any country, and it's true for Malaysia, but I think it's true where anyone moves, it takes you a little while to find your tribe, to find your people. And I think once you've found your tribe, then you end up staying, because it's all about the people that you meet, and you'll stay in a particular place when you meet the right people. And if you don't meet the right people, then you just move on. 

And I think the other thing that's really important for anyone who's moving is that you're moving to that country. So you then have to make the effort to meet the people who live there, because they already live there, but you want to make friends. So we had that adage when we first came here. We made a decision when we arrived in Penang to basically say yes to every single thing that we got invited to. Rain or shine, we were out there at that event and we had an absolute ball doing it. But through that it enabled us to meet people very quickly and then assimilate really quickly into the local culture.

Jim Santos 9:08 

And you live in the capital city of George Town?

Keith Hockton 9:11 

Yeah, George Town is the capital city of Penang. Penang is a state in Malaysia. It's like California is a state and LA is a city. So Penang is a state. George Town is the capital. It's on the island of Penang. The actual state of Penang extends from the mainland across to the island and pretty much everyone who lives in Penang lives on the island because that's where really everything happens. And it's historically unbelievable.

Jim Santos 9:39 

Looking on a map, that Penang bridge seems like a pretty ambitious bridge.

Keith Hockton 9:44 

I see we've progressed from that. There's actually two bridges now, so we've got two bridges that connect us to the mainland. They're the longest bridges in Malaysia, but we also have a ferry service and an international airport. So it's very easy to get on and off the island if you need to.

Jim Santos  10:03 

What struck me about the island in reading your article was there seems to be a really eclectic mix of cultures on the island.

Keith Hockton 10:12 

Yeah, there is.

Jim Santos 10:13 

I guess part of that's from the history, it's kind of changed hands many times. Japanese, Chinese, British.

Keith Hockton 10:20 

Malaysia is itself has an amazing history that goes back to about 1450. So down in Malacca, Malacca was first occupied by the Portuguese and Malacca is actually very close to Singapore. And if we're looking to orientate you, we're looking from south to north. So you have Singapore, then the first major town you get to is Malacca. That was occupied in the 1450s by the Portuguese. Then the Dutch kicked the Portuguese out. Then the British kicked the Dutch out. Panang itself was occupied from 1786 by the British and by the British East India Company. And it only changed hands when the Japanese invaded in December 1941. So it's very much been British all the way through. And of course, by the end of the Second World War, the British were back in 1945 and then they gave Malaysia independence in 1957, but very much stayed in touch and in control with the Malaysian government.

Jim Santos 11:22 

So that would account for the fact that most of the people there speak English.

Keith Hockton 11:25 

Yeah. If you look at Malaysia from south to north on the west side of the island, Malaysia is actually divided by an incredible mountain range, literally runs down through the center of Malaysia. And on the west coast of Malaysia, it's very calm, very peaceful. There's no tropical cyclones. We don't get really inclement kind of bad weather. Whereas on the east side it's actually open to all of the above and shuts down for about probably for about three or four months of the year. We don't get that, which is why west Malaysia has been populated for as long as it has.

Jim Santos 12:05 

Yeah, that's one of the advantages of living close to the equator, is you don't have the cyclic nature that brings up the huge storms. That's part of the reason we chose Ecuador.

Keith Hockton 12:14 

Okay.

Jim Santos 12:14 

Yeah.

Keith Hockton 12:15 

So very similar reasons why people come to Penang. And also Penang is just two hours’ drive away from Thailand, so there's days where we might decide to go for lunch in Thailand and just take off. Two hours later you're there, and an hour later you're having lunch. So it's actually quite accessible.

Jim Santos 12:34 

Now you mentioned lunch. One of the things I think is best about when you have different cultures mixing like that is you end up with incredibly good food, I would argue.

Keith Hockton 12:47 

I mean, it sounds like you've been there, so if you've been here, if you live in Penang for any amount of time, you become known as a penangai. I mean, the food is incredible for a start, because you have an amazing mix of English, Malay, Chinese, Indian and then all the fusions that then come with that. The penangais are actually known as foodies. And you cannot have a conversation with one, if you're having breakfast with one where they're not already discussing what they're going to be having for lunch, or if you're having lunch with one, what they're going to be having, or where they're going to be going for dinner. It's all about the food. All about the food.

