Blogs from George Town, Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 19

Penang is an island off of Malaysia, in the Melacca Straits, the narrow, strategic passage where all the shipping has always moved between Asia and India / the Middle East / Europe. I’ve been visiting the city of Georgetown, or George Town, which is the main city on the island and one of the larger cities in Malaysia. Georgetown is a fascinating mix of Chinese, Malay, and Indian culture. Its culture feels much like the diversity I described in the blog on Kuala Lumpur, a few weeks ago. Georgetown’s history is similar to the history of Melacca, which May, Jordan, Ella and I visited last year. May and I wrote a blog about Melacca last year. Much of what we wrote there applies to Georgetown as well. Actually, Patsy the Purple Cow’s (Ella’s) blog on Melacca ... read more

As I write this, we’re on a train to Thailand. It should take about 9 hours to reach Surat Thani, a city in the South which is the gateway to all the islands on the east coast. We’re going to Ko Samui, but as our train arrives too late to make the ferry crossing tonight, we have a hotel booked for the night so we can do it in the morning instead. Also, we are sitting next to real monks! WOW. We spent another day and morning in Penang and spent quite a lot of time just relaxing and taking lots of naps. On Friday night, we found this great food court and ordered an Indian which was mouth-wateringly yummy. It was the only place we could find which sold beef strangely enough and after finding ... read more

We entered Malaysia after a long day traveling through the south of Thailand. We could tell immediately that we were in a different country, it feels more developed with it's complex road systems and newer modernised buildings. Our first stop was the small western island of Penang where we spent a few days in it's main city of Georgetown. A kaleidoscope of cultures fuse together in Georgetown to create this diverse little place; a mixture of Malay, Indian and Chinese communities roll into one. Taking a walk through the streets of Georgetown feels like you are passing through 3 different countries. One moment you will be wandering past the peaceful, incense lined paths of Chinatown when suddenly you turn into the next street to be bombarded with bollywood beats being blared out of huge speakers and ... read more

The harbor of Port Klang serves as the entry for Kuala Lumpur. We have been in KL many times on previous cruises, so upon the recommendation of friends, Hilda and Jarmo, we decided to visit the newly built capitol city of Putrajaya. While Kuala Lumpur is the financial capitol of the country, the governmental functions are being transferred to the new city designed just for that purpose. Not everyone is sold on the idea like some of the princes and the powerful Sultan who prefer to live elsewhere. But Putrajaya is a well planned city set in beautiful surroundings incorporating both traditional and modern architectural design--somewhat like Washington, D.C. We had a fairly empty bus as there were about 15 no-shows for the tour. Since most of the tours are complimentary, there are some passengers who ... read more

Three different people provided three different answers to the same question. Google wasn't solving the problem either. What I wanted was a bus from Kuala Lumpur to Georgetown in Penang. I had the names of three different bus stations and had just walked to a fourth one that was closed for renovation. Getting out of the city was proving to be more difficult then I would have thought. A variance in prices, schedules, bus routes and cabs to get to the bus stations around KL had my head spinning with numbers, timetables while I was unclear which bus station to choose. I did unleash a profanity chain at the internet cafe much to the displeasure of Richie. I had gotten a little frustrated by all this. What about a train? I checked the website. Cheaper and ... read more