Penang (North-west Malaysian Island)

From what we had read before coming to Penang, the main reasons for visiting it is to see the mix of cultures that exist and see how they all coexist peacefully. It is difficult to imagine but when you arrive and are greeted by an indian taxi driver, taken to our chinese/indian/malaysian run hotel, go out for a quick bite of japanese food before having a drink at a british pub. That is Penang and the whole attraction of the place!

We arrived late at Mingood hotel and headed to the Red Garden hawker center, the Penang food scene is very hawker based. You find a table, remember the number & then walk round the various stalls & order your various dishes quoting your table number each time, then as the various colored plates arrive, you pay for each, the different colored plates representing each hawker stall so then know which plates are theirs. We settled on Japanese, but had the choice of any asian food really, but with most menus having the local names we went with the safer options, chicken katsu and salmon teriyaki.

Hotel Mingood is a nice hotel, only about a 2 or 3 star. Its old but very very clean and the room is massive! There is internet in the lobby and breakfast (corn flakes) on the roof. It is run by a very strict, grey haired, friendly lady.

We started sighseeing the next day but the heat really was unbearable so decided to hire a scooter to take us around Georgetown. Everything in Georgetown is fairly close but the scooter just helped a little, although the 1 way system proved hard to navigate & it was our first time on a scooter in an actual city which proved more hair raising than when on a laid back island!

Basically on 1 street in G'town you can visit an Anglican church, Catholic cathedral, Chinese temple, Hindu temple and 2 Muslim mosques, all within 1 km. Crazy stuff. The only mistake we made was doing this on a Friday afternoon which is when prayers all happen I believe, Jacqui being nosey as she is was kindly asked to leave the grounds of the one mosque as it was all men praying, no women and she wasn't exactly wearing traditional dress! Really don't know how they wear all those clothes in that heat.

To escape the heat we headed to their massive shopping centre, Prangin mall, which was rather huge but full of pretty random junk and nothing really worth buying unless you are into psychodelic girls clothing and other typically asian crazy things.

For dinner we went to the best known hawker center on the island on Gurney drive, again a massive selection of all types of food. We had some chicken satays, fried cuttlefish with chili and some local malay dish, can't remember the name but it was similiar to a pad thai. Also tried the local freshly made sugar cane juice- was very nice! The little kids seem to help their parents run the stalls so you end up getting served drinks by a cheeky 6 yr old boy who runs around saying "drink?, drink?.

Went to the Gurney plaza, another HUGE shopping centre, this time with proper shops, Guess, Adidas, Starbucks and suprisingly a Nandos. Jacqui as usual managed to find something to buy :) Tried filling our scooter up on the way back and put 5 ringgits in which is basically a pound, and we were on empty empty, next thing the tank is overflowing down the side of the bike. Those bikes have like a 2 litre tank or something stupid. Jacqui thought it was funny until she realised there may be petrol all over her new dress but luckily its packet protected it.

The following day my human GPS system went haywire & instead of a 5 min ride down the road to the museum, we ended up far out of town in the middle of nowhere on some highway. Being the humble male that I am....we stopped & asked for directions & were at the Penang museum in no time, albeit a little hot & sweaty but not too worry as the museum was fully air conditioned!

Penang has a pretty colorful history as it has been a Portuguese, Dutch & English colony as well as being the base of the East India company which we all learnt about in primary school history. Then there is how all the different cultures and nationalities have all collided there over time. Francis Light (British) requested Penang in about 1857 to become a trading post for the British from the Sultan, and then later it was declared it a british colony. He was basically responsible for developing the island and creating all the main infrastructure. Its crazy how the transition from a British colony to an independant Malaysian island was so smooth. I think we see a trend... All countries that were previously British are 'successful' but SA was part-dutch so is that were we went wrong?

After that we briefly visited an elegant mansion and a Chocolate Boutique before having a nap and heading out to the night market and hawker center in Batu Ferringhi, which we thought looked pretty close on the map so decided to scooter it. . .bad mistake. We had been going for about 25 mins when we came across a sign saying it was still 11km away, which is a lot in scooter kilometres! Then it got worse as the 2 lane roads became narrow single lanes winding through the mountains, reminding us of our fateful trip to Luang Prabang. We got there eventually unscathed but very nervous for the return leg in the dark.

The beach in BF was pretty dire, very much like Durban beach, tons of people, jetskis, 4 X 4's, horse riding etc. Am glad we decided to stay in G'town and not near the beach. We scurried off to the markets and bought a couple football shirts for peanuts and ate some good spring rolls from the famous spring roll lady and Jacqui had a vegetable noodle hot plate, I had a erm... Oh, chicken with cashews again.

The journey back was a little hair raising but in the end I drove like a granny in the yellow line (when there was one), held up the traffic and we got back in one piece.

We got up early'ish the next morning to get a taxi to the bus station for our 10am bus to Cameron Highlands. We departed over the connecting bridge to the mainland- pretty impressive!

So all in all Penang was thoroughly enjoyable on our scooter and we enjoyed learning about the interesting history of the area!