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NOTE: Pt.1 of 2 is referring to this series as being a multi-segment, telling of my travels in Penang, and that this is the first of 2 parts.
Getting There
Day 5 cont. As you can tell, judging by the title, we did make it to the airport but with only 5 minutes left until our check in counter closed. Sadly I had to leave my chocolate behind because it wasn't allowed through customs 😞. Anyway, we got through customs, ate a sandwich, got on the plane, and 45 mins later we were in Penang. We took a taxi from the airport to our hotel. Compared to Brisbane there are Taxis available everywhere.
The hotel we stayed in was the Evergreen Laurel hotel on Gurney Drive. Gurney drive is just up the road from a lot of food stalls and is right next to the sea. We went to a stall and got a corn on the cob each for 60c. It was very tasty. We then went to a Chinese resturant. The waiter wanted to give us everything they had. I learnt from this that you have to say no because they just keep trying to
give you everything.
So we had some sweet & sour fish, fried rice and some sesame chicken. When it came time to paying though my dad
thought he did not have enough money. We had all this discussion then my dad decided to hand in his camera as a bargainin chip. Just as he handed it in he realized he had more money in his other pocket. Finally we left and went to the hotel and went to sleep.
My first full day
Day 6 Woke up in the morning in the most cumfy bed ever and went to see what they had for breakfast. To my delight I found pancakes and maple syrup. I ate them of course and proceeded to the hash browns then the french toast. I finished off with some coco pops and orange juice.
We then took a taxi into Georgetown to drop off our laundry. It took my Dad 1/2 an hour just to find the place and we kept going in circles. So we dropped of the laundry and went to this chocolate place (Chocolate Mansion?, I can't remember) and they had so many different flavours. They even had
Monkey!
I finally got to see a wild monkey and they were so cool. Scratching their butts and all those stereotypical things.Chocolate potato chips!. After taking a wander we took a taxi to the Botanical Gardens, at the foot of Penang Hill.
This was my favourite part of the day, finally seeing some wild monkeys. At first they seemed nice but when I was close and pointed at one it snarled and ran at a startling pace up to me. Although those deceiving wildlife shows show monkeys as cute, they are evil - butt-scratching relatives that want to kill you.
So yeah I played around with them for bit. Then we went on a bus thing ride. We went around the park, saw some more monkeys then came back to our original place. My dad bought me some nuts/cashews for the monkeys so I could feed them. It was really cool because you put them in your hand and they scuttle up to you and take it. I even ate some myself and they were tasty. I also got some pictures taken with locals who seemed very interested in me.
FUN-FACT: Evergreen hotel does not have 4th or 13th floors - well at least that are publicly accessible.
After this we took a taxi to Gurney Plaza
(a shopping center) and went to Nandos. What's cool about Malaysia is just about anywhere you can get wireless internet. Because of this I gladly surfed the internet while waiting for my food. I ordered chicken strips and chips with a lemonade. When I looked at the menu, it said 'bottomless soft-drinks'. I then realised this meant unlimited refills. After eating we took a look around the shopping center and it has 6 levels!!!
As usual we went back to the hotel, which was only a 10 minute walk down the road and had a swim. Then we walked up Gurney Drive agaiin and found a place to eat. I had a MILO and chicken rice. Afterwards we went to the hotel and went to bed.
Appropriately titled my second full day
Day 7 Today we got up, had breakfast and hired a taxi. Today we were going to the Snake Temple and the Kek Lok Si temple, the biggest Bhuddist temple complex in South East Asia. Our taxi driver throughout the day became our chauffeur.
Kek Lok Si was an supremely great place to lie down. There were hardly any people there and there was lots
of space. Lying under a shaded area neutralised the hot temperature making it the perfect temperature to just sleep. It has a lot of great views as well. But with height comes stairs. It took ages to get to the top of Pagoda. Everytime I got to a higher level I saw another flight of stairs. At the time they were also building this huge Bhudda. I can even see it from our room's window, it's that massive. My Dad also lost his bag with all his money in it, but then realsied that he had only just put it down to take his camera out. Since it was a very hot day we went and bought some water and saw a sign to go down to the pond (whose name I can't remember). There were loads of turtles in there, some bobbing there heads out of the water, some sunbaking.
From this point we walked down the hill back to our taxi. I met a Labrador along the way and it seemed very happy just to wander around aimlessly. We finally did get back to the taxi and drove to the snake temple. It took almost forever since
it was very far away. It was awesome when we got there. There were just rooms you could wander around in and the snakes would just be coiled up around objects like it was there natural habitat (most likely, it seemed to them, it was). I got my picture taken with the lemon-vanilla cake snake and frog snake.