Jim Santos 13:27 

Well, to me, that's the best part of travel.

Keith Hockton 13:29 

Absolutely. And I guess as an anecdote, the British and the Australian air force have been here forever. And just across on the mainland, there's still an air force base there where there where the five nations are actually represented. So over there you actually have the Kiwis, the Australians, the Brits, the Singaporeans and the Malaysians acting as one force. And they used to call Penang a ten-pound posting, meaning that during the two years that you were here, you would put on, on average, 10 pounds in weight.

Jim Santos 14:10 

I found the opposite to be true because I was eating healthier foods, I was eating a lot more vegetables and fruits and I was outdoors all the time and walking around.

Keith Hockton 14:18 

Right.

Jim Santos 14:18 

So for me, it was a great way to lose weight.

Keith Hockton 14:20 

Yeah. Not here. The exercise is actually a big thing here because the weather is very constant all year round.

Jim Santos 14:28 

Right.

Keith Hockton 14:28 

But you could die here. The food is so good. It's amazing.

Jim Santos 14:34 

Living in Ecuador, near the equator, I thought I had sampled just about every kind of fruit and vegetable there was. And then I read your article and read about Durian, which I actually have never heard of before.

Keith Hockton 14:45 

Oh, really? Oh, my goodness. Any hotel you book into in Southeast Asia as a whole, not just Malaysia, there are signs up and they will tell you when you book in, you cannot bring durian in into the hotel. It's that pungent a fruit. But I tell you one thing, and as you started me talking about it, my mouth is already starting to salivate. And it's a funny fruit because I smell it now and to me it's not repungent at all. I actually really like it, but the taste is actually very custardy type texture and there are small pieces that are very custardy in texture, but the taste is absolutely fantastic. I absolutely love it.

Jim Santos 15:27 

What does the fruit look like?

Keith Hockton 15:28 

Oh, it looks like if you can imagine a basketball with spikes. Yeah, that's what it looks like.

Jim Santos 15:35 

So it's one of those fruits that's not immediately obvious, that it's edible?

Keith Hockton 15:38 

No, weirdly. And it's about the same size. So it's about the same size as a basketball with spikes. And it's heavy. And if this thing falls on you, you're in trouble.

Jim Santos 15:51 

The way you describe it, it reminds me a little bit of guanabana.

Keith Hockton 15:54 

Oh, yeah, it's very much like that.

Jim Santos 15:57 

Same kind of pulpy interior.

Keith Hockton 15:59 

Yes, exactly like that.

Jim Santos 16:02 

Okay, well, I have one more thing on my bucket list now to try to find some durian.

Keith Hockton 16:07 

And I'd say here's the other thing about durians. They differ greatly by area and by soil content, et cetera. Fruits and vegetables are obviously influenced by the soil that they grow in. Penang has actually a very rich volcanic soil. So the fruits are very rich in flavor. And you get mainland Chinese, Indonesians, Singaporeans and people who live in the south of Malaysia. All of them come to Penang during durian season because the durians are so richly and so highly valued. And what they do when they find a fruit from a tree that they like, they then book that tree for the entire year.

Jim Santos 16:50 

Wow.

Keith Hockton 16:51 

So all the fruit and no one else can touch it. That's how sought after the durians are.

Jim Santos 16:56 

Here one other thing I wanted to ask you about. Your article talked about the beach towns on the island there and you kind of paint a picture of these small, isolated villages. When I was reading up a little bit on Penang, I saw that while it's only 405 square miles, the population is like 1.8 million. Is most of that population in George T own?

Keith Hockton 17:19 

Most of that population is actually on the mainland. On the mainland island? Yeah. Because Penang state, as I mentioned earlier, on stretches from the mainland across the island.

Jim Santos 17:29 

Right.

