My memory is getting worse these days and to be honest I can’t remember a great deal about this day out. It’s not that I drank excessively, although I will have had a few Tigers, it’s more that it has taken me a few weeks to write about it and I’ve been to another race meeting in the meantime.
Still, I suppose whatever I can’t remember I can just make up. Right, the facts. It was in Penang, which is less than an hour’s flight from KL. We stayed in Georgetown, which is a very picturesque town with a lot of its historical areas preserved. Our hotel was in the Little India area and we had curry for just about every meal.
So far so good. We took a Grab car (just like Uber) to the racecourse and, I think, paid six ringgits for admission with a further twenty ringgits for access to the air-conditioned lounge.
After that, well, not much comes to mind. We had seats in the lounge, but no table and in addition to betting on the live action we also backed horses in races on the telly from Seoul and Macau. Probably. It‘s hard work betting every ten minutes or so at multiple tracks and for a while it felt more like employment than enjoyment.
The only place to buy beer was a counter out in the main concourse so every few minutes I’d pop out and brave the lack of air-conditioning to get another. There was limited food available but I got bags of peanuts and cashews from a bloke walking around with a tray.
The betting was marginally successful. We’d been behind until the final race but the desperate measure of bumping up the stake and getting a decent priced winner meant that we finished ahead on the day, including admission, beer, air-conditioning and nuts. I’d have needed a much bigger stake if I were to include the flights and hotel in the calculation.
Trail of the Lion King 