Hi Kline, never heard about the Tin Club, but I’m not really familiar with Butterworth. Food is a difficult issue because of the different taste buds. Actually I like fine dining and that is one of the two things I miss in Penang (the other one is skiing). There are many good local restaurants in town and usually I frequent Chinese: Double Dragon - Gottlieb Rd, Chinese Recreation Club - Jln. Padang Victoria, Star View – New World Park, Ocean Green Seafood – Sultan Ahmad Shah and close to international fine dining comes Cafe 55 – Lrg. Stewart and as an excellent Italian restaurant I would like to mention Via Pre –Weld Quay. Thanks Karl, for the club info. We used to belong to the Penang Club a long time ago. I will check out the other places you listed. Another one I remembered was the Tin Club on the Butterworth side. But that was long ago. What is your favourite eating place in Georgetown, at the moment? Thanks, Kline

Thanks Kebinger. Nice to have a comparison. My information came from Numbeo which put a very impressive amount of effort into their reports. http://www.numbeo.com/common/. Pull down Crime and go to the Country Index. Malaysia is way up there at 8th highest which surprised me because Malaysia shows up very well in other respects. You will see that these numbers are developed from personal reports not from government statistics which appears to be the basis of Nationmaster's numbers. One could spend a ton of time delving through these indexes and still not find the answers to security and safety. Hi Ynot, I don’t know where you read about the high crime rate of Malaysia. Have a look at http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_tot_cri-crime-total-crimes and you will see that Malaysia is rated quite well. For sure you can’t compare it with highly populated countries but you can see the overall crime rate is lower than Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Austria. Karl

IB is a great way to study but Fairview implements it wrongly Hello, I love the IB programm. My kids always enjoyed this way of learning/teaching. We are moving to Penang and I was seriously considering enrolling my kids in Fairview. The bad comments are mostly about other Fairview schools. What about Penang in particular? I would have the choice basically between St Christopher and Fairview. In St Christopher, my kids would not be learning a second language if I understood well. Would love to read your recommendations. Thanks

My question to the negative feedback givers is how then does the school achieve accreditation from the International Baccalaureate Organisation? Is there merit to your assertions? I was a student in Fairview and finished my University of London O Levels there in 1981. I was part of the original batch of 19 students , most of us had followed our year teachers from Garden International when the parents and teachers had a dispute with the Principal of GI and left to form Fairview. The original teachers who formed Fairview were the best I ever had. The original school was just a rented bungalow facing the General Hospital, we did not have much in the way of facilities. Even our football field was 'borrowed' from the neighboring local school. ( we used an old vollyball to play football with back then, it was all we had) when we moved to the 2nd building The one on Jalan Ampang near the army camp., we students volunteered to clean and help paint it because the school was short of funding. we did it because we were proud of the fact that it was OUR school! Regardless of the lack of facilities ( back then we were seen as the runt of the international school litter. so to speak) The teachers and us students were content with what we had, we were like a small family almost, it was a close friendly relationship between us and our teachers, based on mutual respect. We learned more than just academics, we grew up. Looking back now I think we really enjoyed our school life. the teachers, classmates; In a way, the entire experience was somehow romantically colonial in its innocence and charm. (rose tinted glasses perhaps? im 47 now!) It saddens me to think that from our happy and humble beginnings. the school has transformed into such a big entity with such a bad name... The shame... and to think. when I returned a few years after my college years in the UK to see the old school; (actually it was the 2nd, the original was a small bungalow ) it had already changed for the worst.. fenced in yards, some unfriendly English principal. The only good thing to come from that visit was meeting my old Geography teacher (and former headmistress) who said our class year was the best the school had had. Times haven't changed for the better it seems. - Old Boy

The sicker anyone in my family is, the more we have to pay? No way! In USA I have pension with medical and would need same or at least similar medical benefits. Visited Penang. It could be beautiful but the beaches are too dirty.