Keith Hockton 17:29 

So the population of Penang is 1.8 million, but you've got approximately 600,000 individuals on the island itself. I see most of most of that population is based on the east of the of the island where I am. And that's where George Town is as well. So George Town, for a period of about 10 miles, stretches from one end of the island all the way around to the, I guess the least densely populated side. And then as you travel through the interior and around the eastern side of the island, it's relatively uninhabited. Lots of paddy fields, lots of jungle. I mean, there's lots of jungle here anyway, but there's lots more of that over that way.

Jim Santos 18:13 

Do you have a favorite beach town?

Keith Hockton 18:17 

Dan [Prescher], at one of his conferences actually said he said that they were always looking to move to a place where there was a beach. And then when they got there, they never, ever went to the beach. And I did the same thing when we moved here. It was like, you know, we have to live on the beach because we're going to be at the beach every single day. And we've been here now 12 years. And I think the last time I went to the beach was probably about three years ago. I'm not a great beach person, but if you forced me to choose, I would say probably the area of Tanjung Bungah, which is about five miles from George Town, heading north.

Jim Santos 18:57 

And what's that town like?

Keith Hockton 18:59

Tanjung Bungah is one of the oldest settlements on the island. It was settled probably in around 1810, somewhere around there. So a lot of very green area, very lush area, lots of, lots of houses, actually right on the beach. You know, very much LA. And then as you, as you go further towards Batu Ferringhi, lots of apartment buildings. And actually that's where our apartment is. We're actually not that far away from Tangung Bungah beach, but we actually have our own beach. And our own beach doesn't actually have a name, but it's almost a private beach that no one else uses.

Jim Santos 19:42 

So you're just outside of George Town, basically?

Keith Hockton 19:45 

Yeah, we're about, probably about three-and-a-half, four miles outside George Town.

Jim Santos 19:50 

And are you renting there or did you buy the property?

Keith Hockton 19:53 

No, we decided to rent. The reason why we did that is rentals in Malaysia are actually very cheap. And if I give you an example of that, you could buy an apartment here for about $250 to $350 dollars per square foot. But you can rent that same apartment for about $120.

Jim Santos 20:14 

Wow.

Keith Hockton 20:15 

So when you kind of weigh it up, it didn't make sense to buy.

Jim Santos 20:18 

Yeah, it's a big difference. Is that an area where foreigners can buy property or fee simple? Where you actually own the land that it's on, or are only natives allowed to own the property?

Keith Hockton 20:30 

No, there's no reservations in Malaysia whatsoever. So as an American or a North American, or as a tourist, effectively, once you step off the plane in Malaysia and you get an immediate three-month visa when you land, when you arrive, you can actually buy property there. And then it's one of only two countries in Asia that you can buy apartments here wholesale and actually land, houses, wholesale as soon as you step off the plane.

Jim Santos 20:56 

You mentioned in your article places where you could do long-term rentals or short-term rentals if you're just looking to come out for a month or so. Are those also available at the same kind of rates?

Keith Hockton 21:08 

Yeah, the areas that people, if you're coming to Penang, the areas that you need to look at are George Town, obviously, it's a fantastic walking town and a very historic town. And then as you move a little bit further north, you'll get to the Gurney area. Again, a very old area, but lots of condos on the beach in that area. And then as you move to the next suburb, you come to Tanjung Tokong, and then the next suburb would be Tanjong Bungah. And then if you travel three miles outside that, you'll get to Batu Ferringhi. They are the main rental areas. And you can either rent beachside or you can rent inland with jungle and hill views, or jungle, hill and sea views. But they're the areas that you should look at.

Jim Santos 21:53 

Do these beach towns have the kind of high-rises that Americans are used to on beach areas? 

Keith Hockton 22:01 

They do. I would actually say probably go a little bit further than that and say that they're bigger and better equipped. So, for instance, I live in a 2,400-square-foot, three-bedroom apartment on the beach, but right next to me is a condominium block called The Cove. Those apartments are 6,000. If you go down to Gurney, the area that I mentioned to you before, if you go down to Gurney, there's 12,000-square-foot apartments there with their own swimming pools.

