The Gurney Resort Hotel and Residences Georgetown

And now - the end is near - (we have been listening to too much of Frank Sinatra this trip!). Our days in Penang have been much more relaxed, and we were very much ready for a rest! It was lovely to see Felicia, her daughter Gemma, and a 15 year old who she and Tim are acting as guardians for, called Hooi Ling. Tim was away until yesterday, Saturday, so we spent the first two days in ...

... of this day a particularly clever mozzie suddenly developed an antidote and mass-produced it. I also think that mozzie touts were selling me as 'the best restaurant in town', because without warning I got absolutely mawled by mozzies over the next few hours.<br><br>One thing is for sure - whether I walk through the airport turnstile sideways or not, I'm still going to Bangkok...<br><br>Georgetown quick capsule review: So boring you may consider psychopathy.

... out I went and had a wander, located the nearest ATM and also found a nice book shop where I exchanged a recently-finished John Grisham for a new one. I then plonked myself down in the entrance and spent a good few hours blogging and Skyping. After this the guy sat next to me - Brian, a New Yorker who's been living in London for the past five years - struck up a conversation and we decided to head to the night market together for ...

... that had one item that caught my eye. A plain black Zippo lighter. Now, I&#8217;m by no means a smoker &#8211; or a pyromaniac either &#8211; I just like flipping Zippos open and closing, doing tricks with them, you know &#8211; anything that makes me look dangerous&#8230; I decided to make use of the lessons Sarah taught me on our previous haggling ...

... curry manna.<br><br>We left the table all too soon for me, but we still had a full day of sight-seeing in Penang ahead of us. When I went to pay the bill I realised that each plate of roti canai had only cost 80 sens, or about one Canadian quarter, a price which would only buy me a fraction of a papadam at any curry house back home.<br><br>The sadness won out and I howled like a lonely wolf cub.

... to the hotel, a quick walk along their personal sea-front, still in quite stiffling heat, and a wander along to see what Farquhar's Bar had to offer. As it transpired, a bar manager who seemed to have an encyclopaedic knowlege of English football. Informing us of the sad news of Sir Bobby Robson&#8217;s death a few hours earlier, he was able to recount all of his successes at both national and club level. Impressively, he had heard of Scunny ...

... 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 ...

... here. It's all new. Nobody treats another race, nationality, or religion like a recent intruder. And the diversity of food and religions is the proof. Today's wanderings in the equatorial midday sun under my parasol-- (yeah, I know, sounds sissyish, but before anyone wants to crack wise, you try it, buster)--took me to an old English fort (Ft. Cornwallis, named after that ...

... doing half the stuff you planned to do if you want to avoid an infuriated breakdown. So day two sees us kiss goodbye to plans of snake temples and head to Air Itam to mount the famous Penang Hill via old colonial hill tram. The views are beautiful up there - so much so that we weren't too troubled by the enourmous spiders who create a living ceiling as far as you can see. [About a week later in the gulf of Thailand I managed to delete all of my photographs from this ...

... a few weeks ago the New York Times rated Penang at number three of the top ten places to eat in the world and it was not hard to see why. I was in absolute veggie heaven there. I ...