Penang, Malaysia

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After a fantastic wee holiday (!) in Langkawi we took a boat south to Penang Island. It took 2.5 hours and we were both looking a bit green by the end of the journey! To make us feel even better we were pounced on by taxi drivers the moment we stepped on the island and one even followed us down the street and wouldn't leave us alone!

We stayed in the Tune Hotel in Georgetown, a nice, modern, clean hotel in a good location for a very reasonable price. It's style is a cross between Easyjet and Ryanair because when you book the hotel there are extras that you can add on for an additional fee, e.g. air con, hairdryer, towels etc and there's a big Easyjet style logo plastered on the front of the building and in all of the rooms!

Georgetown is a big, busy bustling place with crazy traffic and hardly any pavements and where they do exist you often meet scooter riders blasting along them! Having said that there is a lot of character and a good vibe about the place. We wandered around the main sites including Cheong Fatt Tze mansion (an interesting blue Chinese style mansion house), impressive colonial buildings such as the City Hall and Town Hall, a small but nice esplanade, a Fort and Campbell Street which is filled with colourful shop banners and lanterns and the shops sell Chinese medicines and jewellery. In Chinatown we walked round a food market selling weird and wonderful fruits, fish and other foods. We got stared at lots when we went into a nearby clothes market with very narrow alleyways and each different stall holder was realing off a list of all items on their stall! It was like something out of a nightmare (especially for GG!) as we couldn't find our way out so had to retrace our steps and meet the same people trying persistently to tempt us with their goods again! GG still has recurring nightmares about it!

We also got a bus out to Penang Hill to get the funicular to the top. Tickets were sold out for the next few hours so we decided to book tickets and come back later for a sunset view and visit the Botanic Gardens first. It's nice to visit the gardens to get away from the noisy, busy town although there appears to be a shooting range next to the gardens which occasionally spoiled the peace and tranquility! We went back to Penang Hill and got the two funiculars to the top. Unfortunately we had about 2 minutes to see the view of Georgetown and over to the mainland before it completely clouded over! (This always happens to us!) At the top there is a food court, hotel, Mosque and a colourful Hindu Temple where we heard people chanting and it sounded like they were praising Tommy Sheridan!!

While in Georgetown GG had the worst restaurant experience of the entire trip! He had to wait well over an hour to get a dish which wasn't even the one he'd originally ordered. We tried to get a discount on the bill but the manager just brought him a single scoop of ice cream as compensation! We eventually managed to get about a quid off the bill! Despite this one bad experience, the service and quality of food the rest of the time was superb! GG's favourite of Penang was fish ball soup and JP's was blackcurrant yoghurt smoothies!

Next stop - Phuket, Thailand!

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