Around Georgetown, Penang.

---

Georgetown has a colourful vibrant feel about it. Narrow streets lined with restaurants and food sellers. There's a mixed array of traffic meadering along along the roads and streets no matter how narrow. Buses, huge posh cars, old broken down cars, bikes galore and cyclos all share the road and pedestrians chance their luck to cross in-between!

In contrast close to the port and several grand looking Colonial buildings, built by the Brits many years before Malaysia got independence in 1957.

There are several Indian and Chinese temples scattered amongst the old heritage buildings that house the Nasi Kanda restaurants.

If you follow your ears in the evening you come across cute bars with live music and chairs and tables spilling out onto the street. A great place to meet up with fellow travellers.

Penang is famous for it's variety of food whether you want meat or vegetarian, Indian, Chinese or Malay. It's all delicious and ready in minutes, often cooked right in front of you.

One attraction promoted was Cornwallis Fort, also near the port. We went along to see it but at the entrance a couple we'd met earlier were just leaving and said there wasn't a great deal to see in there.
We were weighing up whether to pay the 20 Ringetts each to go in when the ticket man informed us the entrance fee included a free drink. " You can choose - water or beer?" he was quick to tell us. Hmm! Now let me think! Beer! of course. He duely wrote a large letter B on the tickets and in we went.
The Scottish couple were right, there was practically nothing to see. A few cannons , a collection of empty rooms where I guess ammunition was stored and a statue. So after five minutes we headed to the bar/ cafe and handed in our tickets expecting to get a tiny glass of Luke warm beer.
Suprise! She opened a fridge took out two half litre glasses coated in ice and filled them with the coldest beer we'd had in a long time.
It had been worth the twenty ringetts ( about £3.50) just for that.

All in all we enjoyed our time in Penang but after five days we were ready to get stamped back into Thailand and return to laid back island life.

---

Photos

Cyclo tour around town
We walked of course