Penang

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Our first stop in Malaysia was Penang island - we decided to spend a few days looking around. We stayed in a nice but basic guesthouse in china town. Penang is a pretty island and a strange mix of different influences. The people are so friendly and helpful we couldn't believe the difference from Thailand! Everyone spoke excellent English. One woman gave us a list of places to see and directions of how to get there!

We went to see a temple on a hill called Tek Lok Si, which was made up of various different temples. It poured with rain when we were at the top and we got drenched! after that we took a cable car up to the top of penang hill, where there are various different temples. Again it started raining, then it got extrmemely misty as we were so high up, and we were actually quite cold! We took refuge in a restaurant but couldn't see the view as it was so misty. Then all of a sudden we turned around and the mist had cleared without us noticing and we could suddenly see right down over Penang, it was bizarre and quite startling!

We also went to a huge posh shopping mall, which seemed very odd after weeks on islands. We got a night bus to the Perhentians after two days.

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Photos

look closely at the statues - assuming they're not swastikas, I never did find out what the symbols mean
This was extremely odd as I had a dream about Nazis the night before (not a dream I've had before so very random!) and had never seen swastikas in S E Asia before!