Advertisement
Published: March 28th 2016
Ok so I was dreading the next part of the journey, having decided we wanted to see some of Malaysia the question was how to travel. As you know our main plan was to take a train wherever possible, but to train it meant going backwards to Surat Thani (you remember that awful 3 bus, 5 hour bus ride!), and I’m not for travelling backwards! So we needed a bus, and we knew it was going to take about 8-10 hours. Our mantra became, let’s just ‘suck it up’ and try and enjoy the scenery. What a pleasant surprise, yes we were taken to a bus station, where we were duly labelled (stickers) with ‘Penang’, and where we met up with about 12 others also labelled with the same destination. A 5 hour drive in a mini bus to Had Yai (Thailand still), then another 4 hours in an extremely blinged up mini bus over the border and right into the centre of George Town, Penang. The journey was made all the more pleasant as we met Emmie a gardener come play therapist from Bristol and her Polish boyfriend, who’d been travelling for 18 months but had some crazy tails of
their work experience on the weed farms in California!
Our expectations were surpassed when we were dropped off only 2 minutes from our hotel in George Town. (A big deal because you don’t want to be haggling taxi/tuk tuk fayres at 10 pm at night in a new currency!). The hotel was fabulous, although it looked a bit like a 1970s student campus building, it had free breakfast (eggs benedict were amazing), free drinks every night in the rooftop bar where they showed a film, free tea, coffee and ice cream all day and (my favourite) free laundry! All for the princely sum of £27 per night!
George Town is a delightful mix of cultures, predominant 3 are Chinese Malay and Indian. Therefore, you also get a fantastic mix of temples, mosques and churches as well as a fabulous diversity of foods. We ate at an Indian restaurant, and twice at the Red Garden Food Paradise, where there were over 35 stalls of mixed ethnic foods surrounding a central eating area, waitresses weaved through and sold beer, and you were entertained by live music….. but we didn’t make the lady boy show… already had
Into the Jungle
a walk from Penang Botanical gardensexperience of that in Krabi!
There was a lot to see in George Town. A British colony from 1786 when Francis Light acquired the town and notably the harbour from the Sultan of Kedah on behalf of the East India Co., and later in the name of Great Britain. The Penang State museum although small told the history of the small island well. Penang still retains a great deal of the architecture of its 19
th century trading and shops in fact they are protected as a UNESCO heritage site. Penang remained under British colonial rule until 1957 when it obtained independence, except for the period of Japanese occupation in WW2.
We visited Fort Cornwallis where Captain Light landed. To encourage his men to clear the area for development he reportedly used cannons to shoot gold coins into the jungle. The Fort was never really useful, as it was too small, and we didn’t find anything there much, let alone coins!.
The town has a young ‘arty’ feel, lots of posters encouraging education, study and a graffiti art scene. We dipped into the quaint Camera Museum, Kim could reminisce over the collection
of old cameras, but it also recognised the contribution photography has made internationally, from iconic pictures demonstrating journalism to the use of digital photography in science.
A visit to Pinang Peranaken Mansion made an excellent stop, where an over exuberant tour guide elaborated on the wonders of the residence. It was the home of a Baba, and Nonya, Perankans, which means that they are Chinese heritage but born in Malaya. The Chinese adopted some local Malayan and British cultures and architecture, we were told they were involved in both straight and illegal business, it was the height of the opium trading.
During our stay we caught the ‘hop on hop off bus’ for a trip around the town and its surrounding areas. We walked in the botanical gardens, quite lovey, but in need of rain which is due very soon in large quantities. A ride on an extremely steep funicular railway took us to the top of Penang Hill, stunning views but also some odd side shows that reminded us of little amusement parks in the Isle of Wight. For some reason there was also a medical centre… handy?. The bus also took us
to the posh beach area of Batu Ferringhi, swish hotels like the Hard Rock line the coastal route and pretty but small beaches which overlook the straights of Malacca.
Lastly we took the ferry to the mainland port of Butterworth, this is where the train comes to from Thailand. A little disappointed at its modern feel and development, we headed straight back to George Town, after all its free ice cream in the hotel!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.079s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0483s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
