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Published: March 14th 2009
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War museum
At the entrance. After another late ride I arrived on the island of Penang. The promise of getting dropped off in the town center was of course just horseshit and instead I found myself at a bus station close to the airport (quite far from town), so me and a Suiss guy took a cab into Georgetown. We went straight to the 75 Travellers Lodge but they were fully booked. However, the owners did have two other places on the same street and I first checked out the Western & Oriental Cafe but they didn't have any sockets in the very cheap room and I really need some for my laptop and to charge batteries. So I went to the other place, the Star Lodge which was a bit more expensive but still cheap and got a really nice room WITH a bathroom and a comfy bed. There was even a balcony and sporadic WiFi. It's always best in the beginning for some reason, so you're being lulled into thinking it's great and then things turn south. So the first night was really quiet and I had WiFi all night long. After that the Wifi became worse and worse and then they started making
The "guillotine"
That's what they called it. Here allied soldiers were executed by the Japanese. some noise next door. It sounded like there was a saw mill there and they kept up the sawing until about 9-10PM. This didn't bother me though, it was more curious that the religious dudes in the temple next door started banging away at there drums at 11-11:30PM!!! What's up with that? Still, despite lots of ants and a not to potent fan this was a really good room. A lot better than most shitholes I stayed in in Malaysia. The guys running these places were really nice and helpful. The old guy at 75 Travellers Lodge was a really funny one. Very enthusiastic and friendly. As he too was a Beatles fan he quizzed me on songs.
I didn't do much on the island as I really just felt like chillin'. I did go to the war museum though and not surprisingly it was a letdown. The displays looked half finished and most of them didn't have much of any explanatory signs. The place is an old base so you walk around mostly outdoors and check out the different barracks and cannon firing bays. There were some claustrophobic tunnels you could crawl through (with the threat of being
Heavy Metal???
Why did they have to put up an illustration like this? Looks like a really cheesy sleeve cover for one of the bands coming up in the NWOBHM! Naturally, I thought this was great! "attacked" by some bat) and in one of the communication centers there were some really lame displays, blown up photos of dummies siiting infront of radio equipment and war maps - yes, the photos were of the dummies from the Battle Box Museum in Singapore! This museum did however have tons of cute puppies running around! All of this for a whopping 30RM, sweet zombie Jesus! Go to Singapore instead, if you want to visit war museums. I knew I never would get my money's worth in this place so I wasn't too upset by this.
A couple of days later I went to the national park to do some jungle walking again. Again, having recently been to the Cameron Highlands and Taman Negara I knew this wouldn't be very spectacular compared to that and I didn't expect too much. The walk (I did the one to Monkey Beach) was fairly "jungleish" but it had a lot of boardwalks and such and as it went along the coastline you could constantly hear the jetskis and motorboats which took away from the jungle feeling. Having said that it's still a nice walk and to my surprise I was greeted by
Cheese fest continues
A closer look at the text. a meter long lizard as I started my walk. I saw plenty of monkeys (I guess they're really used to tourists) and yeah, there were some on the Monkey Beach, where you by the way can take a dip if you feel like it. There were a bunch of local tourists there. As I came to the end of the trail another, even bigger, bright green lizard hastily crossed my path. Cool to see these godzillas in the wild (or maybe there was a guy in the bush throwing the lizard out as I came walking..?).
I got really lazy on this island. Maybe it was all the horrible MacDonalds food? Yeah, I never did find any nice food in this place and hence CrapDonalds. The only okay food was the morning noodle soup I had. It took a couple of mornings to modify the soup but it finally became quite tasty as I got rid of the fishballs and other crap they threw in there. I stayed a while longer on the island than planned and hence shortened my Thailand stay, which is the last stop on this long journey. So stay tuned for a report from tourist
Dogs of war
A bunch of puppies chillin' on the museum groiunds. "Heeellooooooo pu-u-u-uppies!!!!" ghetto Phuket!
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