Jim Santos 22:33 

Those are huge rooms. Normally in beach communities especially, you expect the places to be a little bit smaller because people are spending so much of their time outdoors.

Keith Hockton 22:42 

Yeah, no, not here. The apartments here are really huge. And a couple of those apartments, the Cove one, Tanjong is another one where they average about 4,500 square feet, and down in Gurney with their 12,000 square feet, they're totally modernized. So everything that you can imagine in a very modern, swish apartment, these apartments have, and at a fraction of the cost of what you would pay back home.

Jim Santos 23:10 

Now, what kind of expat community is there in Penang?

Keith Hockton 23:13 

Oh, my goodness, it's massive. Jim, I'll give you one example of how surprised I am. I've been here 12 years and I'm a local historian, so I'm also relatively well known here and there are still parties that I get invited to. And I'll give you one example. We got invited to one at a place called Alila Villas and it was an American guy who actually moved here after seeing me at one of the international conferences, I think it was the Atlanta conference a couple of years ago. So he moved here with his wife, who was from Mexico, and they invited us to the party. We got there and without exaggeration, there must have been at least 100 people there. All of them were South American or of Mexican origin. And I was standing talking to a lovely couple, and I said, ‘You guys are all South American or Mexican?’ They're like, yeah. And I said, ‘Is there a massive community here?’ And they're like, yeah. And they said, we all connect on Facebook. There's actually a South American community that connects on Facebook. 

And actually I had dinner with a Norwegian guy last night. I was cycling around the island because I do a lot of mountain biking, and I came across a group of five guys who were just by the side of the road. And I stopped and said to these guys, ‘where are you from?’ And they were like, ‘well, we're from Norway’. I was like, ‘what, all of you?’ And they're like, ‘yeah, there's a Norwegian community here’. And I'm like, what? Who knew? So there's every kind of community here you can imagine.

Jim Santos 24:53 

Yeah. That's interesting because I would have thought it would be mostly Australian and British.

Keith Hockton 24:57 

Oh, no. The Australians used to have a massive contingent here because up until 19, probably about 1980, the Australians had a large contingent at the air base across on the mainland. And of course, as the years wore on, that kind of worn down to now there's only a contingent of about 60 to 80 Australians that work at the air base. At one stage there were five and a half thousand men there. So you can imagine with the families now, the largest contingent under the long-term visa here is actually Japanese, followed by North Americans.

Jim Santos 25:39 

You mentioned that visa program in the 2021 article. They were kind of still on lockdown from COVID. Is that opened up yet or they were accepting tourists but not residents?

Keith Hockton 25:52 

Yeah, pretty much. Malaysia is open now, and it has been for the last year. And during 2020, they actually changed the MM2H visa option. So now it's a little bit more intrusive monetarily. But interestingly, Sarawak, which is a Malaysian province over on the island of Borneo, a fantastic state. Sarawak then said, ‘well, okay, if you guys are going to get a little bit more strict about your visas, we're actually going to open up our own visa system’, which also allows you to live in Malaysia, which was fantastic. It was such an opportunistic thing for them to do because what we immediately then saw was as the Malaysian government here struggled with what to do with the visa system, Sarawak actually introduced almost an identical visa and everybody just kind of switched across to that. So although the MM2H visa changed, it changed literally as Sarawak opened up SM2H. So, quite fortuitous.

Jim Santos 26:58 

It struck me actually as fairly high requirements for deposits in banks and for income, especially for an area where the cost of living is so low.

Keith Hockton 27:07 

Yeah, that was the, the new mainland Malaysia visa. And it was unattainable, in all honesty. And that's one of the reasons why the Malaysian government are now reviewing it. But as I said, the Sarawak visa opened up at the same time. And that's actually super attainable, very much like the old visa that was here. So there is hope.

Jim Santos 27:30 

You have spoken at International Living conferences in the US. As a matter of fact, I think I was probably at a couple of them. But you're always so busy there, you never actually see the other International Living people. What is something that when you give these talks and you meet the people afterwards and talking to them in the exhibit hall, what is the main thing that surprises them about Malaysia?

