Blogs from George Town, Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 16

When we booked our flight tickets in October, we did not even know when Chinese New Year would be. We just decided to take the cheapest return flight. Then, we thought it would be nice to end our trip in Penang. I had been there last year and loved it - but for Markus it was something new. Furthermore, it is a good place for some decent shopping before going back to expensive Switzerland. In December, we told our friend Serena in KK (Malaysia) that we will be in Penang and we asked her to join us - and she told us that it is CNY and she has no time to join us. That was a surprise. Well, we were sad, not to meet her. But, we were up to celebrate Chinese New Year in ... read more

Happy New Year! Last time I wrote we had just arrived in Singapore from Bali. The plan had originally been to spend both Christmas and New Year's Eve in Singapore. This was of course all without knowing much about Singapore... Our host Sam was very nice, though this was the first time that we've lived with someone and their parents. But Sam's family was amazingly wonderful to us, especially since Tay was sick and it rained the whole time we were there. Due to these two things we did little besides try the local cuisine and plan our onward travels. Singapore is a very modern city, but we found it unfriendly and uninteresting (sorry to anyone who really loves it!). We decided 4 days was quite long enough before moving on to Malaysia. Our first night ... read more

We left Cameron Highlands for Penang, via a short stopover in Ipoh. We managed to find our hostel easily and settled into the Penang lifestyle by having late night noodles from one of the many street vendors. We spent our first sightseeing day looking round the local area, visiting Fort Cornwallis, which is built on the Cape where the city’s founder (Captain Francis Light) landed. We also saw some beautiful government buildings, a church and some temples. Our next outing took us to the Snake Temple, where there are live snakes on the alters. Whilst the concept sounded interesting it was a little disappointing as all the snakes were very lethargic and it was hard to tell if they were real! The following day we went to see two temples, the Burmese Dharmikarama and the Thai ... read more

What we have been up to recently…..Part 1 Apologies for the relatively long delay since the last blog, there are no real excuses to be honest other than that we have been quite busy! Last time we posted anything we were about to leave Thailand for the second time, and enter Malaysia also for the second time. As I write today on December 13th we are back in Indonesia (again for the second time) and planning to leave again in 4 days time. As you can gather, there is a fair bit of stuff that falls in the “time in between” category. In fact, there is probably too much for one blog so consider this your first instalment of the update. Today’s topic ladies and gents (pens at the ready) in Malaysia. After a relaxing couple ... read more

Naz: From Krabi we headed down to Hat Yai in the South of Thailand for a one night stopover and then crossed the border the next day into Malaysia. When we arrived in Pulau Penang we were dropped off at a massive shopping centre so, after Ric stepped in a bag of curry straight off the bus, we decided to sample the Malay cuisine and headed straight to McDonalds... We then headed to Chinatown to see if we could find a place to stay. The streets on the way were disgusting, there were rats scurrying around and the place absolutely stunk! Anyway, we had heard good things about a place called Banana Guesthouse so headed there and because we were tired took a room without even looking at all the facilities... Bad decision! I am happy ... read more