Penang Island BH Visit !!!

The Pearl of The Orient.

You will be suprised that Penang Island is very active with swiftlet farming.

There are at least 600 BHs and many are having problems with the local council since when the Unesco gives a blanket proclaimation that Penang is a Heritage City.

Heritage city means those heritage buildings must be restored and turned into a kind of tourist attraction areas.

Due to this procalimation the BH owners were asked to vacate, if I am not wrong last year.

I think that is something very hard. If I were the local council I will ask the owners to modify these old buildings so that the front and the back looks like original.

The cost to carry out these modifications are high but trust me if you lay this condition, the BH owner will be willing to do so. The only thing is to allow them to use these buildings for swiftlet farming and recover the cost for the conversion.

I was told the cost to restore those external walls are not cheap. They can be more expensive then converting them into a BH. If this idea is accepted then both parties get the best of both world.

The owner get back his swiftlet farming business and the local council got those retoration done FOC. Again avery year the local council can collect a yearly License fee to run the state.

Coming back to my visit, I was engaged by Mr.L whose BH, somewhere in Ayer Itam town and was converted from and idle shop to a BH way back in 2008.

After three years in operation he managed to own three precious nests.

He told me that he wanted to give up and very shy to discuss with any friends about it. He also commented that his wife have been hard on him over the costly investments which bring in zero income. The word is " Harry I am under heavy stress please help".

The first thing that I did was to take a short tour around the house. Hmm .... the back door neighbor seem to have many birds flying around. Mr.L BH entrance hole was within their flying path but how come they are not willing to enter and stays?

Mr.L took me into his two floors BH and I think the so called "Sifu" must be totally blind or have very little ideas about swiftlet.

I was told that the "Sifu" have passed away but if you look at the good side, at least he will not cause more miseries to more newbies, I told him.

The BH was done with little knowledge about swiftlet charecteristics. Those walls that were used as bedrooms, toilets, store rooms and etc were not removed and they were too small for swiftlet to fly around.

The humidifiers seem to cause the house to be filled with fungus and the tweeters arrangements were rediculous.

The birds refuse to enter the lowest floor. There are lots that need modifications.

I told him that I am confident that I can turn around the house. Main reason being, those birds from the neighbor at the back are always flying on the top of his entrance area.

Everything inside the 3 years old BH needs to be revamped and those walls taken down in total.

Give me three weeks to get it up and three months to see a few new nests in it. I promised him.

I can see those smiles back on his face. Please go back home and reassure your wife that the BH will be back to normal within the next 3-4 months.