Keith Hockton 27:53 

I think a great example of that, Jim, is the conference that I just went to a few weeks ago in Atlanta.

Jim Santos 28:00 

I was at that one, as a matter of fact.

Keith Hockton 28:02 

Yeah, I remember seeing you there. But as you said, everything gets a little crazy. But I remember being there on the Friday and I wasn't talking until Saturday. And you know what it's like everybody who talks seems to get very busy because people are then interested.

Jim Santos 28:18 

Right.

Keith Hockton 28:18 

And on the Friday? As I said, I wasn't talking till Saturday. I was actually really embarrassed because the table next to me was Costa Rica and it was mobbed and, and not a single person came to talk about Malaysia. And I was so embarrassed, I actually, in the evening, I was so embarrassed by the crowd that was actually at the Costa Rica table that I actually stood up and joined the crowd and I was actually asking questions about Costa Rica. And a woman, actually, who was right next to me, she looked at me and she said, aren't you the Malaysia guy? I was like, no, no, I don't know where that guy went. I think he's gone for a drink somewhere. 

Anyway, the following day I then gave my talk. I was on 11:00 a.m. and then suddenly there was massive interest in Malaysia. And then I was busy because I gave another talk on Sunday and I was busy for the next few days. And I think that the surprise comes, first of all, about the standard of living that we have here. It's incredibly high at a very low cost.

Keith Hockton 29:22 

The second thing that surprises everyone is that everyone speaks English and that English law is effectively applicable throughout Malaysia.

Jim Santos 29:30 

Right.

Keith Hockton 29:30 

And then I think the third thing is how large the expat population is here and the kind of lifestyle that we actually live. Especially when you start talking about the Bangkok bug that you get. For the apartments that you can rent and how little they actually cost to have an amazing beach style lifestyle for actually very little.

Jim Santos 29:50 

Yeah, that's probably the biggest advantage of those Bootcamps for people who are considering expat life, is you always run into something that you hadn't considered before or an area that you hadn't looked at before.

Keith Hockton 30:01 

Yeah, I think that's absolutely true. And when I was talking on the Saturday, it's actually quite funny because I'm used to it now, but I wasn't used to it a few years ago. I get up on stage and it's actually quite funny. A lot of people actually stand up and they go to leave because it's about Malaysia and they're not really interested in Malaysia. And the same thing happened during that conference. I got up on stage and people actually stood up and I actually said I said, ‘Guys, please don't leave. I said, if you do, I think you're going to lose out on one of the best stories that you're going to hear this weekend.’ And then I actually said to these guys, and I really believe it, I brought up the movie Sliding Doors and I said, this is your sliding door moment. You guys have actually made the effort to come here. This 20-minute conversation could change your entire life, so please don't leave and stay with me for that 20 minutes. And to their credit, the crowd were amazing. I thought in Atlanta, really, really nice people. And for the next 20 minutes I basically expounded about how good life was here and how this was their sliding door moment.

Jim Santos 31:08 

Well, that sounds great. I'm glad you got such a great response from the crowd there.

Keith Hockton 31:12 

Yeah, it's cool. I think one of the things that you have to remember, Jim, when you go to these conferences is that at some stage we were those guys exactly 12 years ago, I was that guy sitting looking for something different and looking to make that move. And you just need that one conversation with someone who actually believes in where they live and what they do to give you that little push to make you take that leap of faith. And then I guarantee it. You said earlier on it's something that the only regret you will have is that you wished you had done it sooner.

Jim Santos 31:49 

I wanted to change gears here just a little bit. There's a more recent article you had an International Living November of 2022 in the Globetrotter section, just a short article about Penang's most secret speakeasy. And this struck me as really interesting. It sounds like the opposite of an escape room. You actually have to figure out a way to get in instead of getting out.

Keith Hockton 32:10 

Yeah. Speakeasy is obviously the Americans, I guess, invented the speakeasy during Prohibition.

Jim Santos 32:19 

Right.

