🚶🏻‍♀️I Only Went Out For A walk on Love Lane 💕

I’ve known them since I was twelve.

We hadn’t spoken for more than three years.

Within minutes we were back where we always seem to end up.

Food.

Not tasting menus. Not somewhere with a view. The important things.

The best char kway teow.

They now own Luma, a small café on Chulia Street serving good coffee and modern, healthy food. Before I arrived, I gave them only one instruction.

“No tourist places.”

I wanted the places locals go when they actually want the good one.

That was enough to start the familiar back-and-forth.

“What about the stall near the market?”

“That one parking very susah lah.”

“Then the other one?”

“No, not that one.”

Somehow we ended up somewhere else entirely.

The hawker centre sat beside a wet market, nowhere I would have found without them. Every table was occupied. There was no queue for the char kway teow, at least not one anyone could see. People simply gathered around the stall, all trying to catch the uncle’s attention while he worked alone over the wok.

He barely looked up.

Somehow he knew who was next.

When our turn came, one of my friends called out for extra si ham before I had a chance to say anything.

Eventually we scored a table in the middle of the busy hawker centre.

Later they took me for Penang laksa beside a drain, which was exactly the sort of address I had asked for.

There are char kway teow and laksa stalls all over Penang. Finding one is easy. Finding the one that makes your Penang friends light up is something else entirely.

The next afternoon I was back at Luma.

Chulia Street outside was doing what Chulia Street does. Motorbikes squeezed past cars. Hawker stalls were getting ready for another round. Bars were opening. Conversations drifted between Hokkien, Malay, Mandarin and English. Somewhere beyond all of it, the call to prayer from a nearby mosque folded itself gently into the noise.

When the café became busy, one of my friends smiled and waved me away.

“Go have a walk around Love Lane lah! You’d be surprised.”

I have been coming to Penang since childhood, often enough to remember George Town before every second shophouse seemed to contain a boutique hotel, a bar, a hostel or a café with very good coffee.

I don’t say that critically.

Luma itself is part of that change.

Love Lane runs just behind Chulia Street.

Every Penangite already knows its reputation. Ask around and you’ll hear different versions of how it got its name. A curry puff seller told me it was for the mistresses in the old days. A tour guide walking past his group mentioned a British officer named Love, in the flat voice of someone repeating a line he’d stopped believing years ago.

For a long time, this was where wealthy merchants kept their mistresses a discreet walk away from their respectable homes. Brothels, boarding houses and sailors all became part of the lane’s reputation. The stories have been polished, exaggerated and retold for decades.

These days Penangites are probably more interested in where to find the best char kway teow than arguing over how Love Lane got its name.

I thought I knew the area well enough.

There used to be a narrow lane that cut back towards Chulia Street. I headed towards it almost automatically, only to find that a newer development had blocked it off.

So I turned around and took another way.

That was when I noticed Wan Hai Hotel.

The front door stood slightly open.

I peeked inside.

The place looked abandoned.

That was invitation enough.

I sneaked in.

A fluorescent tube buzzed overhead. The air smelled of damp timber, old plaster and rooms that had been shut for a very long time. A staircase climbed around a corner. Further inside, a corridor stretched past weathered timber doors.

I took a few photographs and left.

It wasn’t until later that evening, scrolling through the pictures on my phone, that I noticed what I had completely missed while standing there.

Dates written in chalk.

Recent dates.

A visitors’ message board. A kettle. Little signs that somebody was still keeping track of things.

Wan Hai wasn’t quite as abandoned as I had decided it was.

Someone had written those dates.

Someone still had reason to climb those stairs.

A little further along Love Lane, another doorway caught my attention.

Above it hung four Chinese characters.

長袖善舞

Literally, long sleeves dance well.

An old Chinese expression describing someone who knows how to move gracefully through people and situations.

It made me smile.

By the time I wandered back to Luma, the lunch rush had passed. The café had gone quiet again and my friends were ready to leave the rest of the afternoon to their staff.

Which meant we could return to more pressing matters.

“So… nasi kandar?”

“That one parking very susah lah.”

“How about the other one?”

“The curry there better.”

Five minutes later we were in the car, still deciding.

A couple of days later they drove me to the ferry terminal. I was heading across to Butterworth to catch my train back to Kuala Lumpur.

There was a long hug.

Then a few words in the private language we’ve accumulated over the years, the sort that would make absolutely no sense to anyone standing nearby.

We hugged.

They turned back towards Chulia Street.

I turned towards the ferry.

We still hadn’t agreed on the best nasi kandar.