Shangri-La Golden Sands Resort Pulau Penang

... a mall, had some lunch, and eventually made it back to my hotel a few hours later. There I met some other travellers who I sat down with and had some beers. After a few beers, a group of us headed out for some dinner in Little India. It was chaos. The holiday of Deepavali was in full swing, and this is what I imagined India might be like. The streets were packed with people and cars ...

... did not purchase one single thing (And there was more than enough opportunity... the mall was I think 6 stories)! We spent most of our time though just walking around the city and looking at all the neat architecture. We had plans to head to the Botanical Gardens today but once at the bus station were told that the bus no longer goes there.... so that plan was out the window. We decided to figure out our next step and found out that to take a ...

... SD Guesthouse at 5:59, the owner explained that the minibus had just came and left without us. I immediately went outside and ran down the street toward Banana Guesthouse but before I got there I was relieved to see a minibus turning down the street toward me. I ran back to our guesthouse and sure enough this was our ride. We were the first people to board the minibus and after we picked up four more people from surrounding the area, we set ...

... on the roof terrace. We can see all the roof tops for miles around. We make enquiries down at reception about how we go about getting our 60 day visa for Thailand. They advise us that for an extra 20 Ringit (£4) on top of the normal visa fee, the hotel could have our passports back to us this afternoon at 3pm complete with visa. DEAL. It would have cost us more for a taxi there and back plus we would have had to collect our passports the next day! All we had to give them was 2 ...

... day as the main chariot is paraded from Little India to Waterfall Temple - a good 8km across the town. This takes approx 12 hours as the ...

... to the beaches as it was a national holiday for four of the fifteen days. I was in a slight state of ...

... against the side of the coach like some two legged cats marking their territory. Ten minutes later we stopped again, and upon restarting can only have done what I can describe as limped to the first available service station. 5 or so men came out and basically looked at the tyre/wheel and then they all disapeered and then over a period of about an hour, some of them proceeded in little spurts of energy to do some work. An hour later we left and finally were really on our way. We ...

... of my journey to Thailand was to Penang, Malaysia. I enjoyed the journey there, the challenge of local transportation and the anticipation of what lay ahead had my spirits high. After three nights in Penang and not meeting a single other traveller, my mood soured. I did meet many colourful locals but I found it extremely discouraging and somewhat depressing that I wasn’t able to meet others like me. I saw plenty of other travellers but I was still feeling too introverted ...