Hotel Central Georgetown

... s China town area is a lot less glamorous, but it was good to be back in an area with an authentic chinese feel - chinese food for dinner that night. The first night Alex and I opted for a dorm room in Blue Diamond hotel - possibly the strangest building I've ever stayed in.. enormous rooms, an entire wardrobe per bed, no sinks in the bathrooms, weird looking fish in the 'foyer', and a terrible Malay band playing out the front. The next day ...

... quite aggressive, especially drunk) and the plain ended up landing because of this incident, he in prison for 10 mths... blablabla - those kind of stories.

next day: sick in bed

last day penang: i visited an pretty old chinese clan house. gorgeous building!! what detailed artworks they put in one building is just amazing. i also went to the penang museum and art gallery, had dinner with some guys from the hostel. (memo to myself: think of what travis told you!!).

Today we got a ferry from Langkawi over to Georgetown in Penang.

This place is a mecca for food. we arrived in the early afternoon and managed to get signed into a hostel straight away, lucky though as they only had a couple of rooms available.

Once we were settled in (shower and changed) we headed straight out into the china town that they have here, just sat down at a little restaurant filled with locals and ordered some ...

... to much, a standard oversized spawling city with little to see in the way of tourist attractions, I took a few photos of the 'Twin Towers' and took a trip up the KL Communications tower for some perspective on how spawling the place really was, too big for me frankly and one night was enough. Fortunately I had anticipated this and already booked my train ticket for the next day, an overnighter from KL to Butterworth.

The train journey was not too pleasant, the air con ...

... The place had a great vibe about it and as I walked through Little India it struck me that culturally I was now in South Asia not South East Asia.

This became even more true when, for the first time since Dubai I heard chanting from a mosque. I went to tourist info and found a bus for about 40p that would take me to a nearby beach. I strolled along the golden sand for a while with the waves lapping at my feet; the water as warm as Cuba but no where ...

... Britney Spears when she had a mental turn and cut off all her hair, fab. I scream "Terima Kasih!" at him, 'You've ruined my hair you imbecile!' Terima Kasih means 'Thank You' in Malay (it's the only phrase I know in Malay), but it was said with the tone of 'You've ruined my hair you imbecile', he smiles, I want to smash his teeth in with my flip flop.

Need some diving, off to the Perhentian Islands on overnight bus tonight, how exciting.

... br>
While we were here there was some type of celebration with food kiosks and music. This gave us the opportunity to try several local treats and also enjoy some entertainment.

Shanusha Holiday was the Express bus that we took from Georgetown to Kota Bhara, It was one of the more luxurious one's that we took on the trip. I can't remember how much it cost and I believe it was a 7 hr bus ride.

... fish that just come right up to you in the water.. and on Oli's wishes we're flying to Mulu National Park on Borneo (you have to fly because it's surrounded by mountains) and they have a ton of huge beautiful caves and a 'Canopy Skywalk' which is basically a mesh bridge that they built over the rainforest canopy so you can see all the animals and activity that goes on there ...

... oppressor of American liberty), St. George's Church, a beautiful mosque, a funky Hindu Temple (they're all funky pink and lavender with elephant trunks protruding from the sculptures of dancing girls), and the oldest Buddhist temple on Penang built in 1808. I've been on this journey almost 11 weeks and am learning how to be a traveler instead of a tourist. Yesterday I walked to ...

We travelled for a whole day to reach Penang. The last part of the journey involved taking a boat from Butterworth to Georgetown. We arrived in a sprawling city full of skyscrapers and shopping malls and wondered why we had bothered. We had some dinner for 2 pounds for 2, and tasted the delicious Penang food. David had claypot chicken which was so good we almost ordered another one. We drank honeydew melon ...