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By Looi Sue-Chern.
AFTER being abandoned and nearly forgotten for 33 years, plans to restore the Crag Hotel have given locals hope life will be brought back to Penang Hill again.
The old hotel, rebuilt from an attap-roofed bungalow named "The Crag" in 1929 by famous hoteliers, the Sarkies brothers -- who also founded the Eastern and Oriental Hotel in Penang and the Raffles in Singapore -- was a great success in its golden years.
However, business dwindled during World War 2 in 1942 and it failed to regain its popularity after the war ended in 1945.
After being vacant for 10 years, the bungalow was leased to the Malayan Incorporated Society of Planters and was converted into a school for European and Malayan children in 1955. It housed the International School of Penang or Uplands School, as it was more popularly known, on a 3ha hilltop land at an altitude of 732m above sea level until 1977, when the school moved to Jalan Burma in George Town following increases in rental. Penang Hill native Beh Chin Siang, 38, remembered how Penang Hill buzzed with activity during the early 1970s when the school was still at the old Crag Hotel. Beh said he and the other local children used to play with the young pupils at the school. "I remember making kites and tops to sell to the Uplands kids. We also sold them snacks, candy and chewing gum when they walked to the train station to go home for the weekends. "They were like our playmates but I do not think I could recognise any of them now if I met them." The school, he said, was very much part of the local community on the hill. The management of the school employed locals as gardeners, housekeepers, cooks and laundry workers. "When the school moved, they lost their jobs. Some found new jobs in privately-owned bungalows on the hill while the others left to find work elsewhere. "Things were never the same after that. Now, the whole place is quiet." The last time the place was alive was in the early 1990s when the Crag Hotel site became the set for the 1992 French period film, Indochine, said Beh, who was roped in by the film crew to help out. He said the French filmmakers put in a lot of money to refurbish the site for one-week's filming. "They refurbished all 22 buildings on the site, fixing everything from the wiring to the toilets. The whole place looked brand new." Although the film went on to become a huge success, winning the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film, the Golden Globe Award for Best Foreign Film and gave French actress Catherine Deneuve her Oscar for Best Actress, the decaying wooden structures only enjoyed a temporary lease of life. Now that the state government has announced a new Request for Proposal (RFP), inviting companies to present their ideas on how to restore the hotel to its former glory, Beh hopes something good would result. He said it was about time something was done so that the place could benefit locals and visitors, because many tourists who had visited Penang Hill over the years said there was practically nothing much to see there. The restoration plans had also attracted the attention of former Uplands School students scattered around the world. Briton Anita Leggart-Pye, 42, who studied in the school from 1974 to 1977, said the "beautiful place" should not be left to rot. Looking back on her school days on Penang Hill, she described her experiences there as "magical". "The misty mornings and trees with fabulous buttress roots gave us a magical feeling about our school. It was not every day you woke up on top of a hill surrounded by jungle," said the Johor-born former Uplands full-boarder whose father was a Sime Darby Plantations planter who travelled up and down the country. She said the surroundings easily put students into imaginary worlds with fairy houses, soldiers and safari cars. She remembered pleasant Sunday walks on the hill, playing in waterfalls, watching children's programmes on Radio Televisyen Malaysia (RTM) at 7pm, playing board games, ping pong, and celebrating festivals like Easter. "For me, the most memorable memories were building fairy houses in tree roots using moss for beds and flowers and bark furniture, and celebrating birthdays with my friends with cakes and bottles of 'pop' or fizzy drinks." Leggart-Pye said the place should be redeveloped as an accessible hill retreat. "Hopefully, the old Uplanders can come back then," said the mother of two. Leggart-Pye was in Penang in March to visit her alma mater in conjunction with the 55th reunion of former Uplanders. She organised the reunion with James Justice, 55, also a full-boarder at the school. Justice, from Sussex, England, who studied there from age 4 until his 11th birthday in March 1966, expressed disappointment that the priceless heritage asset, which he loved as his second home, had been left to rot for more than three decades. He said he had contacted the state government and the Penang World Heritage Office about the hotel's restoration in April and suggested that the Penang Island Municipal Council engineers conduct a structural survey to record its heritage before the buildings collapsed. Justice's father, Major J.M. Justice, was the school's governor. Justice said he was not in favour of the place being restored as a hotel because he felt Penang Hill lacked the facilities and infrastructure to support such a venture. He said there had been better suggestions to retain it as a learning centre. "Of course, we would love it if some of our old dormitories were restored as guesthouses where we could stay and help the place make some money," said Justice, who has fond memories of wandering around the jungle and bathing in the waterfalls near his old school. ** Reproduced with permission. This article first appeared in the June 20, 2010 issue of New Straits Times.
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