Blogs from George Town, Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 52

Getting to Penang was a bit of a mission. It was only one boat and yet between the delays, the overcrowding (including bags against emergency exits) and the total failure of the air conditioning it was grim. Nevertheless onwards to the old colonial madness of Penang. Its a strange but interesting place, with Little India, Chinatown and the colonial areas. The place seems frozen in time around fifty years ago, filled with little garages sporting tin 'Shell' signs from yesteryear and dilapidated Bitish buildings everywhere. There are some backpackers and also a few older expat dropouts playing draughts with the locals in the stifling heat. We had lovely food at a Chinese restaurant called Opera on the first night on one of the renovated streets in the centre. You start to get a feel for just ... read more

Oh my goodness. We are now in Penang, back to the busy city life. Back to internet and phones and hot water showers. But honestly, I would love to be back at our homestay which is where we have been the last two and a half days. It was the most relaxing days of our trip thus far. We arrived in a small town that I am still not sure the name of, but it was the first time I have seen just houses here. Everything else has been tall, enormous apartment buildings. It's kind of crazy to see that so many people could cram into such little space, especially when we arrived at the bus station. The area was full of tropical foliage, green landscape everywhere, tall trees. Really beautiful. And then we got to ... read more

greetings from country number 5 on my south east asia tour. i really like Penang - it's very modern and westernised with skyscrapers and large shopping malls. After over 5 weeks of visiting temples and many other cultural activities i decided to give the colonial buildings and tourist attractions a miss. Instead i had a long lie (never slept past 8am until today and plenty of 5am starts), updated my journal, shopped and sat in starbucks drinking a mocha frapucchino with my book. was lovely just to chill out. tonight we had a lovely dinner (nuala had a very funny dish called "Fish jumps in the pan") before heading for a drink to a cool bar called Soho - apparently it's very popular with the celebrities when they visit Penang and it had pics of the ... read more

We spent 2 weeks travelling through Hong Kong, Singapore & Malaysia. HONG KONG We arrived to a deluge of 'black rain' - so heavy that we could get off the plane, but baggage handlers refused to go out into the weather (for over an hour) to get the bags off for us!! Then we found that hotel had reserved was not what we had wanted, and so had to switch hotels. Then it started raining again - however, aside from all that, we did have a good time in HK!! We tasted the ex-pat lifestyle with Rupert (an ex-work colleague of Helen, currently working in HK), with dinner, drinks & dancing to filipino bands until the small hours of the morning. We explored Central Hong Kong island ... took a bus to visit & buy souvenirs ... read more

Just a quick update, I saw my first wild monkeys of the trip. Brilliant, monkeys are great, one girl even got a photo of a monkey having a sly wank. But then, I was tricked by the monkeys, who sat and posed for photos, while one of their mates walked up the tree, got in position, and pissed on my head. Little bastards.... read more