Hotel Mingood Georgetown

After getting over not being able to watch The Simpsons movie on the Boeing 777 due to language difficulties (I'm no linguist, but I think it was randomly jumping from English to French, to German, to some Asia dialect, Homer is much funnier in english...), I was happy to be back in the tropics. There's something about getting off a plane with the senses responding to humidity, high temps, and the smell of the ocean. It always reminds me of stepping off the plane overseas for the first time a...

We arrived in Penang very early in the morning, and having gotten up at 4:30 to go to the airport, we were exhausted. Our taxi driver was very friendly, welcoming us to Malaysia, and having a bit of a chat with Scott when he told him he had lived here. As we drove past areas our driver kept asking Scott if he remembered any of it, but since he was a child when he lived here, he didn't remember much. The place where we stayed was called Hotel Mingood, and the staff there were incredible, weari...

Its raining! The first spot of rain since Hue (day 5!). Well a spot of rain is a slight understatement! It's chucking it down!!! So refreshing though! And what did I have planned for today, a walking tour of Georgetown of course! By the time we had finished breakfast though the rain was clearing and we decided to venture out. Georgetown is a newly recognised UNESCO world heritage town and has a stunning mix of races, history, cultures and religions! Their English is almost better than mine! T...

I continued by train northwards, getting off at Butterworth for the ferry to Pulau Pinang, a large island off of Malaysia's northwest coast. It's main city is Georgetown named by (guess who) the British for (guess again) King George ?, when the East India Company used this island to establish a trading post in the area. Having been traveling in this area for a while it is impressive to realize the extent of the British trade empire and colonialism, and how much influence it still has. I read...

It seems amazing that we have now been on the road for almost two months. It is going so quickly!

We have just spent four days in Georgetown, which is the main town on the island of Penang in Malaysia, the original headquarters of the British Empire's 'Straits Settlement'. This old colonial town has very recently received Unesco World Heritage status but it may be another case of striking while the iron is starting to become a bit luke-warm. Although many major buildings grace...

As we mentioned before, the wide range of backgrounds and beliefs here has led to a great diversity of temples and cultural headquarters. At times it seems like every street in the old town has at least one temple and many have more. So you can imagine what it is like taking a walk down the street that has actually been renamed 'Temple Street'! (Incidently the street naming here can be quite tricky because each cultural group has its own and different names for lots of the roads). Some of the...

Merry Christmas!!! And what a Christmas it was....Dane and I caught a 10:30AM bus from KL to Butterworth on Christmas morning, and then took the ferry across the strait to the city of Georgetown on the island of Pelau Penang. After walking around this little colonial town, through little India and just about everywhere else, Dane and I finally found our hotel. The problem was that we were looking for Penang Road and we were on Penang Street, and since neither of us knows much Malay, we couldn...

Arrived last night in Penang - more rain! Staying in a pretty gd budget hotel in Georgetown (Min Good Hotel). Spent today on a taxi tour of the island although the weather put a spanner in the works. Mainly visited indoor temples, and factories (including and very nice OE diamond factory where I bought myself a white gold and diamond ring). The snake temple was so cool we got to hold an albino viper snake and a water dragon lizard. We also paid to watch a snake eat a mouse but it was so distu...

Yeah so the bus journey was not so great feeling a bit fragile, a few people were very ill and had to be sick in bags! Two of them (marie and Sara) are nurses and had stolen some tablets from their ward- they cost 200 and are meant for cancer patients, so they got passed around! It was raining in Penang when we got there, Me and Jenna, trying to save a bit of money and have an early night ate at a local cafe which wasn't too great, I spent the night on the computer trying to upload pictures a...

After a bus ride and then ferry across to Penang Island we got a taxi to Georgetown. We checked into Hotel Mingood (onthe advise of tripadvisor) - it was clear that this was a former hostel, but was ok for the 1 night. We did a massive tour of the city in several hours following the Heritage Tour walk. We saw and took photos of most of the city's historical buildings and read about them from our little travel guide. You will find an array of photos of buildings from forts to temples. We grabb...