Blogs from Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 7

We bought our tickets at the ferry terminal saving us a few ringgit rather than buying it from our guest house :) We had a tasty breakfast of yummy pastries from Bread Story and boarded our boat for George Town Penang. The journey passed quickly as a James Bond movie played on the screen and the views out to see were pretty. We arrived in George town in the early afternoon and set about finding a place to lay our heads. A lot of the places were booked up so do book Malaysia in advance! We found a place but it wasn't great! We took the free CAT bus around the town and out to the mall for a spot of shopping :) There were three big malls all next to each other so I had ... read more

A boat from Langkawi, a next stop for Sam, Becca and me. Love lane, beach street, church road - romantic, stirred, eclectic. A line of mosques, churches, synagogues, temples.. Turn to music, spices, iron work twists, turn to see murals on walls. Little India, China Town. Meander; bright blues, mint, wooden panes, cobbled lanes skyscrapers, shop-houses, crumble. Chinese dragons, colonial frames. Wooden planks out to the sea; Fishermen under bulbs, look out to ships. Friends made from Sudan; coffee, temple & live music trips. Sam performing lyrics, with a Marley alike on guitar, Noodles, rotti, prawns, masala. Lanterns in paper, crafts in wood, smoking incense. Doodling in China House, cake picks, creative spirits. Mazes of art, music swirls, pulling tastes. George Town, Penang.... read more

We had a bit of a sleep in today; got up and headed down for breakfast about 10:00am. I’d said to Bec that on this trip I’d (at least once) try noodles for breakfast. So I did, it was weird. I also had eggs and beans on toast. We were ready to leave so we headed out the front of the hotel to the public bus #101 at around 11:30am. We’d decided to go local today instead of the hop on/hop off as it didn’t really matter if we got lost and it was heaps cheaper, only 2.70MR to get all the way to Georgetown. We wanted to go all the way to the Jettys area to find two of the main street arts we missed on the previous day. The bus took just over an ... read more

Our day started early with our alarm set for 5:35am to have quick showers and check-out for our drive to JB Senai International Airport for our Air Asia flight to Penang. We made good time on the drive there and had organised to meet the Europcar representative there at 7:00am. Finally after a few laps of the airport we found him, handed over the keys and he did his standard check. There were no dints or scratches at all caused by us which was pretty impressive all things considered. We checked the mileage before getting out and noted we'd driven a total of 564kms. We had already checked-in online, just had to print our boarding passes and bag tags and drop our bags off which was all a very smooth and easy process. Then we went ... read more

Nick: Penang, the island located off the western coast of peninsular Malaysia, was to be the first stop of the last country on our itinerary. After the lazy days spent relaxing in docile Ko Phangan, we were both looking forward to being somewhere a bit busier once again, and following a short international flight from Ko Samui, and taxi ride across the island, by Thursday mid-afternoon we had arrived at our latest accommodation. We'd opted to stay in Georgetown, the neighbourhood located on the northeast of the island, and despite the abundance of guesthouses and hotels in the area, finding a room that ticked all of our boxes at a reasonable rate had proved trickier than expected. Checking into our hotel, we were given an enthusiastic and warm welcome by two guys that worked there, who ... read more