Georgetown, Penang

---

We’ve now left Kuala Lumpur and arrived in Penang, which is an island off the west coast of Malaysia. It was inhabited by the British and has a lot of historical sites. It’s actually a “unesco world heritage city” whatever that means!

Before we left Kuala Lumpur, we ended up buying our fair share of fake items (love my D&G sunglasses) and discovered two amazing foods. Firstly, the best chicken satay skewers EVER from a stall in Chinatown and secondly these Malaysian crisps which are “ninja hot plate” flavour. Me and Terry just call them “Ninja Crisps”. We had a bit of trouble finding somewhere decent for lunch on our last morning in KL so decided we’d go for the safe option of KFC. Unfortunately, KFC isn’t safe at all. They obviously don’t serve bacon (due to the muslim population) which is understandable but they are serving rice instead of chips, mashed potato with mushroom gravy as a side and they serve it on plates...strange!

Our train was due to leave KL at 14:54 but was late so we didn’t leave till 15:45. The 6 and a half hour train journey was a lot like the last one except it was daytime so sleeping wasn’t an issue. Terry’s popularity with the kids here seems to have ended as a little Chinese boy tried to hit him very soon after we sat down. He also spat in his hand and held it out to Terry....

I read some of my book, we watched the A Team and Hawaii Five O and the journey was painless. I did use my very first squat toilet yesterday which I didn’t really like. Squatting should only be done when your 2 years old and nowhere near a toilet or extremely drunk. Once we got into the train station, we took a quick ferry over to Penang and shared a taxi to our guesthouse, Hutton Lodge with a random woman. The accommodation is a restored old colonial building and our room is absolutely huge. It comes with breakfast, which we completely missed this morning as we didn’t get to bed till very late and the showers are nice too. The windows have shutters to keep out the mosquitoes which is good as so far, we only have 5 bites between us.

We’ve been walking around Georgetown, the area we’re staying in today but after 3 hours we had to come back because it’s 35 degrees outside and it’s getting hotter! We saw a fort and learnt a little bit about the history of Penang (Fort Cornwallis, entry RM2), walked along the promenade by the sea port and had a lovely tour of a Buddhist temple from a little old man. He couldn’t really speak English, but proudly showed us a newspaper from 2008 when Tony Blair visited Penang and pointed to a few areas of interest in the temple.

Penang is nicer than KL. It’s quieter and the buildings are old colonial style with whitewash walls which looks great. The open sewers, stray cats, rubbish and dangerous traffic is still here, but the place feels more laid back. We were only planning to stay tonight then take the train up to Thailand tomorrow but the trains are all full so we are going to Thailand on Sunday instead. Luckily, Hutton Lodge can accommodate us an extra night and we’ve got our train booked out of Malaysia. There is a beach resort in Penang called Batu Feringgi which we are planning to go to tomorrow. It’s meant to be very touristy but we haven’t really been anywhere touristy yet so we don’t mind.

I love the comments you've left. Miss you all and can't wait to see everyone when I get back!!

---

Comments

[Brian]

I see from Google maps that there is a Tesco's store in Penang,they definately want to take over the world!

[Dermy]

Amazing :)
Omg.. penang sounds awesome, not sure about the KFC tho haha whats the point if everythings vegetarian...?! and lmao is Terry causing a scene with the kids then aww bless xx and eww squatting thats sick... had 2 do that in turkey was so weird lol! love n miss you loads im we jealous lol hope that u dont get bitten too much we all remember kavos haha aww have a great time!! xxxx