Penang April 2008

---

Penang Island April 2008

Hello Everyone!

How are we all? This will hopefully be the first of many blogs from us!
The night we left Melbourne was nice, just had some family and friends over before we left for the airport. The flight from Melbourne to Kuala Lumpur was around 8 hours and we both got a small amount of sleep. We then had to hang around at KL airport for a few hours before we got our domestic flight to Penang. During these few hours we decided to use an internet café and it was only then that we realized we were in the wrong terminal for our next flight, the domestic terminal was actually 15km away! So we hurried for a bus there and in the end we made it safe and sound.

The area of Penang that we stayed in was Batu Ferringhi and it’s a long stretch of road along the beach with several resorts. There wasn’t that much to do there, we went exploring through Georgetown and to the Botanical Gardens with hope of getting to use the funicular railway but it wasn’t working We then decided we would try and hike up Penang Hill instead - big mistake! We got about 200m up this said hill when Rob noticed a group of monkeys on an embankment above us. At first these monkeys looked cute and somewhat harmless, until another 10 of them appeared and slowly surrounded us. It was at this point that I began to panic! These “cute” monkeys then descended down the embankment and began chasing us and hissing at us, by time this I was screaming! Suffice to say our Penang Hill mission was promptly aborted, we decided to walk around the gardens as they seemed harmless enough! Along one of the bridges within the gardens there was another group of monkeys who were literally launching and diving off the side of this bridge into the water and swimming around, we’d never seen anything like it! I began to feel a little more relaxed amongst the monkeys again and Rob was taking pictures of them so I thought “why not?” and got my camera out as well to take a photo. That was another mistake on my behalf, as soon as I had my camera facing a single monkey it launched itself at me!

The best things about Penang are the food and the night market on Batu Ferringhi. The prices for meals were ridiculously cheap and absolutely delicious. We would have a meal with drinks for $4 all up between us. The night market had knock off’s of every brand you could imagine, and we got to exercise our bartering skills!

The hotel was beautiful as well, and so reasonably priced. The only problem was hoping you didn’t fall into a sewer whilst roaming the streets, the sidewalks are open and disjointed and the stench was pretty bad! But all in all it was a nice relaxing couple of days, and a couple of days was enough.

Di & Rob.

---

Photos

Penang 170408 34
Vicious Beasts!