Keith Hockton 32:19 

And one of the things that Penang has is a plethora of old buildings old buildings that were built in the 1920s, going back to that time that just aren't used anymore. And a couple of very enterprising individuals decided that they would open seven or eight speakeasies throughout Penang and the whole deal or the exciting part of the thing was, first of all, to find them because no addresses were given. And then when you got to the particular speakeasy, how you would then get in. And the first one that we went to was a barber shop. And I'd heard about it, and we walked in with some friends to this barber shop and there's a barber there and this barber chair and everything. All the acoutrements that a barber would have, but the guy doesn’t speak to you. And if you ask him for a haircut, he politely asks you to leave. What do you have to do is search for the telephone. And there's a telephone sitting on the wall over by itself. And that was the obvious thing to kind of go to. And there were numerous clues around the room as to a number that you dialled.

Keith Hockton 33:28 

So you picked up the telephone, you dialled a three-digit number, and then a secret wall opened up in front of you, which was just wild, and that let you in. So one of the coolest speakeasies that I've ever been to. The other one was as cool, to be honest. It was an ice cream parlor in another part of town. And again, there's a guy behind the counter who's dressed up to serve you ice cream. And all the ice creams are actually there in the counter itself, but right in the corner is a massive orange, double sided, double door refrigerator. And again, you ask him any questions, he asks you to leave. So you walk up to the fridge, you open up the fridge, and the fridge opens up into this amazing secret kind of drinking space with cool music and everything going on. It's pretty good.

Jim Santos 34:24 

If you weren't aware that these were speakeasies, easy to come away, thinking that the people of Penang are really rude, can't get a haircut or ice cream.

Keith Hockton 34:32 

Anywhere, this is true. But there's enough hints going around on the Internet, on Facebook and various different sites to kind of tell you where they are and to hint as to what you should do. And then but they're super amazing. Really, really amazing. And just lovely quiet spots, depending on what you what you're looking for, where you can just kind of disappear into George Town and just have a quiet drink and listen to some cool vibes. It's pretty special.

Jim Santos 35:01 

Sounds pretty amazing. I think I would enjoy that.

Keith Hockton 35:04 

Yeah. And just finding them is all part of the adventure.

Jim Santos 35:06 

Keith, we mentioned in the introduction that you also have a podcast of your own.

Keith Hockton 35:11 

It's called There's Always Tea. And the reason why my podcast partner and I called There's Always Tea. She's Welsh and I'm Australian, and in Australia and the UK, and in India, whenever you have issues that you want to talk about, you always sit down with a cup of tea and you discuss those issues. So we came up with the idea of There's Always Tea because that's what we always sit down and discuss with. And we launched it about seven months ago. 

It's effectively a history podcast for everyone. It's a bit different because I'm a historian and she's very ethereal, and what we try and do is give the listener, I guess, a take. And also, I must mention, we're voracious researchers. My background is research, and one of the things that we wanted to do was find out information about a particular subject that the listener just cannot find on the Internet. So we have fun with it, we have a bit of a laugh with it, but it's also quite serious to the extent of the information that we give back and forth.

Jim Santos 36:23 

I don't believe I've ever heard anyone described as ethereal before.

Keith Hockton 36:33 

I'm a numbers guy. I was in investment banking, so my background is actually math and physics and kind of chemistry. But I'm also an avid historian and, as I said, I'm a local historian here. I lecture on Malaysia, the British East India company and all that kind of stuff. And Nikki Jordan, who's my podcast partner, is an empath and she's also an HR person, but she's very in touch with people's feelings and situations in various different work situations. So we look at things from a very different view. So, hypothetically, let's say we do a podcast on, say, Mary Shelley, which is a podcast that we dropped a couple of weeks ago. So Mary Shelley was the writer of Frankenstein and she was married to Percy Shelley, one of England's amazing poets. My view on them is very historical. I researched to the Nth degree to find that stuff about Mary Shelley that probably wouldn't have been written in books or out there on the net. What she kind of digs into, is the actual, the personality of Mary Shelley and her relationship with Percy Shelley and how all of that kind of evolved.

