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Published: August 7th 2007
On the day we finally left Langkawi we opted to stay in the bungalow until 3 minutes to midday...just to make sure we got our money's worth! Again, Neil did another fine job of finding us transportation to the jetty so we could catch our ferry to Penang.
By now, everyone will know Neil's knack of finding great, reliable transport! If this car had ever been called roadworthy, it was probably in the 1960's and we have made a note that if a taxi a. has it's windows open and b. the boot doesn't open we shouldn't get in it! The taxi driver...a bald headed, mud stained clothed bloke with a flat cap and a fag hanging out his mouth grinned at us (with three teeth) and proceeded to stuff one big rucksack in the front seat, the other in the middle of the back seat and pushed us two either side of it with our other smaller day sacks. To say this was one of the smallest backseats ever is an understatement. This journey had not started well, Neil was getting his right arm slowly roasted as he had the sun on his side and Donna was getting mouthfuls
of the drivers fag every couple of seconds. This taxi was also the slowest car we had ever been in, it went (and we are very serious about this) 20 miles an hour, top speed, even less going uphill. We were witness to a road rage incident on this journey, actually it was directed at our driver. We were crawling up a hill to a set of traffic lights on red when the brakes decided not to work, not for want of the driver frantically pumping the brake pedal! We finally stopped, halfway over the 'stop' line, the next thing we heard a shout and we turned around to see a bloke in the car next to us angrily shouting and making all sort of gestures at our driver while his wife looked suitably embarrassed and we just laughed (but not out loud as the driver sort of scared us a little bit!).
Close to the harbour it started to rain...this was when we realised how bad this car was, the windows couldn't be put up! The rain started really coming into the car (it was a good job we had put the waterproof covers on the rucksacks) we
great colonial building
there were so many of these in Georgetownwere getting soaked and the driver was frantically trying to get the button for the electric windows to work. This involved hammering the button with his fist, his thumb and finally, whilst still driving he flicked off the button with his pocket knife and started stabbing the mechanism inside until the windows went up. We arrived at the harbour, the journey having taken 20 minutes longer than it was meant to, the car groaning, screeching and never fully stopping so we had to grab everything with the car rolling and we were a little windswept and wet and embarrassed in front of everyone (who stared) when we arrived at the harbour.
The ferry journey to Penang, however, went smoothly and we arrived, not into the main ferry terminal as we expected, but into a bit of the jetty next to a disused warehouse - maybe the docking fees were less there? We then ran the now-familiar gauntlet of the usual taxi cartel, who annoyingly only targeted the western tourists saying 'yoo wan taksi, taksi, taksi' and finally just yelling loudly in our ears TAKSI when we ignored them! We walked and finally arrived in Little India and Donna was
left with the bags while Neil went out and about to find a room.
While Neil was looking for a room he had all sorts of adventures! He wandered around the delightfully named Love Lane area of Georgetown...the naming will become all too clear very soon! So Neil starts to look for accommodations and didn't like the first few which were in the - not accurate in the slightest - gospel, Lonely Planet. He then starts to wander in to each hotel/guesthouse he sees...unfortunately one of them, called the Full Love Inn (ahem!) was run by a 60 year old woman that looked like the Chinese pirate lord from Pirates 3. With a whiter than white talcum-powdered face, heavy blue eye make up, false eyelashes and big ruby red lips, she looked Neil up and down and said in a husky (like she'd smoked 40 a day forever) 'hello, dharleeng, how may I help yoo?'...Neil stuttering and a little unsure where to look, as she had a tight red satin dress with her boobs hanging out, asked if she had a room, to which she replied, 'yes dharleeng, for how long yoo wan', I can do for 3 hours
with pretty girl (gesturing at a strangely dressed, in no way was she pretty, or a girl, girl) for 80 ringgits'. At this point, Neil mumbled his apologies and left sharpish. After several more viewings of short-time hotels, strange old lady and ladyboy experiences, Neil found a nice guesthouse for us to stay in, run by a sweet old Chinese couple. Horror of horrors though we had to share a bathroom and the walls and floors were literally made from papier mache but we had cable TV and it was cheap, although after a couple of hours being in the room, Donna began to have suspicions that these rooms also were rented 'by the hour' and when Neil took her past the Full Love Inn, she declared it was obviously a short-time hotel by the reasoning 'you can just tell'! Our guesthouse ended up being the noisiest place we have ever stayed due to the papier mache walls and that other people really seem to have no concept at how heavy footed they are, how noisy their TV is, how loud they talk at 6am in the morning and how loud they argue with their Thai girlfriends in their room!
Georgetown is one of those places where you don't get much for your money, so we made the best of it by filling our days with activities. Penang, like much of Malaysia is a strange mix of cultures with Indian, Chinese, ethnic Malay and hints of Britain too. The old colonial buildings were gorgeous, but unfortunately there didn't seem to be any efforts to restore them to their former glory and a lot were run down in need of paint jobs, as you can see from some of the pictures. We really enjoyed wandering through the old colonial streets, soaking up the atmosphere, listening to the sounds of Chinese people hocking up something from their lower intestines...seriously Chinese people are the worst of all Asians for this and will even hock up and spit it out on the floor in a restaurant. It's THE worst habit we have come across, Donna kept getting annoyed and Neil kept saying 'and you want to go to China?!' in an incredulous voice.
