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From Kuala Lumpur, we decided to head north, going on the well worn, overland trail from Malaysia to Thailand. The obvious stop on the way was Penang Island, the oldest British settlement in Malaysia and a mini-backpacker mecca. While the spot seems kind of off the map for American tourists, it's become quite popular with tourists from the Arab world, wanting to visit a tropical, liberal Muslim country.
Getting there from Kuala Lumpur was actually a lot of fun. We payed about $3 extra for a "luxury" bus that included large, fully reclining seats. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get much sleep because a guy decided it would be nice to blare religious music from his cell phone for half the ride. However, it was a nice break from our usual cramped means of transportation. Our mistake of pretending to be real backpackers by show up without a place to stay was about to really make things unpleasant.
The bus dropped us off a little ways out of Georgetown, the main city on the island, and we took a taxi into town. Like good backpackers, we had reverently sifted through Lonely Planet and had marked off some decent places
to stay. We told the cabbie the name of the first place, and he said that it was probably booked because the local militia had the weekend off and were partying it up in Penang. When we got there, it turned out he was correct.
So began our journey to find a vacancy. Our brash cabbie took us from one shitty hotel to the next, saying something nasty in an unidentifiable language as we discovered, each was booked. The receptionists weren't much nicer, only violently shaking their heads as a I approached. At last, the cabbie pulled up to an empty street corner announced that it was final stop and the lace was "not so nice."
Seeing a big sign for a bar and hotel, I climbed a gritty staircase to the second floor. The pungent aroma of mildew greeted us as we entered, and the attendant announced he had a room available that featured hot water and air conditioning. It was at a pretty reasonable price, so we happily took it.
Stepping into the room, I was reminded of various scenes from the X-Files, seeing roaches all over the place, suspiciously stained bedsheets, and a worse
version of the lobby's smell. The bathroom took things to another level, with a black substance covering most surfaces, and a toilet bowl with water so cloudy that I couldn't see the bottom. The guy at the front desk insisted we pay him up front.
Alex was pretty hungry, so we went off in search of food. The hotel seemed to be surrounded by closed storefronts, and the only food option seemed to be a dodgy Indian place. As a rule, it's a bad idea to eat at a questionable Indian restaurant if you don't have access to a clean toilet. Never the less, we entered, and without showing us the menu, started to serve us food. Thankfully, it wasn't bad and seemed to agree with out. Instead of heading back to roachland, we decided to talk a walk around.
Our meanderings took us out of Little India and into another Chinatown. Segregation at its finest! This appeared to be near the city center, and we spotted a hostel. On a whim, we inquired about vacancies. They did have a free room and we gladly took it, writing off the roach room to stupidity and an crooked cab
driver looking for commissions. The hostel workers were nice enough to drive us to the other hotel to pick up our stuff.
The hostel was on the infamous Love Lane, a street with a number of dive bars, local characters, shady cats, and a sprinkling of ambiguously gendered prostitutes. The dive bars were a good time, meeting our share of old burnouts and young Germans while drinking ridiculously overpriced beers.
Penang was the first walkable city on our trip and it felt good to get some exercise. The city was filled with the standard attractions of any colonial city-- famous mansions, old forts, a great waterfront, light houses, and everything else. There were a number of great temples and wats, including an ornate complex called the Kek Lok Si Temple.
It's on the outskirts of a city, on the slopes of Penang Hill. Unlike some of the other hill side temples we had seen, getting there is not a simple matter of climbing a trail or long stair case up to the temple. In this case, we walked through a narrow tunnel, lined with aggressive tee-shirt and trinket vendors. After wading through throngs of worshipers/tourists, we arrived
at the first stop on the temple trail: a pond filled to the brim with turtles. It progressed through a colorfully decorated temple, ringed with a wall of live-like statues. It culminated in a white tower which we couldn't seem to enter.
Before visiting the temple, we made a stop to the neighboring botanical gardens, where we found a trail head that led up the hill into virgin rain forest. The thing we hadn't counted on was hordes of monkeys that guarded the entrance and roamed the parking lot, looking for adventurous locals to feed them some fruit. While, no feces throwing was witnessed, we did see our fair share of monkeys jumping around in the trees above us. It began to rain and, considering that we were hiking up a steep mud trail with no rain gear and wearing sandals, we decided to turn back and seek shelter.
One of the highlights of Penang was the excellent food. On the waterfront, a food court of street food had been set up, featuring the predictable bowls of steamy noodle soup, grilled mystery meat on a stick, and the treat of giant fried crabs.
We finally felt like
tourists in Penang, having felt like visiting businessmen in Bangkok and KL, and pioneering adventurers in Cambodia. Our next stop was Phuket Thailand, a little ways up the coast. The journey involved our first encounter with a famous Thai minibus.
As always, you can see Alex's version of events at Hawking away.
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John Turner
non-member comment
Gross, yes, but not a record setting toilet ..
I expect that your initial comment 'kind of off the map' is an understatement in the case of Penang. It was amusing to type in just "Malaysia" to Google maps, however, in an initial fruitless attempt to find out just where the hell you guys actually are. It was rewarding to see, scrolling down, that there was a snapshot of the toilet after the wonderful description of the abortive hotel room. But, hey, in the photo you can see the bottom just fine. And some parts of the floor didn't have dark mold. The picture actually looked a lot like the bathroom in the dorm of our youngest. I now have to add Penang Island to the list of places to see (I assume there are upscale hotels for the petit bourgeoisie -- turns out there is a well-known Jazz festival on the Island in December). It was comforting to see that one can buy a large than lifesize poster of Jesus in Little India, illustrating your description of 'liberal Muslim country.' BTW, the New York Times yesterday had a large spread on photos of Ankor (at http://tinyurl.com/39cf83). Yours were just as good.