GEORGE TOWN, May 23 — From the outside, Hong Kong Bar looks like one of those old-style bars long past its prime with tired-looking furniture and only a handful of customers.
Even its signboard is a few decades old and the words Hong Kong Bar were carved onto one of the columns fronting the pre-war shophouse along Chulia Street.
Behind the long wooden bar is a soft-spoken man in his 50s while a woman, about the same age, serves customers.
They are siblings, Peter and Jenny Tan, and the owners of the business left to them by their late father many decades ago.
The one thing that sets this old bar apart are the hundreds of plaques and souvenirs lining its walls for this is the Hong Kong Bar, a well-known watering hole for Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) servicemen, sailors and tourists from the 1960s up to the 1980s.
Stepping into the quiet little bar is like entering the past for many RAAF personnel and airmen, especially those who had spent a number of years in the RAAF Butterworth base here.
One of them is 72-year-old Don Richards who had stopped by the bar to reminisce over the good old times when he was based in RAAF Butterworth between 1967 and 1969.
“It is good to come back here for a beer, just like the old times, and to look through their photos of the many other RAAF servicemen who had had a good time here,” he said.
He remembered how the bar used to be so crowded he and his friends had to sit in trishaws parked by the road right outside the bar.
“We’d be drinking our beers sitting in the trishaws because back then, there weren’t many cars, just bicycles and trishaws,” he said.
Other than the hundreds of plaques lining the walls, the Tans kept thousands of photos of their patrons, most of whom were RAAF personnel and their spouses.
Jenny said they used to have more photos but many were destroyed when the bar was gutted by a fire back in 2004.
More than a hundred of the plaques adorning the bar’s walls were also burnt in the fire leaving only twisted metal, the words and emblems on it faded.
“Most of it were gone but we managed to salvage what was left by the fire,” Jenny said.
The plaques that survived the fire are proudly displayed along the front part of the bar.
New wall plaques, most by RAAF visiting platoons, now adorn another section of the bar’s wall.
“They will come here every time they visit the Butterworth base and they will give us a wall plaque and some of them will leave other items like caps and kangaroo soft toys,” Jenny said.
RAAF took control of the Butterworth base back in 1958 when thousands of RAAF personnel and their families lived here.
Thousands of RAAF servicemen and their families made Penang their home between 1958 up till 1988 when it handed the full control of the base to the Royal Malaysian Air Force.
One of RAAF serviceman who spent a few years in Penang, Jack Walker, 75, said the bar is one stop every RAAF serviceman will remember.
“It is not just the beer but it is the people behind the bar, they talk to us, they treat us like family here,” he said.
He remembered clearly how every Saturday, they’d leave the Butterworth base to come to the island for a haircut.
“Our first stop would be to the bank to withdraw money, the second stop would be the bar and the third stop would be the barber. After the haircut, we would stop by here again for another drink and another and another...” he said.
Today, the bar is almost a forgotten place and it can hardly compete with many newer bars and pubs along the busy main road.
“Young people don’t come here anymore, they prefer newer places with trendy music,” Jenny said.
The bar is open from 2pm till midnight on most days, depending on business.
“We will gladly open for any of our regulars because we live upstairs,” Jenny said.
