Suffolk House gives off a colonial vibe (in a bad way)

Being fascinated by the architecture of the building, and the fact that it is located right in the middle of Penang, just hiding in the garden beside the road I've passed by numerous times, my family and I visited Suffolk House last Sunday. I was prepared to spend a fortune there for an overpriced afternoon tea set and surprisingly I ended up beyond disappointed.

Not sure we were late or not, we arrived there at around 3.30pm. While I guessed it was a perfect time to have a tea time, apparently not. We were not alone. There was some sort of event on-going there. We were the only one who were there specifically for afternoon tea. We were immediately being told that the afternoon tea timeslot would be ended at 5.30pm. Our waitress was the main reason that I ended up disappointed. She gave off a vibe that we were not welcomed at all. The fact that she had to mentioned there would be another event that evening in the room we were sitting in and they would need time to cleanup after us, I was like: "what the hell do you have to mention that?", while we still had about 2 hours left until then. 

As expected, the whole experience was pricey. The tea set was average. The building was ok, I have seen better. Although the room we were in was very cozy, the rudeness of the waitress, the very well-dressed customers of the event happening in the adjacent room, just made us not very comfortable to stay any longer. After we left, we went over to the public park opposite the building. It was here that reminded me of Parasite the movie. While the Suffolk House and everyone there were the rich, there were homeless folks camping in the park just a bridge away. And what was even stranger was that there were many ordinary folks oddly choosing to picnic beside the very little bit of greenery between Suffolk House compound and the busy main Jalan Ayer Itam. The contrast of the rich and the poor was just eye-opening because I would never expected to see this in Penang itself. I have seen this kind of contrast in Mumbai before and this is almost on a par with it. 

My verdict is, if you have extra money and want to get a glimpse of how our ancestors felt during the oppressive English colonial times, Suffolk House can definitely deliver on that end 🤣

Suffolk House viewed from the public park opposite