Keith Hockton 37:50 

So we have an absolute ball doing it, and it's so funny and weird. And I know that this is going to sound weird, because I know you're a podcaster. When I'm actually working out, I listen to podcasts all the time, but I've actually taken to listening to my own podcasts because I find them really funny and actually really uplifting. And very often I'll go back to podcasts that I did, say, four months ago, and they just kind of carry me through. It's a lot of fun.

Jim Santos 38:22 

I don't know if you've had this happen to you, but I'll look back at an article that I wrote a while ago where I'll pick up one of my books and be reading it and think, ‘I don't remember writing that. That's really good. I wonder who wrote that.’

Keith Hockton 38:38 

Absolutely. I'll be listening to a podcast, I'm like, that's really interesting. And I'm like, ‘Hang on, you wrote that? Where did you get that information from?’ Yeah, no, it's good fun. Yeah.

Jim Santos 38:48 

If our listeners are interested in picking up your podcast, how's the best way for them to go about that?

Keith Hockton 38:55 

We're on every major platform available, so from Spotify to Amazon Talks to Stitcher, we're on everything. So it's been, I guess, nicely, quite a success story from the point of view that we got picked up pretty quickly and our listenership has stuck with us all the way through, which then just kind of dominoed into more platforms. So pretty much anywhere where you listen to a podcast, we're there. And weirdly enough, you know, someone sent me someone contacted me from Uganda the other day. They actually sent me a really nice message from Uganda, and I messaged back and I said, ‘how do you listen to our podcasts from there?’ And they said there's a platform called Afropods, which is the biggest platform for podcasts in Africa. And he said, ‘you guys are on there’. And I was like, what? That's fantastic.

Jim Santos 39:54 

Well, that's good to know.

Keith Hockton 39:55 

Yeah, I know. It's really cool. It's really cool, and it's so much fun.

Jim Santos 39:58 

So you're famous on several continents, Jim.

Keith Hockton 40:02 

I think the only place I'm famous is my own bathroom more than anywhere else.

Jim Santos 40:06 

At that Atlanta conference, I had a bunch of people around my table at one point, and a woman walked up and leaned over and asked me very quietly, are you famous?

Keith Hockton 40:16 

And what did you say?

Jim Santos 40:18 

I said yes. I'm Brad Pitt. Just had a couple of really rough weeks.

Keith Hockton 40:23 

I know, it's kind of a weird question, isn't it? It's a strange question because you as a writer, you know, I'm a writer. You know, you're a writer. I don't think we ever really see ourselves in that light. And I got I got sent a picture of the last week of a woman. I read a children's book a couple of years ago called Alana and the Secret Life of Trees at Night. And she actually sent me this amazing video of her five-year-old daughter sitting in the back of the car reading the book. And she said, ‘we'd be so over the moon if you could actually sign a copy and send it to us’. And I think as writers, you kind of forget that because we mix with other writers and other artists, we don't really see ourselves in that light. But I guess there is a price of fame that comes with that too.

Jim Santos 41:10 

Right, well, and also, writing is a very solitary profession. You're sitting in your room at your computer by yourself, and it's very internal when you write this stuff and it goes out to the world and yeah, it's sometimes overwhelming when you hear people who have been moved by what you wrote.

Keith Hockton 41:28 

Yeah, it is very overwhelming. I'll tell you a very quick, funny story about that. My business partner, because we also run a publishing company here in Malaysia, he's about ten years older than me and he's a very academic writer. I'm not an academic writer that he is. And I was in a café a couple of years ago, sitting down, and a woman came up to me and she said, ‘Are you that writer?’ And I said, ‘well, yes, I am that writer’. And she said, ‘oh, my goodness’. She said, ‘I've been following you for years. I absolutely love your books’. And she then started talking. She started talking about some of the maps that were in the book. 

And at that stage, I knew she was actually talking about my business partner, who's also an author. He's written five or six books. And I just didn't know what to say because at that stage she said, ‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ And I said, ‘yeah, sure’. So she bought me a coffee and she sat down and at the end of it she said, ‘you know, I've actually got one of your books on me’. She said, ‘Would you autograph it for me?’ I said ‘sure’. You're hoping that she was actually going to pull out one of my books. And she didn't. She pulled out one of Marcus's books. 