NOTE: These names aren't actually what the snakes were called just my way of describing their appearance.
They also had an animal zoo sort of place. It had monkeys, guinea pigs, a very large tortoise randomly sitting in the corner, snakes and a particularly weird rabbit just hopping around. I chased it around for a bit then it hopped into a shed. Oh and did I tell you, all the snakes in the snake temple are venomous?
NOTE: That was a rhetorical question
After this we had lunch, which for me was a bowl of Blhurfg (pronounced Bl-errr-gah). We took the taxi back into Georgetown to pick up the laundry. On the way back we saw the Penang Bridge, which connects Penang to the mainland and is 13.5km long. As is our routine, we had a swim and then went
to have dinner.
We went to the hotel's Italian buffet dinner. Evergreen has a buffet dinner every day of the week, with a different culture each day. Also with every paying adult a kid dines for free. I had spagetti and ice-cream. They had so many toppings!!!! Then as usual we went to bed.
NOTE: I didn't actually have the spagetti and ice-cream at the same time nor the toppings
Third day
Day 8 It's been a week since I was last in Brisbane and man it seems a long time away. Today was the day we got the motorbike. I ate breakfast particularly fast for no apparent reason. After brekky my Dad went off to collect the motorbike and I stayed at the hotel. I like this hotel because it has great service. There are people to open the doors for you, there is free internet wireless and wired internet and you get free mentos. There is also a great pool to swim in. The food is also great and every paying adult for the buffet, a child eats for free.
So my dad came back with the motorbike and we were off. It took about
20 minutes to get to Batu Feringhi. Although it sounds like another way of saying vomit, it's actually a beach. It was not crowded at all there, probably because it doesn't have any surf. I saw a guy with a horse on the beach, someone on a jetski and a tree that looked like it was thinking OMG (See photo). We then drove further up the coast to the spice gardens.
The spice gardens have a café and a museum but they were being renovated when we got there so we didn’t get to see them. There was a chair swing though which I really liked. Firstly you sit on it, then push back and swing over a 5m drop. There is a net there but I don’t think it would be able to support anything over 20kg. Back to the main topic. The spice gardens were pretty cool. They have a lot of different wildlife inside, and we saw a Water Monitor. No a Water Monitor is not a screen made of water or a guy that checks the water is ok, it’s a large lizard similar in shape to an Iguana. Oh and it can swim.
So after this experience we continued to the Butterfly Farm. It was of course filled with what you would expect, butterflies, but it also had many other animals in different areas. There were fish in the pond, lizards in enclosures, scorpions in their own enclosure, stick insects and spiders. I even saw a cat, though I don’t think that it was part of the collection, just some random cat wandering around. My favourite of all the animals were the scorpions which glow blue under ultraviolet light.
We rode up to the mountains afterwards and went to a waterfall. The water was very nice and cold and was very refreshing to spash your face in. We could also see the ocean where the tsunami hit in 2004. From here we went to the National Park. To note there is also a large dam near the waterfall we went to.
At the national park there was a really annoying lady doing Security that I judged to have a very small IQ. She kept trying to 'help' us but she was just plain annoying and seemed to think we couldn't do anything. My Dad lost the keys to the motorbike and
OMG
I'm A Tree found them again which was another half hour's drama. The park was very nice. There was a small jetty from which I could see the sea, some rocks and a dock. On the jetty I was looking at these black dots and then realised they were little bugs skimming across the surface of the water. After this I barked at these dogs on a boat over on the dock, and they went crazy and barked back for a while and then we decided to go back.
My Dad dropped me off at the hotel. He went and returned the motorbike and got lost for a while then came back again. Meanwhile I watched TV and played on the computer. For dinner we went to a place on Gurny Drive called the Coffee House although according to the menu 95% of what they served was not coffee. I can pick it out from any other place because the have lights and sprinklers on the tree outside the resturant. The sprinklers were there to keep you cool and are positioned everywhere. For dinner I had what I though looked like chicken in my noodle thing but was actually squid. I do
not like squid now, it tastes like plastic. So instead I had some potato wedges and lemonade. For relief of boredom I also watched the Brazil vs. Chile soccer match and pretended that the fish in the fishtank were singing (hehehe). Then as usual we went back to the hotel and went to bed.
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Irmeli Goller
non-member comment
Malaysia
You seem to have a very varied and exciting time. What would you like to take home from Malaysia if it was possible? I suppose you are used to heat living in Australia, where it gets very hot in the summer, so the Malaysian temperatures don't seem to worry you. Is it very hot and humid? Did you enjoy the bike ride? A long time ago your dad had a huge big motorbike and I once had a ride at the back and I loved it. What a great time you are having!