Blogs from George Town, Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 14

Vanuit KL namen we de bus naar Cameron Highlands. De busrit duurde een kleine 4 uur, en maakt een tussenstop onderweg. Kleine restaurants met snacks. Wat trouwens heel lekker is is de creamy corn! Warme maïs in een potje met boter! Heerlijk! Ook hier kan je goedkope fruitzakjes kopen, wat handig is voor in de bus. Er is hier een soort fruit (ben de naam vergeten) dat tussen een peer en een appel lijkt. Nee, geen Japanse Nasji peer...iets anders, typisch van dit land. Je kan het zeer goedkoop kopen en de verkoper doet er een soort poeder over, wat het fruit zoet maakt. Zonder het poeder is het zeer droog en niet zo lekker. Mensen vinden vers fruit hier een echte lekkernij. Op elke hoek van de straat staat er wel een fruitstalletje met versgesneden ... read more

It used to be a colonial mansion back when female dresses had to reach their ankles. Since the start of our trip we have never really planned more than a couple of days at a time, so we decided to grab a flight to Bangkok with Dennis and Nicole from Ha Noi and spent a couple of days weighing up where to continue our adventure. After saying goodbye to them after travelling on and off for around 5 weeks, our last trip was all squeezing into a tuk-tuk to take us to our hotels, we said goodbye and checked into our home for the next 4 days. We spent our whole time going through different plans as to where to go, shopped for new clothes and caught the second state of origin match in between ... read more

Coming from Koh Samui the bus is 14 hours roughly to Penang. When you first leave Koh Samui everything seems so organised, the agent hands you a ticket and tells you a time. The surface of the operation is very much organised, however after being on the bus for little over an hour i was dropped at the foot of another, larger bus, the driver asked me where i was going and i told him Penang. Without checking the ticket he welcomed me aboard and gave me a sticket labelled 'Penang'. From this point on, losing this sticker would be the difference between making it to Penang or being stranded in God knows where. A series of buses led me to the boat crossing from Samui to the mainland. As the night before i hadnt slept ... read more

Aoife and I arrived in Penang island, connected to mainland Malaysia by bridge, on the evening of January 12th by ferry from Langkawi. Upon arrival, the taxi drivers swarmed the area putting pressure on people arriving. We planned to get a free shuttle bus as it was our understanding that the guesthouse was less than ten minutes away. The taxi drivers told us that the shuttle was not running at this time of year which turned out to be untrue. Then another taxi driver hounded us asking where we were going. He was adamant that our guesthouse was 20 minutes away and we agreed a fixed price. Turned out it was just over 5 minutes around the corner. I questioned his earlier lie and he just got angry with us. "Keep your f##king money" he said ... read more

Having visited many places in Thailand over the years and having watched most of these succumb to mass tourism, this time we were merely passing through. Free fifteen day visas are granted to most European nationals at land-crossings, thirty days if you fly in, or sixty (for a price) if gained at an embassy pre-arrival. With the ever increasing openness between ASEAN countries and the ready availability of inter-country buses (these may be minibuses or coaches) there is nothing to be gained these days (save the kudos and the small joys of roughing it with the locals) from complex multi-bus journeys that actually work out to be more expensive as well as massively more time consuming. So, it’s simply a case of source the cheapest bus and ride from one country to the next. The only ... read more