For the past few months as we have zig-sagged our way around Asia, Malaysia has been in some respects a bit of an afterthought. Not that it deserves to be so, as the more we read, the more we learn that there us so much to see. Its just that it's never been a country that stands out like the big hitters of Thailand or Vietnam. Now we're here though, we realise we are probably in one of the most culturally diverse places we have ever been to.
As we said before, we were truly sad to leave Bangkok behind after a fun filled six days and an incredibly two months in Thailand. Our flight down to Penang went by without much fuss, despite mild turbulence, and we managed to hire a taxi with ease to take us up to georgetown, Penang's UNESCO listed city. As we drove, two things became apparent. Firstly, there were many more cars on the road, very expensive cars at that, replacing the hum of battered old motor bikes. Secondly, the traffic moved in an orderly fashion, they had rules!
Driving through the old town towards our hotel we instantly got the impression that this was a curious mix, we'd never really seen anything like this before. You'd have to say if your being totally honest, that it wasn't the prettiest place. Only first impressions though!
After dumping our bags we quickly went in search of some of Penang's famous hawker food, essentially street food of various varieties spanning a number of cuisines. Our first stop was a place called Kapitan, a Muslim-south Indian restaurant famous for it's roti chanai's and tandoori chicken. the roti channai's were amazing, really light, almost pastry based breads cooked in the tandoori oven. We also had some amazing turka daal to go with it, a tasty lentil dish that everyone seemed to be eating.
The next day we woke absolutely shattered, the past few days had been really busy-almost non-stop but we both wanted to get out and explore the city of Georgetown. The town itself had some very attractive parts, the British colonial buildings were very impressive, they had been meticulously maintained to make sure they retained their former glories and looked as good as new.
After a good old tour around the unesco heritage buildings we walked on into little India, were we stood and sniffed up all of those delicious smells! The place was very loud, almost every shop pumping out vicious Indian pop music to try and shift a few of their Now; Bollywood compilations. It was a great sight though and so very different to the sight of Asia we have had elsewhere on the continent.
By this point, and we're not expecting sympathy here, we were so tired. The last couple of weeks had definitely caught up with us so we headed back to try and chill out, you know, listen to some decent music and set curry puffs, but found it increasingly difficult due to being in one of the noisiest hostels we have been in. Basically, most of the accommodation in Georgetown is within extremely old buildings that have absolutely no soundproofing whatsoever. That meant the Chinese people above us actually sounded like Robocop wearing corrective walking shoes. We also had a locked door in our room that after closer inspection opened to the adjacent room! It was locked ofcourse but meant that we heard all sorts of noises from that room and whenever they put their light on it lit our room up. Oh well, at least we didn't hear the guys upstairs taking a dump, oh yeah, scrap that, we did.
The next day we waited patiently for a bus that would take us to the centre of the island to a lookout. We did indeed wait patiently, for an hour! In the end we gave up and caught another bus to a small national park, the smallest in Malaysia in fact. We went because it sounded cool but in the end spent four hours on a long jungle trek. You see the guy at the park headquarters told us it would take 2 hours there and back. He lied. After two hours we didn't even make our destination, a beach at the other end of the jungle. Instead we walked through steamy jungle, all in flip-flops, for 10kms! We had a great time though and even though the flip flop combination wasn't a great idea, it made us hungry for more treks! Need to buy footwear first I suppose.
Being tired anyway probably wasn't helped by a 10km jungle trek but that night we were so shattered that we hopped out for more food, this time an indian-Malaysian combination called nasi kandar before heading back to the hotel to rest up before tomorrows four hour drive up into the Cameron highlands.
Penang was an interesting place, it has some very attractive buildings and the food, even though we didn't do it justice, was fantastic. It does feel strange to be in Malaysia though, it is so very different to Thailand. The mixture of Indian, Chinese, British and Malay cultures is fascinating, if not a little strange but the biggest thing is the fact that order, or something resembling it, had now been resumed. Give me chaos!
Anyway, onwards! To tea, hill walks and scones!
Much love, Tommo and shellface xx
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