Penang

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Rise and shine! Yet another early morning. Thankfully the ride to Penang went off without a hitch; in fact I arrived over an hour earlier than expected. Arriving in Georgetown I got the bus to Chinatown, the backpacker district. after the hassle of sorting out a room during the previous days I wanted to make things easier for myself so I booked a dorm room in advance in the cheapest place I could find, when I found the hostel the owner, a man called jimmy told me there were no dorms and instead I was getting a free upgrade to a private room. I dropped my bags and started talking to 2 guys in reception, 1 a Yorkshire lad the other a Dutchman. we all arrived within hours of each other and had a case of the munchies so we set out to find the food court, it had around a dozen eateries from far and wide, Malay, Japanese, Chinese, Thai & Indian. After one and a half laps I made my choice and waited. We took a walk around the area after dinner before heading back, I wanted to chat to some Aussies I met the others went for a kip so they could watch England’s first match of the World Cup.

In the morning all but thee Dutchman rose early to visit the snake temple, as you would expect there were snakes, there was also a photographer with 2 pythons, I was the only one to fork out the 3 and hold the snakes. After that the Australians and I went for curry in little India before I met James to go to the fort which we felt was a big letdown. If you read the flyer seen it, done it and have everything but the t-shirt. The walk there and back was hot, but we looked at the buildings around the fort and seafront where you can clearly see the British influence. In the evening we went to an Indian restaurant where I had the best Tandoori chicken ever. It’s ridiculously cheap for £2.50 I had Tandoori chicken, garlic naan, and sprite. And sauces. That night the Australians were playing so we went for drinks in a place running promotion 5 for price of 4 which for us worked out to be great for us. After a few rounds we built a replica Angkor Wat which looked great, we utilised thee bottles, ashtrays, ashtrays, napkins and even ice from the beer bucket. Sadly there was no camera handy to record our accomplishments.

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