And I sat there and I was in a quandary for about a second and I thought, you know what? I've carried this all the way through. I'm just going to sign it on behalf of Marcus. And I signed it on behalf of him. And she was over the moon. And about a week after that, I actually had to give a talk on one of the books that I'd written on festivals of Malaysia at an institute. And I purposely put a slide in there of Marcus, a photograph of him. And I told that story at this book launch, and he was in the audience, and he thought it was terribly funny, so it was all okay.

Jim Santos 43:12 

It's a shame she wasn't in the audience.

Keith Hockton 43:14 

Oh, my goodness. Can you imagine?

Jim Santos 43:16 

One more thing about Penang before we wrap things up here? You have a section in your older article about where to stay and what to see if you're looking at just coming to get a flavor of the area to stay like a month or so, maybe two months. What are the kind of must-see and must-do things about a visit to Penang?

Keith Hockton 43:35 

Okay, so George Town was discovered by a guy called Captain Light from the British East India Company in 1786. It's an incredibly historic old British East India Company town. And if you arrive and George Town is an amazing walking town, so you'd want to see things like Fort Cornwallis, which is the oldest standing British East India Company fort in Southeast Asia. You'd want to see things like St. George's Church, which was built in 1818. Also, it's the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia. There's a cathedral, a Catholic cathedral right next door to it, which was built around 1800, also worthwhile. And George Town itself is just worth wandering around. And you can do this for days because the architecture in George Town goes from roughly about  1810 all the way through to the amazing architecture through to about 1930. So it's just an incredible walking town. The roads you want to wander down, where all that where all these things are would be Light Street, Montreal Street, Love Lane, which is actually incredible. It's one of the earliest lanes in George Town, and around that area there's effectively one historic square mile of all this incredible history that you can just wander around for days.

So definitely do that then, if you want to get away from George Town. Penang Hill is hugely historic. So the British had a thing where they built hill stations and they built things called hill stations to effectively get away from the heat of the plains. And what they would do, they would move their entire government to the top of a hill because it was roughly anywhere between, say, three degrees to 13 degrees or 15 degrees cooler, and they would rule there from the summer months. So Penang Hill actually has its own quintessential British English village on the top of Penang Hill that's definitely worthwhile going to. There's a UNESCO Habitat foundation up there now as well, which is basically rejuvenating virgin jungle. Definitely worthwhile going to that while you're up there. And of course, to finish with, if you do go there, David Brown's restaurant. David Brown was a character who came out to Penang in 1800. And, you know, one of the first houses up the hill was, you know, he had a house up there and they've turned it into a restaurant. So lots and lots of historical things to do.

And of course, then there's the beaches and the national parks. So Penang as a whole, we've got the smallest national park in Malaysia, but it's really quite beautiful. You're always going to see lots of monkeys. And there's also a turtle beach at the end of that where turtles actually lay their eggs during the season at a very old lighthouse. So lots of things to do when you arrive.

Jim Santos 46:48 

Well, sounds like a fascinating place and really appreciate you taking the time to talk to us about this today.

Keith Hockton 46:54 

That was really cool. Jim, thank you.

Jim Santos 46:56 

Yeah, thank you for being part of Bigger, Better World. Like to remind our listeners, you've been listening to a conversation with Keith Hockton. He's the International Living Malaysia correspondent and also a fellow podcaster. With the podcast There's Always Tea. So again, thank you Keith, and best of luck to you.

Keith Hockton 47:13 

Thank you, Jim. It's been an absolute pleasure, really. It's been an amazing chatting to you, so thank you very much.

Jim Santos 47:30 

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Be sure to tune in next week when we will check in with International Living correspondent Wendy Justice. Wendy is currently living in the highlands of Central Mexico. Mexico, of course, came in at number two in the 2023 Global Retirement Index, so you won't want to miss what Wendy has to say. Thanks again for tuning into bigger, better World. I'm Jim Santos for International Living and I'll see you next week. Until then, remember, there's a Bigger, Better World waiting for you.