The story of Lot Lot

I cannot tell the story of Lot Lot without first giving a brief history of Penang, Malaysia. Penang is an island on the west coast of Malaysia in the Andaman sea, south of Thailand. It was given to the British in 1786 by the Sultan in return for protection from the Kingdom of Siam. British captain Francis Light became the first Superintendent and renamed Penang Island to be the Prince of Wales Island. To expedite jungle clearing by laborers, Captain Light fired silver coins from his ship cannons into the dense vegetation, and the land was cleared in no time. He named the main settlement Georgetown in honor of King George III.
As Singapore and Hong Kong became more popular trading destinations Georgetown fell on hard times. In World War II the British abandoned Penang just prior to the Japanese invasion, leaving the Malays to suffer atrocities at the hands of the Japanese.

While spending the weekend in Penang I decided to take a trishaw tour of colonial Georgetown. A trishaw is a three wheeled bicycle rickshaw. My driver was Lot Lot. He is a 45 year old Malay who was orphaned at birth and raised by a single Chinese mother. Growing up in the Chinatown section of Georgetown he is fluent in four dialects of Chinese – Mandarin, Cantonese, Fuking and Hakka as well as Malay. My work associate Dick Chan from Hong Kong accompanied me on this trishaw tour and handled the translation from Mandarin to English. Lot Lot spent several years as a fisherman before settling on his career as a trishaw driver. He was an excellent tour guide. He shared a lot of the history of Georgetown and pointed out several hostels that charge $6.00 per night with no air conditioning and $20 per night with air conditioning. We know we over paid him for the 1.5 hour trishaw tour. We gave him $20. The one hour taxi ride from the airport to my hotel was $25. Getting to know Lot Lot and hearing his story was well worth the $20.

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