Penang, Malaysia

After bite one...

After spending eights nights in Koh Tao we were just about ready to leave by (another) long bus journey to Malaysia. I was nothing short of terrified to be crossing the border. After reading online about people being left behind and my friend Carly telling me that I would have to run to catch up with my vehicle after being checked through I was starting to wish we were flying. Possibly because I had been so nervous the crossing didn't turn out to be too bad at all. It consisted of three stops where we had to leave the vehicle. The main one of these was very much like the crossing back into the UK on the ferry from France. Despite this, the total journey was a long one- beginning with an overnight boat from Koh Tao with about 100 'beds' lined up next to one another. After this strange experience it was onto another bus, crossing the border and then hours and hours later we arrived in Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia.

Ice Kacang

I was not sure what to expect from this island but it certainly wasn't the reality. Having spent so much time on Thai islands, regardless of what I had read about Penang I still expected to be relatively close to a beach at all times. Instead of this we found ourselves in the bizarre Georgetown on Love Lane in a hostel called Old Penang. The hostel was lovely, nice and clean, cool enough to sleep and with free breakfast until 12pm we weren't complaining. We were in the middle of a cultural, historical, art enriched town, supposedly famous for its street food. With this in mind, after a refreshing shower we went in search of one of the dishes on our street food map; after searching around the streets, having a prostitute shout that she wanted to kill me and walking for miles we gave up finding a place on our map and stopped at a street food cafe. James was displeased to say the least and I was also uncertain but didn't want to reveal this after my insistence on trying some local dishes. Luckily we both enjoyed a nice meal but were left feeling slightly disappointed that it wasn't one of the infamous Penang dishes we had read about. Not to be discouraged we went in search of the national desert Ice Kacang which we found in a nearby coffee shop. I suggested that perhaps we should try one of these in case it wasn't to our taste but on hearing the word ice cream, Dibbs was adamant that we should have one each. What turned up was a bowl full of liquid, inside this was a block of unflavoured ice on top of which balanced a scoop of ice cream. I should also probably mention that inside the liquid floated, green noodles, kidney beans, sweet corn and strange jellies that seemed to disappear as your chewed leaving nothing to swallow. Dibbs made the valid comment that perhaps this famous dish had been invented by a child king and no one could refuse to accept it. At least we ate the ice cream.

 Defeated, we headed back to our hostel, shattered after our long journey.

The following day we decided to make a start on viewing some of the popular tourist attractions in the area. This began with a walk to the quays, although not overly impressive, our walk through the Chinese quarter to get there was interesting.

Next stop was the snake temple, where pit vipers had found their home. One thing about Georgetown is that it takes an incredibly long time to navigate anywhere, this is due to the appalling maps, busy traffic and inconsistent buses. However, we finally made it to a random roadside shack, behind which stood a pretty poor excuse for a temple; although, lets face it, we were there to see snakes. We walked into the entrance where there was a tree with fake snakes strategically placed, we both sighed thinking it had been a waste of time and made our way into the temple where we saw lots of venomous pit vipers lurking in the trees. It definitely put me on edge- not as much as when we came back inside to see that the 'fake snakes' we had been stood close to were all real as the guide poked them with a stick to prove it. There was also a huge python lurking in a tank which Dibbs held along with the only de-venomed viper in the place. I was content to simply stroke the python, at the end furthest from its head.

We had enjoyed our time at the snake temple but afterwards it was a 20 minute wait for a bus that drove straight past us when we tried to hail it down, followed by another 20 minutes then a 40 minute ride home. Tired, we made our way back to the hostel where we would find a new friend, Jeff from Borneo, waiting for us. We were soon off out to dinner with Jeff and Rick, Malaysian and Taiwanese. Jeff laughed his way through every conversation and was mildly sexist- I think he may have referred to me as a prostitute at one point. Walking back from dinner with them we were called over by a guy sat with a group next door to our hostel; this happened to be somebody we had met on one of our many bus journeys. So many bus journeys that neither we nor Jordi could remember which but we spent the night chatting with him and the rest of his group ending up in a Reggae Club that played pop music.
The club was a funny experience- it was Halloween but I don’t think this is particularly well celebrated in Malaysia so there were a scattering of people dressed up. There was also a Chinese girl in the club with her Korean roommate. I say her Korean roommate because I never learned her name- the Chinese girl simply called her ‘my Korean roommate’ constantly. She was also obsessed with the UK and hugged me when I said James was my boyfriend.
The next day saw us taking a bus to the national park nearby-ish. Another long bus journey and we arrived at the entrance to the park with a choice to go to either Monkey Beach or Turtle Beach. We set off on our hike to Monkey Beach which a girl the day before had told us we could accomplish in flip flops. I think that you could but I wouldn’t advise it. The walk was really pretty; we saw huge monitor lizards, monkeys and lots of big colourful butterflies. The beach itself wasn’t stunning and we didn’t swim because of the numerous jelly fish that were washed up on the shore. It was still a nice spot and had a pier that we walked along to look at a nice view of the beach.
That night we finally found a huge street food market called Red Garden Cafe which, ironically, was only a five minute walk from Love Lane. We stuffed ourselves with biyriani, stewed pork, noodles, roti and beer. Although I still hadn’t tried many dishes listed on the street food map I was satisfied. My research had shown me that there would be much local, traditional food on offer; however, the place that we went to provided a cultural mix of dishes. Penang is hugely influenced by Chinese and Indian cooking with a China town and a little India in Georgetown.
On our third day in Penang we had a plan. It involved a bike. Not just any bike. To see it was to love it. Our ride was a version of a tandem, perhaps a chuckle brother’s variety. Joined at the handlebars we sat side by side with a canopy over head.  Leaving the bike rental shop we rode like total maniacs along main roads for about half an hour before we realised we were going in circles and would be needing a map. I was completely helpless sat on the left side of the bike because James had all the steering power. Whilst we laughed all (the majority of) day I think the time we probably looked most amusing to bystanders was during a heated argument where James kept running me into the curb to avoid traffic.
It took us around an hour and many treacherous five lane motor way crossings where the beeps were a mixture of anger and amusement but we finally made it to our destination- the foot of a train line. This old railway which had been developed over time, took us up to a hill station where we had a stunning view overlooking Penang. We could even see where we had cycled from (although I’m not sure that gave us much motivation for the return journey).
After spending some time relaxing and marvelling at what was on offer at this altitude- paintballing amongst other things- we made our way down to jump back into the hot seats.
We had one final mission on the way home which was to take our mode of transport through a McDonalds drive through. I’m not sure who found this funnier- ourselves or the people around us. After ordering a cheeseburger to share (we weren’t even hungry) and two cokes, we parked up in a car space for a rest.
We arrived back in Georgetown, weary after the day’s exertions but still managing to fit a little sightseeing in on the way home. We stopped at a few of Penang’s famous street art spots. These were really incredible and I would have liked to have walked the street art trail but, completely shattered and knowing we had to get up early for our journey to Kuala Lumpur the next day, we left it for another time.
I enjoyed Penang a lot but was surprised by how large the island was; it felt as though we were in a big town on the mainland. It is a multi cultural place with Chinese and Indian influences on the food and town. It is fairly quiet and not the place to go if after the beach or party scene but there are lots of sights to see if feeling up to the challenge of navigating the bus system and finding them all.