Stout Beers, mmmm...

Trip Start Jan 14, 2004
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Trip End Ongoing


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Flag of Malaysia  ,
Wednesday, January 14, 2004

You have to take a ferry to get to Penang, the island on which Georgetown sits. It's a beautiful old city with an overwhelmingly strong Chinese community, all laced with typical Indian and Kampung Malay culture. Narrow streets lined with once colorful - now paint chipped - shophouses and incense fuming Buddhist temples give this ancient colonial port town a warm feel. Despite its distinct Chinese character, a wonderful "Little" India sits adjacent to Chinatown. Women young and old sheathed in Islamic headscarfs and Indian Bollywood pop songs blaring out of shops signal unmistakably where you are. This mixture of 2 cultures living side by side was really the first thing that struck me as unique in Malaysia, pretty cool. Oh, the locally brewed Guinness beer was pretty good too!

The funnest thing I did was rent a motorbike for a day to ride around the 70km island, a little nerve racking since it was my first time driving a motorbike. Simply beautiful and totally invigorating though. The main road circumventing the island takes you along scenic coastline, then up a few hundred meters over some of the islands interior mountains to cooler temps. Tourist traps like the butterfly garden and tropical fruit farm helped break up the ride. Seeing wild monkeys darting across the road was pretty cool too.
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