Last stop in Malaysia

• Amandaseims's Profile
• About this blog
• Entry from Georgetown

Trip Start Aug 15, 2006 Previous
Entry Trip End May 27, 2008 Next
Entry

  Georgetown, Pinang, Malaysia
Friday, January 18, 2008

From KL we got the train to Butterworth and took a quick ferry across to Penang, arriving in the main city of Georgetown.  After a great chicken tikka (my first ever!) at a place called Sri Anaman we decided that since Georgetown isn't famous for having many attractions (apart from the cuisine), we would skip through it and got a local bus along the coast to a  tiny place called Teluk Behang.  After a few wrong turns we found a guesthouse 'Miss Loh's' and were greeted by crazy dogs and an eccentric old Australian man called Sam who showed us around - it was pretty basic to say the least but that's Asia and backpacking for you.  We took a walk around the town (well a few shops and houses) and picked up some supplies for the next day as we were going hiking.  On the way back home we saw a poor cat that apeared to have a huge lump of it's head missing and I swear you could see inside it's brain.  It must have been some kind of disease as it didn't appear to be bleeding but the cat seemed quite weak and dazed and we were thinking that maybe we should have put it out of it's misery (we  couldn't though).

Today we had a great nutritious breakfast of banana and honey pancakes topped with ice-cream (yum) and set off to hike up to the lighthouse in the national park.  When we reached the lighthouse it was surrounded by a security fence and was pretty ugly so we headed to Monkey beach, where yes, we did see some macaques.  After more pictures of monkeys we set off on another hike to a beach Sam had told us about.  On the way we found a small cool stream and as we were both sweating it was the perfect place to sit inside and eat lunch.  It was lovely and refreshing but the only problem was the local shrimps who insisted on biting my toes every minute or so!

At the beach I managed to soak my shoes falling in whilst trying to jump over a small estuary on the beach and typically Ollie just laughed hysterically.  Lucky it's so warm here and my shoes dried in no time.  The beach was really nice and we almost had it to ourselves (apart from the local tourists that arrived by boat for an hour),  The sand was akin to fine crystals of glass (which we used to exfoliate ourselves!) and I swam in the sea as it was really warm....until I realised it was also quite dirty with lots of brown particles in it which were now clinging to my skin. 

Back at the hostel we ran into Miss Loh the owner and she wasn't too happy that we weren't staying tonight as we'd missed our check out time by an hour or so.  However, since we were the only people staying in the guesthouse (apart from Sam and an odd old age hippy looking guy) we thought this kind of guesthouse would be quite relaxed about things.

We got the bus back to Georgetown and checked into the Golden Plaza hotel which again was pretty dinghy but it was cheap at least.  We managed to find another Indian with great tikka and set off around the city in search of a decent bar to have a 'farewell to Malaysia' drink - we couldn't find anywhere so it was a early night.  I woke up after 12am very dehydrated so set off to go out and find a shop only to find I was locked in the hotel!  Luckily I have a water filter in the form of a straw so I finally got to use it with some tap water (after carrying it for the last 18 months!).

Tomorrow Thailand.......

Penang National Park

Post your own travel photos for friends and family More Pictures

Shocked looking monkey	Ahhhhhh	The beach	Beach 2
Beach 3

Slideshow Print this entry Share

Previous Entry Next Entry