Penang

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On Sunday 22nd February our group made the 9 hour drive to Panang, Malaysia. It was nowhere as bad as one might think! I spent the first half of the journey chilling out, listening to Harry Potter and the second half lying across 3 seats sleeping - so no worries!

Not long had we been in Malaysia that it started bucketing it down with rain. It had gotten rather tropical in Krabi in the last couple of days, but it really started to rain across the border!

In the afternoon we landed into Georgetown, Panang and had a little potter. Panang is an Island and a state of Malaysia, nothing like the touristyness of Ao Nang of the day before, but it also wasn't geared up to tourists at all really, just added to the experience! We went to see the traditional houses on stilts on the waterfront, a bit stinky at times...

But Malaysia was more of a gourmet experience than anything else. The first night we went to a big night market where you could pick whatever you wanted to eat. I ate a big yummy noodle soup. The following morning we went for a "Malaysian" breakfast, which I think was Indian, but that's Malaysian really (confused yet? I am!). Anyway, it was some kind of bread/greasy pancake with dahl (lentils), I wasn't sure at first, but it turned out to be quite nice really. I also had a really sweat, milky and almost orange tea, that's just how it came, yum. There was also a kind of halva, I was a bit confused when our guide said that's what it was as it was bright orange and swishy/jelly like, not like the hard sesame stuff I'm used to. I have since looked it up and halva has many similar names (halawa, halva etc etc) and can be made of sesame, semolina and some other stuff, so mystery solved! A bizarre breakfast away!

To continue the Indian(ish) theme, we popped along to a Shiva festival at a Hindu temple and ate some South Indian food for dinner. This turned out to be a kind of crispy savoury pancake filled with potatoy filling with dahl and was called Masala dosai, it was nice but kind of needed a bit more substance to it! I filled up on laddu, Indian balled sweets. Whoops. By the way, I'm a good half a stone heavier than when I left the UK. Time for some excercise I think!

The following morning we went for a Chinese breakfast, I had steamed buns filled with black bean and sweetcorn past, pretty yummy if not the most sustaining sensible breakfast!

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Comments

[DougRattray]

Mr Stephen?
Have you noticed how many people in Malaysia are called Stephen? Sounds like your having a great time. It's a bit freaky how many of the same places we went to. Are you going through intrepid?