Phuket & Penang

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Phuket proved to be the loation for my first piece of proper bad luck on my travels. Upon arrival I had noticed that the padlock on my suitcase had quite a few scratch marks on it. Assuming that it was simply something that had happened during transit I thought nothing more of it. However when I next checked on my secret stash of backup money that I had been keeping in my suitcase, to my horror it had disappeared. Robbed. Annoyed but not devastated its just part of travelling I guess and it teaches me to be more careful in the future. So although we had a really nice chilled out day on the stunning Patong beach watching a beautiful sunset, I was pretty pleased to see the back of Phuket when we left.
After a long but fairly comfortable 14 hour journey to Georgetown on the island of Penang in Malaysia, we quickly dumped our bags in our nice guesthouse and looked for somewhere to eat hoping not everywhere had shut. We came across the only restaurant still open in Chinatown which was filled with locals. Never have I been to a restaurant where everything happens so quickly! The waitress came over immediately, recommended two dishes which we said would be fine, seconds later our table was surrounded with people offering us a variety of spring rolls, dim sum and various other tempting chinese foods and before we knew it our table was rammed full of food! It was a delicious meal, the two particular dishes standing out most being a giant dumpling that tasted exactly like a steamed steak and ale pudding and the more bizarre crispy chicken in a sweet strawberry sauce! Genuinely really tasty!
However my main reason for writing is to describe the day that Tom and I have just had, definitely one of the most eventful so far on our travels. It started in a very leisurely fashion, having a nice breakfast and strolling around Georgetown, perusing over the colourful markets of little India, taking in the smells of sweets and spices, and walking along the beautiful seafront of the town. As we came to the end of one particularly unusual conversation as to what would happen if Tom were King of the World, we decided to get some lunch. Taking the Lonely Planet Books advice we headed for a curry house in Little India and had a great meal there. Penang definitely seemed to be living up to its impressive culinary reputation. And so before leaving the restaurant and moving on to our next destintion Tom went to the toilet. The next set of events happened extremely quickly. Sitting at my table I heard a scream and some shouting, and turning round I noticed some of the staff starting to get into a bit of a commotion. Out of the crowd Tom came striding over the table and said in a fast firm tone "We have to leave", I asked "Why?" only for him to reply "NOW!" Frantically gathering my stuff together we made a quick get away, made our way out of Little India for Tom to then reveal what had happened. Upon entering the toilet, what he had thought was a stiff door that needed a good yanking to open it, turned out to be a locked one that he had managed to rip off its hinges to reveal an Indian lady who proceeded to just scream at him. Laughing at the situation we went into a small place in Chinatown and ordered a couple of beers. Again what was to happen next was unexpected. Rather than bring us two beers the people in the restaurant insisted on bringing us various different types of chinese food. Still stuffed from our curry we were not hungry at all and had to constantly send the food away and tried to explain we only wanted a couple of beers only for the people in the restaurant to start shouting loudly in chinese at each other, clearly unimpressed with us. And so, still beer-less Tom and I snuck out of the place, and thought having successfully managed to aggravate two ethnic groups we should perhaps do our next bit of sight seeing outside of Georgetown. So we hopped on a bus and arrived in Air Itam, a suburb of Georgetown which houses the Kek Lok Si Temple, the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia, and also lies at the bottom of Penang hill which is supposed to have a great view of Georgetown from the top. We made our way through the many market stalls arriving in the impressive Kek Lok Si temple, which seemed to be a mixture of various different kinds of style of architecture - very typical of malaysia as it is definitely the most culturally diverse country we have been in so far, giving it a very different feel to the rest of south east asia. As we were making our way out of the Temple we noticed that the way we had entered had shut. A little annoyed, from what we could see the only other way out was down a small rural alley that took you back to where we had come from (The temple was on top of a hill). Looking like we had no other option we started to make our way down, taking a left which came to some steps which looked over the valley in which the town lay in below. Taking a moment to stop and look, Tom suddenly turned round startled and simply said "Run!" Looking down I saw this massive dog running, not in a friendly way, but actually running at us. Although he wasnt barking it was obvious he was incensed, and Tom and I pegged it both absolutely terrified. Probably the most terrified I have ever been. Leaving my flip flops behind I looked over my shoulder and saw it gaining and barking now and genuinely thought we were in serious trouble. I stopped, turning round getting ready to roundhouse kick this thing but thankfully it then stopped and went back to where it had come from. Clearly Tom and I had strayed into land that it was guarding. At first we looked at each other shocked, but then burst out laughing, probably out of relief and disbelief in the situation that had just arisen. We did then manage to find a safer route down, and then made our way to the bottom of Penang hill, which we took a furnicular railway to its 800m summit just as dusk was falling over the city. The view was magical, and it was cool and peaceful at the top, as we listened to the monkeys in the jungle as we looked over the city. Making our way back to town we had another amazing meal, this time a fusion of malaysian an indian styles, in a place called Sri Ananda Bhawan and then came back to our guesthouse where I am writing to you now, relieved to still be in one piece! Whilst this has probably been the funniest day of our travels so far, its perhaps a good thing that we are leaving tommorow for Kualar Lumpur before we manage to cause anymore chaos here! I have had a great time in Penang and hope the rest of Malaysia is as entertaining!
Lots of Love to all

xxx

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Comments

[iris]

Hi
Hi you two, Very relieved to read you are still in one piece, my goodness as far as bizarre events go you couldn have made that day up. Anyway, take care of yourselves. From your big fancrowd in Crouch End. XXX