a slight diversion

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Welcome to part 3 of the blog.

Unfortunately Leigh had to leave us, shes doing a 1 month jungle trek to raise money for an orphanage in an Indonesian village that was devastated by floods in 2003. If anyone is interested the website is www.kindertehuisbukitlawang.nl, this might still be in dutch but if you want any more info, send me an email and i can send back the instructions to the English language site.Steve however has decided to stay on and travel with us for a bit.

Anyway after we said our goodbyes to Leigh, we spent one more night on pangkor, swimming, eating, drinking on the roof terrace and trying not to step on poisonous frogs in the dark, basically the same as we'd been doing all week. The next morning we caught the ferry off of the island, intending to head to the perhenthian islands on the north coast. Steve had other ideas though, he convinced us to try penang as he had heard the food there was amazing and he's a bit of an animal when it comes to his diet!

We caught a bus to butterworth, this took about 3 hours and unlike the last bus me and Reuben caught to lumut, neither the bus nor the driver looked like they would breakdown and die at any minute. The driver did have a go at us, well Reuben anyway for slamming the luggage compartment door, it was actually me that slammed it, but i didn't really fancy an argument with the guy so i kept quite.
After this we caught a short 5 minute ferry over to penang and after half hour or so walking round in the sweltering heat we check into a small Chinese run hotel, quite clean and tidy, with a/c in the rooms, about 5 pound each per night!

Steve had wanted to come to the island to try out the local cuisine, but me and Reuben had read in the guidebook that there was an authentic English pub on the island that served pints, so we dragged him along for a taste of Britain. The pints were lovely, if a little expensive and we played some pool. I got hustled by Steve, who when i asked him to play looked very sheepish like he didn't know what to do, he then proceeded to beat me, best 2 out of 3, on home soil!!!

After that we headed to a small Indian restaurant, where we had the best Indian i have ever eaten. Tandoori chicken, rotis, naans, various currys and lasse, a fruit juice and milk drink that's very refreshing and kills the spice from the curry when it gets too much. All 3 of us ate like kings and the whole lot cost about 50 ringgit, which is 10 pounds!

Then we decided to find somewhere to have a drink, we found a cool little reggae bar on the same road as our hotel, and we spent hours drinking tiger beers and chatting to the Indonesian landlady. It was here that we met a really cool guy from Italy called Juva, he lives in Nepal and has spent time traveling across asia, which meant he had a lot of recommendations for places to go, especially in Laos, which i am really looking forward too.

We left the reggae bar and went back to have another pint at the English bar, however when we got there it was a completely different vibe from the day, gone was the quaint, quite pub atmosphere, in came the pumping euro dance music and sleazy old western men with very young Malaysian prostitutes. We only had one quick beer then went back to the hotel.

Tomorrow we hope to visit some temples and beaches on the island before catching another ferry too Langkawi, a tax free paradise where the drinks are cheap and then on too the perhenthians!

Again i cant upload the photos as there is no SD slot on this computer but i will whenever i have the chance.

Till next time, goodbye

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