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Penang
Chinese New YearI had only intended to stay in Penang for a couple of days. Long enough to get a 60 day visa from the Thai consulate and then head for the islands in the Andaman Sea.
It didn't quite work out like that.
For a start, we arrived on a Friday afternoon and of course the Thai consulate would be closed over the weekend.
Penang is itself an island in the Andaman Sea and in the past was of strategic importance.
It was home to the first British settlement on the Malay peninsular, founded by Captain Francis Light around 1779.
At the time only a handful of indigenous people were living on the island. Apparently they were quite keen to help him build his fort for a payment of 15 Spanish dollars each. What they found to spend the money on is not recorded.
We went and had a look around the fort. It has been handed to private management and now costs 50p to get in. They have done a good job though. We were met inside by a nice Indian man who gave Linda a dried palm leaf rolly cigarette to smoke, let her hold his
musket and then sent us on our way around a comprehensive set of informative displays.
Georgetown, the capital, is a complete melting pot of Chinese, Indians, Malays and tourists and is consequently great for shopping. Once I'd got my head around the currency conversion it was even better so we splashed out on clothes, luggage and spectacles.
On the subject of luggage, for this trip we bought wheeled holdalls instead of rucksacks. It seemed a good idea at the time but we soon found that all the contents migrate to one end of the bag, creating an unwieldy bulge.
We sorted through the enormous range of "brand name" luggage on offer and picked a couple of decent quality looking wheeled suitcases. Of course, any backpacker credibility is completely blown as we will turn up at cool locations looking like a couple of middle-class holidaymakers. If I had a marker pen I could scrawl "My other bag is a Karrimore" across the 'Polo' logo, though I doubt it would do any good.
We gave one of the holdalls to a goitred old lady who appears to live on the street, just along from our guest house.
She spends all day on a shady piece of pavement with a small collection of brown paper bags which I assume contain her possessions.
Linda thought that perhaps she'd like to keep all her brown paper bags in a holdall.
I thought perhaps she'd like to sell the holdall and buy more brown paper bags.
Either way, she seemed very pleased to receive the bag but there was no sign of it when I passed by half an hour later.
Our visit also happened to coincide with Chinese New Year.
The advertised street party turned out to be an exercise in how many thousands of people can be squeezed into a few side streets.
We did see some traditional theatre, a fashion show and a very impressive break dancing display in addition to sweating off several pounds in weight.
They didn't wait until midnight to see in the New Year. Things wound up with a decent firework display at 11.30pm.
Looking back on it I realise that we didn't see any evidence of alcohol consumption during the whole evening, somewhat of a contrast to the typical UK drinks-fest.
We finally hit
a beach by taking a bus to Batu Ferringhi, 15 km out of Penang, or in this case, a one hour bus trip. Still it was nice to have paddle our first paddle in the Andaman Sea.
We got up early the next day for the ferry to Lankawi.
The guest house owner asked if we wanted a taxi, and when we went out of the front door there was a geriatric bloke with a geriatric bicycle rickshaw. I never thought he'd get both us and our luggage on board, but he piled 'em high and we gently trundled through the back streets to the docks as first light sifted through the gloom.
On arrival in Langkawi we headed straight for the main tourist area of Cenang Beach and booked into a budget motel from the guide book.
This accommodation was a bit disappointing, consisting of a large hut with a lino floor and an iffy bathroom. At £9 it wasn't particularly cheap either, although it was right on the beach.
However, we soon found that there were some excellent low season offers at the local hotels and the next night we moved into
a luxury room in the Boutique hotel which was very nice , and well worth the £16.50, particularly as I negotiated the inclusion of a big cooked breakfast.
Although it's the main tourist area, apart from the beach there is only the one road, lined with a selection of shops and restaurants.
Keen to avoid the tourist size portions and prices we found a very nice Malay place serving local dishes at one end of the strip.
We ate there most nights, joined by a selection of obese Germans who would order half of the menu. We overheard a waiter tell one couple "You eat too much" as he took their order. They were unfazed, I expect they already knew.
It was only £7.50 to hire a car for the day so we set off around the island, heading first for the main town, Kuah, to find an atm.
Thinking I was driving to the port we accidentally pulled in to a jetty area and found a beautiful, deserted park along the sea front.
There are only a handful of roads, and not much traffic, so it would be difficult to get lost.
After visiting a couple of waterfalls the highlight of the day was ascending a local mountain by cable car. which would have afforded some seriously good views had the weather not decided to close in.
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