Our first evening in Penang was a little disastrous, but hilarious at the same time. We walked to Little India in search of some food and wandered into an
Indian (surprisingly!) restaurant that seemed very popular. We didn't get a chance to order and before we knew it we each had a huge banana leaf spread on the table in front of us, a couple of big spoonfuls of rice were dumped on the leaf, along with some dhaal, some strange stringy veg (no idea!), spicy green beans (which were tasty), topped off with some coconut curry sauce. We then got brought a chicken masala dosai, which was basically chicken masala, potatoes and peas in a rice flour eggy type folded over pancake and we also got a bowl of something which looked like deep fried tofu (urrggggh)...we looked at each other and thought oh well, let's dig in, we were so hungry at this point! We looked for the forks and spoons before realising that there was no cutlery in the entire restaurant...everyone was just eating with fingers. With some trepidation, in case we 'did' it wrong, we began eating with fingers, this was an experience we didn't really enjoy as although customary in Malaysia, we never really felt right eating with our fingers...to make it worse you can only eat with your right hand as the left
is used to wipe your bum! Imagine it, we were like two giggling school kids, with Neil commenting how strange it was to see Donna shovelling food in her mouth, spilling it everywhere at the same time and dribbling dhaal down her chin...it's a good job it wasn't a first date or anything! The 'waiter' also hovered anxiously in the background with the sauce containers, and he offered more every 3 mouthfuls of food we took. Donna didn't like eating with fingers at all as it got her fingernails dirty and made the skin on her fingertips wrinkly...you know how OCD she is! We did enjoy the meal, but the combination of flavours (particularly the coconut curry with the dhaal) didn't really work for us and we didn't go back there...also the meal gave Donna the squitz so we thought it wouldn't be a good idea! Our night was topped off with a nice cup of tea (as beer is waaaay to expensive here!!) and an early night with our bottle of duty free vodka and cable TV!
The next day was slightly better food-wise, we discovered the wonderful Hainan chicken restaurants in Georgetown. Hainan chicken for those who
don't know is chicken which has been boiled in a delicious stock and served with rice, soup and a lovely honey, soy sauce and ginger sauce. It was sooooo good, we just couldn't get enough. The chicken is hung in a glass container at the front of the restaurant and the 'cooks' take great care in chopping the chicken and laying it over the rice. It sounds like such a boring meal, but honestly it's one of the best we have had on our travels. We also had a bit more luck with Indian food, finding a fantastic restaurant which did the best tandoori chicken, naan and dhaal we have ever tasted. This isn't like the Indian food we get in the UK, it was so tasty and moorish we couldn't get enough...although Donna (her OCD coming back!) began to worry that we weren't eating enough veg!
Whilst in Penang we decided to treat ourselves to a few trips to the cinema, it was so cheap, it worked out at 80p each and for an extra 80p we could get a lovers combo. What might you ask is a lovers combo? Nothing exciting, just a huge caramel popcorn (there
sleepy rickshaw man
well he'd had a tough day cycling people around! we go, we were getting our veg!) and a big drink of whatever we wanted. Neil was always too embarrassed to ask for the lovers combo and made Donna ask for it. The cinema staff all seemed to giggle when Donna said 'can I have a lurrrvers combo please'! We had great fun watching Spiderman 3 which was rubbish and cringeworthy with Tobey MacGuire doing a weird strut and 'evil' thing *shudder*; 28 weeks later was great and had the Malays in the cinema hiding behind their seats and crying in fear...it was funny to see the UK on a film though! We then went to see Pirates 3, which again was good but we had more fun observing which jokes the Malays found funny compared to what we laughed at. The people in the cinema with us seemed to appreciate the visual humour a lot more than the actual jokes in the script...as in 'eee look a monkey and he's doing funny things', eventhough all Malays understood perfect English. These cinema visits were a real treat for us, although we are sure the cinema company thought we were perishable and needed to be deep frozen as the air con
in the cinema was fierce...Donna had to wear a hoody and wrap a sarong around her legs and feet and Neil just had to stay cold as Donna wasn't sharing her sarong with anyone; Neil's chattering teeth didn't detract from our enjoyment though! What did disturb us was the constant chatter and phone ringing and one bloke who kept getting up, walking around the cinema to stretch his legs and the constant loud yawning of another bloke in the row in front...he seriously couldn't have been feeling sleepy, we'd had understood if the cinema was toasty warm but the air con would have been enough to keep Sleeping Beauty and Sleepy the Dwarf awake!
We were surprised to note that while we were in Malaysia there was a 50 years of nationhood celebration going on, marking the fact that the British only relinquished control of Malaysia in 1957. Maybe this is why Malaysia and the Malays are similar in some ways to the British and the UK. We had a nice morning wandering around the Penang waterfront, looking at the town hall and museum and seeing Fort Cornwallis where Sir Francis Light first discovered Malaysia way back in the
days of yore (yep we can't remember when!) we refused to pay the entrance fee of a whopping £1 each and contented ourselves looking at the walls and the cannons poking over the top and then headed off to McD's for a 9p ice cream with raspberry sauce...mmmmm ice cream!
After a couple of false starts with unintelligible directions from the old guy who ran our guesthouse, we finally found the free shuttle bus to Queensbay Shopping centre...there was a rumour (started by Neil) that there was a Top Shop and Zara there. Donna was uncontainable, she was so excited at seeing a Top Shop she was shaking with anticipation! We found the Top Shop and Zara and Donna was restrained and only bought one top...but this was with the knowledge/promise that there were more of these joyous temples of goodness in Kuala Lumpur, which was our next, and last, stop in the lovely Malaysia.
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Darren
non-member comment
Interesting
I stumbled upon your travel log accidentally, is quite interesting. This is a good way to know what is our foreign guests think of Malaysia. Welcome back anytime. email: darrenguyz@hotmail.com