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Giggling away to ourselves in Hong Kong airport’s departure lounge because the Air Asia staff were insisting to Neil (at 9pm) that our 9:05pm flight was on time and the plane hadn’t even arrived yet…well
this is Asia! We weren’t too bothered because we had decided to sleep overnight in KL’s Cheap Charlie terminal until the first connecting flight to Penang, even though the last time we did this we vowed never, ever again - but the prospect of saving a night’s accommodation was too tempting, so all common sense (and memories of the eye dropping tiredness) went out the window!
The wait wasn’t actually too bad as we had dosed ourselves on the refillable McDonalds coffee at 5am and our flight to Penang was only a quarter full (how do they make money on these flights?) and we arrived into one of the oldest airports we have seen in a while and is actually on a par with Stansted airport for wall-to-wall carpets! We wandered around the airport trying to find the Rapid Penang information counter, and considering the airport is so small it did take us a while...maybe the coffee wearing off?! Rapid Penang is the relatively new
public bus system on Penang and there is a special offer for tourists for a pass which is RM20 and has unlimited travel on all buses for a week. As we had lots planned we thought this was a good idea and the company’s website said it was available at the airport. Even though we are technically living in Asia now we always need to keep in mind that…
this is Asia and most things don’t ever go to plan. We finally found the woman who was (wo)manning the information desk (sitting outside nowhere near the info desk reading her paper, naturally where else would she be?) and were told the passes were ‘finished’ there and she hustled us onto the next bus into Georgetown with us madly scrabbling our loose change together so we could pay.
We had booked a nice and fairly new heritage hostel in Georgetown to stay at on the delightfully named Love Lane but because we were early we had to wait for check-in which meant sitting in the indoor courtyard area drinking tea and watching TV until our room was ready. After a quick shower and a sleep (we are getting too old for
the overnighting in the airport lark, really!) we felt slightly better and hit the streets of Georgetown. We headed for a great chicken rice restaurant which we found on our last visit in 2007 and by luck (although Neil says this was due to his good memory and navigating) we found it without too much hassle and the chicken rice was as good as we remembered. No, the restaurant didn't have a name so you would probably never find it...our advice is to just head to any foodie place with hanging chickens outside and try your luck...after all it's just chicken and rice?
Some people may find it strange how we like to look around shopping centres and supermarkets in the different countries we visit. To us though it's a really good way to see differences between countries. Take supermarkets for example, compared to the UK they are very different - in Thailand there is a row dedicated to fish sauce and chilli sauce, in the Philippines there is a row for tinned sausages and corned beef, in China there was a lot of live produce (frogs!) in the meat section. With Indonesia, India and Cambodia, these countries don't
really have many supermarkets as such - they have much smaller mini-marts. We find supermarkets in Malaysia to be quite fascinating because they are the nearest to the supermarkets in the UK and even sell similar things we haven't seen in a while like digestive biscuits, rich tea biscuits, haribo sweets, jelly babies, licorice and baked beans to name just a few things!
We had decided to head to one of the shopping centres to find an optician which had been recommended and, of course being in Malaysia, to find some Cadbury’s chocolate which still never tastes the same as in England. Although it wasn’t a long walk it was a tough one, the temperature was somewhere between steaming hot and unbearable (and we are used to the heat!) by the time we reached Prangin shopping centre we were more than ready for a McDonalds ice cream and air con (in that order!). We found the opticians, got Donna’s eyes tested, picked new glasses for her and were shocked at how little the glasses cost and how high tech the eye test was…it was unbelievable. The glasses only cost £50 including the lenses and both Donna and Neil are
happy now she can see properly and Neil doesn’t have to keep telling her what signs say!
The one thing that stood out for us last time we visited Penang was the food, which we had decided when booking our flights would be the focus of our visit to Malaysia this time. The food in Penang is spectacular and we were very, very excited about going to our favourite Indian restaurant called Kapitans which does a variety of tasty Indian food including tandoori and tikka sets (marinated chicken with naan bread and dhal dipping sauces) and great veggie food as is usual for Indian restaurants. We had a feast and it didn’t disappoint, definitely one of our favourite restaurants in the world! We really can’t say enough how amazing the food in Penang and at Kapitan’s is! Would we travel great distances to visit Georgetown for this restaurant alone?....Yes we would!
The next morning we took advantage of the free breakfast - well toast, jam and tea or coffee - and then headed out for the Snake Temple (or Hock Kin Keong) - a sight we had seen on the last series of the Amazing Race. We managed
to get our bus pass after several minutes of 'huh?', 'what?', repeat please' with the guy sitting behind a glass screen talking very quietly (why do they insist on making the hole to speak through so tiny?!), then we hopped on a bus and the nice bus driver told us where to get off…these buses are amazing (some even had wi-fi!) if only for the fact they are fiercely air conned which is a welcome relief from the heat. The Snake Temple was interesting and the strangest located temple we have ever been to...it's set just off the busy main road to the airport with steps leading up to it! There were lots of pit vipers there…as the sign says on the pic, “don’t touch, Poison! Just for look”. Yep, we stayed well away from the pit viper snakes, we aren't that stupid but Donna couldn’t resist a pat of the python which people were posing with and there was also a weird looking albino python there too. We hopped back on the bus (air con!!) and headed for Queensbay shopping centre for more air con, lunch and the cinema. Our lunch was huge and cheap at the food court,
we got tickets for Iron Man 2 and also got a combo offer of popcorn and two huge buckets of drinks for the two of us. The cinema and popcorn treats in Penang are super cheap and luckily we had planned ahead and taken long sleeve tops with us as the air con in the cinema was super-cold…yes we are never happy - it’s too hot outside and too cold inside!
One weird (but funny thing) we noticed was that every time we got a bus and the bus system being relatively new, the locals seemed very confused as to where to get off the buses. There didn’t seem to be any real rules about where the buses would stop but there were some bus stops dotted around. On 5 separate occasions when we dinged the bell to let the driver know we wanted to get off, we would look behind us and half the bus had suddenly stood up and rushed to get off at the same time as us. This left us wondering what would have happened if we hadn’t have been getting off the bus…would these people have just stayed on without ringing the bell completely
missing their stop? Puzzling!
We spent a couple of days wandering around the UNESCO World Heritage sights of Georgetown looking at the old Clan houses and temples and we also took the bus to Gurney Drive where there is another huge shopping centre and a really famous hawker (food) centre. The food centre wasn’t open by the time we were leaving but it seemed like a lot of seafood which neither of us are too keen on so after an ice cream respite - seriously we lost count of the number of ice creams and ice lollies we ate on this trip - we headed on back to a shower and a Kapitans meal.
While at Gurney Drive we popped into the Cold Storage supermarket (on the hunt for Cadbury’s) and we had what has to be the strangest food/drink experience we have had in quite a while. This is the Sarsi drink experience. We were looking in the fridges for a cold drink and Donna sees a bottle called Sarsi and manages to convince both herself and Neil that this is Malaysia’s version of Dr Pepper. So looking forward to a nice cold drink we unscrewed the
lid, Neil took a nice big drink and managed to pass the bottle to Donna without letting on that drinking Sarsi is like drinking liquid Tiger Balm or some other menthol-type muscle relaxant. It was disgusting…that explains the look on Neil’s face on the photo. We won’t be doing that again in a hurry!
So, after some action packed days in Georgetown we were more than ready to move on to the nearest beach - Batu Ferringghi if only to get that cooling sea breeze!
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karen
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Good to have you back
Where have you been? It's been a long 8 months at boring work without your updates. sooooooooo jealous you are still on holiday! How do you do it?!