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Published: January 25th 2015
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We arrived in Butterworth (the station for Penang island) at about 13.30 off the overnight sleeper from Chumpon in Thailand. There were some immedìately obvious differences....the Malay writing (unlike Thai) uses the same alphabet as English, and the electrical sockets are like english ones. From Butterworth it was a short ferry ride over to Georgetown in Penang. There we lugged the baggage the couple of streets to our guesthouse in the old town. This proved to be the only bad place where we have stayed so far! Everywhere until now we have been made to feel welcome; but here we arrived to find the place locked up. A kind neighbour had to telephone the manager and ask him to come and let us in. Fortunately we were only booked here 2 nights before moving to a lovely airbnb for 5 nights close to the beach resort of Batu Ferranghi about 40 mins bus ride away. Here the host was incredibly enthusiastic and welcoming. He gave us heaps of information about the local area, and on our final night he even brought us out to eat followed by a Karaoke place with his friends.
Georgetown is a world heritage site because
of the many historic buildings and different cultures - Malay, Chinese, British and Indian living in close proximity. To be honest, we were too hot and tired to be bothered to explore this historic town. Instead, we enjoyed sitting in the beach side cafe near our airbnb, and swimming or lounging beside the pool there. The airbnb was on the 21st floor of a complex of several blocks of condominiums sharing a large pool surrounded by trees and sun loungers.
A funny excursion we had in Georgetown was the time tunnel and 3d murals exhibition. The 3d murals are paintings on the wall with props infront, where you or the enthusiastic young staff can take photos of each other. This gave us a bit of a laugh.
Batu Ferranghi has a long sandy beach very busy with jetskis, banana rides, horse rides and paragliding. Being a muslim country, there are no people lying on the sands in bikinis and swim suits. There were a lot of Arabs there on holiday. The women wore their long black robes, and sometimes niqab to cover their faces, even when they were in the water, on a jet ski or paragliding. (Its
a bit reassuring to know that the clothes dont stop them from enjoying themselves at the beach). As a westerner I felt underdressed and almost indecent in my very staid one piece swim suit....so I didnt swim at all on the busy Batu Ferranghi beach, and changed as soon as I got out of the water at a quiet beach. Fortunately for me we had the use of the swimming pool at the airbnb, which was not crowded, and was mostly used by westerners and Chinese. Most of the Malay muslim women wore trousers or long skirts with headscarves. There are some really stylish outfits with headscarves to match in with the clothes or accessories.
One day we visited the national park, about 30 mins away by bus. The buses are very frequent (every 5 mins from 6am til 11pm), cheap at well under £1, and air conditioned. There we took a walk through the jungle to Turtle Beach, and came back by boat, stopping to swim at Monkey Beach on the way back. We finally got to see some monkeys in the jungle there, and after that again in the jungle next to the airbnb. We also saw
a komodo dragon neat Turtle Beach, but didnt get the camera out quickly enough for a picture. At Turtle Beach we saw some baby turtles in a plastic tank at the research institute, but not on the sand. (The mother turtles lay the eggs under the sand here...naturally the babies would dig themselves out when hatched, and make their way down the beach to the sea....many being eaten by seagulls during the journey across the beach. The Malays prevent them from getting eaten by digging up the eggs, hatching them in captivity, and then releasing the babies straight into the sea).
Anoth
er outing was to the Tropical Fruit Farm. We have been enjoying the fresh tropical fruits and juices in both Thailand and Malaysia, and liked the idea of finding out more. The tour said they grow over 200 types of fruit there, and we could see them growing and then sample them. We were shown quite a few different trees and bushes , and learnt some interesting facts; but the tour was a bit spoilt by the guide moaning at length about how he is always given small groups of europeans to show around whilst his
colleague takes round larger groups of arabs, and so gets paid a larger bonus. The company has a policy to keep the 2 groups seperate, and so while there were only 4 in our group, the Arab groups were about 12 people. The guide was very pissed off about bringing us round and rushed a bit. We saw the trees the durian fruits grow on, but these were out of season. Durians are a large bad smelling fruit. (The interesting thing about them is that there are signs on buses and other public places to say that smoking, dogs, weapons, alcohol and dorian are banned. ) The other disappointment was that when we came to taste the delicious fruits, they were not labelled, and we felt a nuisance asking what was what.
So, overall the best thing for us about Penang has been chillaxing by the swimming pool!
Next stop will be Cameron Highlands, 5 hours away by airconditioned bus and costing less than £5 each.
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