Penang

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As we have been travelling around Malaysia we have heard a lot of things about other places around here from other travellers. And we only heard one thing about Penang, that it was bad and should be avoided. That the taxi-drivers always try to rip you off. With this in mind we considered going straight to Langkawi instead but changed our mind as there was only a bus to Penang.

We found a nice place to stay in called 100 Cintra Street. It is also an art exhibition and museum. It is an 120 years old building just brought back to old style.

Georgetown, the big town on Penang Island is where everything happens. It is in old style as there hasn't been a skyscraper revolution yet. All the houses looks like there have been there for hundreds of years and there is a nice feeling of presarvation. There is a big chinese population and chinatown is big and busy.

The first day was mainly checking out the town, going shopping and walking to the seaside (unfortunatly no beach in Georgetown).

There are plenty of good restaurants everywhere and I was enjoying staying in the city after Cameron Highlands. We seem to change city for a relaxed place and back to city. It's a good way of doing it and the relaxed place always get more time than the city.

They have cinemas in Georgetown and I thought it would be a good time to see some of the new movies. They show plenty of asian movies and I always enjoy to watch them. We watched "The curse of the golden flower" and "Confession of pain". Not the best movies I have seen but defenitly worth the price (cheap cheap).

On christmas eve we planned to go out on a small trip to the highest mountain/hill of Penang. You go by a steep railway up to the top of about 800 meters. Unfortunatly being christmas and a major muslim holiday it was busy. The next tickets for a train would be a 4.5 hours wait. And we weren't too keen on that.

Luckily there is also another big tourist attraction closeby, a big temple, Kek Lok Si.

So we went there and walked around and saw a lot of buddahs and giant chinese monuments combined with a bit of hindu.

The next day we wanted to go to the beach, a christmas day on the beach, that's the way it should be. It was fine, main problem for me was to find a place to buy the newspaper as everywhere was shut. We ate at a french restaurant so that I could have some nice bread.

On the way back we stopped at a cinema to see one of the movies and then outside there is a major hawker stall collection. All different kind of food, and of course, really cheap. I had some nice noodles and them we walked home back to our hotell.

We were gonna leave the next day but I wanted to see the football so it was a late night. They broadcast all the Premier League games here but since it is 8 hours difference they start quite late. And the boat to Langkawi was early early in the morning.

We stayed another day and we now managed to go to Penang Hill, only 90 minutes wait for the train. And it takes me about 2 hours to read the paper anyway, no problem.

We went up, walked around a bit, it is quite nice as it is a bit cooler, a good view of Georgetown and very quiet compared to in the city. We were almost attacked by a 20 cm centipied, it walked towards us but was pushed away in another direction.

The worst thing about Penang Hill is to get back down, the queue for the down-train is loooong.

We ate at a very famous indian restaurant that night, good meal of sheep-kebabs and naan-bread.

The next very early morning we left for Langkawi

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Comments

[Jenny]

Wow, vilken resa...
Mycket spännande!! Har nu läst ikapp alla dina inlägg (har ju själv varit på resande fot men är tillbaka i Hjo igen). Skriver det sista på min C-uppsats som ska examineras strax. Hur länge till ska ni resa? Ha det fortsatt bra på era strapatser och se upp för bomber och sånt!! Kram från Jenny

[Lotten]

kan inte förstå
kan inte förstå att det är kristoffer som blivit så "mogen" blir glad i hela kroppen av dina reseberättelser! keep it up! det förgyller tillvaron för oss här hemma...