Malaysia! Georgetown - George Town, Malaysia
George Town, Malaysia
Georgetown, Thursday August 22nd So after getting the train over to Butterworth we then had to walk across to station and along to the pier to get the boat over to Penang Island, and Georgetown, all of which took about 10 minute, on the boat and across. Next up was a 15 minute walk in the baking sun to get to the hostel, but there was no point getting a taxi as we knew it was relatively close. It probably did us good walking for a bit after being sat on the train for the best part of a whole day. Georgetown is a UNESCO heritage town, and in parts you can see why - we were walking along streets of really nice looking buildings, but then you would get to a street that just looks like others we had seen typically over SE Asia, dirty, rundown and just almost derelict. It was a bit strange that even though it was early afternoon the amounts of shops and restaurants that had their shutters down and seemingly looked closed. Arrived at the hostel and it was on one of the nicer, older looking streets thankfully - the place itself was nice enough, free tea coffee and water, toast for breakfast but the rooms were tiny and the fact there were only 4 showers/toilets for the whole downstairs wasn't the most thought out plan. Left our bags in the pretty tiny room and want off out in search of the first proper meal in 24 hours, before that was the issue of money. Since Lloyds are *insert word of your choice with a negative meaning* they now feel the needs to charge us a Non-Sterling withdrawal fee, luckily it only started about a month ago. But basically it means that each time we use the cashpoint they directly get about £14 off us, and we lose a further £2 or so from the exchange rate. Because of this we have to get the limit out of the ATM to keep used down, Hong Kong was easy no issues there, not were there in Thailand, but for some reason in Malaysia there is a limit of MYR1000 (their money, Malaysian Ringgit) in the majority of ATM's. Even the ones in the banks themselves limited to this, after trying about 3 banks we finally found one that let us take out out card limit of £300 (MYR1500) Another we currency sorted and we could finally set off for food, we had seen a cafe in a hostel just along from ours that had reasonable prices so decided to go back there. 1 baked potato with cheese as tuna, and one with beans and cheese - that was something we had both wanted for months so to finally get it at a good price was amazing! Somehow as the money had taken us ages it was maybe 4:30 or so by now and we decided it was maybe a good time to make a rough plan of what we were going to do in Malaysia - I guess it made sense seeing as we were now here and didn't really know. This time it just seemed a lot more difficult to figure out a plan, mainly as we wanted to see things on from north to south both coasts, and in the centre - so there was no obvious route to follow other than we must be in Singapore on the 19th September as that was our first night there booked. We got some places written down and quite quickly decided the Cameron Highlands would be our next stop, after that we had the places but unsure of travel south down the west coast, then back up the east - or just zigzag our way down the country. Earlier that day we had walked through 'Little India' on the way from the boat to the hostel and on our quest to find a decent ATM we had also walked past an outdoor food market that was all shut up but presumed that it'd be open that evening for dinner. Unsure on where to go we ventured towards Little India to find some dinner, after walking around and around a few times we didn't know where to go without being hassled and having slightly creepy people staring at us when we showed an interest in eating somewhere. Back to the market type area it was, with a good 20 stalls selling the usual wide range of different animals, in soups, deed fried, or with rice/ noodles. Pretty early on we had our minds set on a vegetarian clay pot biryani, cheap filling and being vegetation we didn't have to be as worried about what was going to be in it. We wanted something to go with it though so held off ordering it for now, kept on walking around and having nearly completed the loop with nothing else standing out too much we then got to something a bit different. We were intrigued by the pictures above their stall, it looked a lot more modern and you could tell straight away it was an idea by young people rather than just following on from the stall mum and dad had before like most others (not always a bad thing though) Yes, the food - well from the picture is was a cube of bread but that's about all we could tell, the woman who was making the food came over to tell us what it was. You get a cube of fresh bread they make (we were right this far then) then a choice of filling from either cheese or curry, and a fish of your choice, prawn, lobster, squid, salmon or crab. Not entirely sure what we made of it we went for a curry with squid option and the clay pot biryani from the other stall and went to sit down. 5 minutes later the food was over, an it was amazing - fresh bread, a relatively hot curry and a load of squid in the middle! The biryani was also really nice, but as we sort of knew what to expect here it wasn't the same. We ended up getting some fresh green apple juices to go with the food also, one of the last times we did get drinks with the meal as we soon decided to just carry water everywhere as we could refill it at the hostel for free. With food finished we headed back to the hostel after another walk around, this time heading to over by the new Chinese area of the small town - just like around by us though the majority of places were closed which was weird. A bit more internet time to look at accommodation for the rest of Malaysia was the next plan as with August and September being some of the busiest times it may not be that great for us to just turn up if we want to get anywhere semi nice. Friday, we woke up, had our coffee and toast (I now drink coffee - I think it is due to it always being available for free, so technically in the price we've paid therefore I now drink itAnd made our way out, got a map and started to walk around some of the old buildings, mosques, temples and the like that got Georgetown its status. After a few weeks on it being warm at around 30 with a lower percentage humidity it was now right back up there with the humidity and the direct heat of the sun on us, by about 11:30 we thought it was too hot to just be walking around the streets so tried to figure out the bus timetables. We decided on getting a 101 that would take us around to some of the places we wanted to see, but after one bus passing and us having no clue on prices we ended up walking back to where the ferry had brought us as the bus station was attached. Here we could actually look at a map with the routes on it and find out how much it should cost. We chose a bus, 204 I think it was that took us to the bottom of Penang Hill, there we would have the option of cable car or a very long walk up to the top. After the slowest bus journey in history due to traffic and the fact it stopped maybe every minute as it was the normal local bus we finally made it, bought 2 tickets for the cable car as we thought there will be enough walking in the Cameron Highlands - I had my student card with me and to our surprise it worked so a nice 50%25 off on one of the tickets. Made our way to queue up and about 15 minutes later we were on our way up the incredibly steep hill, we were on this cable car/ tram contraption for quite a while and as you'll see from the pictures it was pretty steep! Finally making it to the top and allowing everyone else to walk off first we managed to get ourselves some nice pictures out all the way back to Georgetown itself, and across the edge of the island back to mainland Malaysia. Other than the view we weren't too sure what to do, we saw a sign that directed us to some monkey place but knew we wouldn't want to pay to get in, there was no need as we saw ourselves some for free whilst walking the KM or 2 there and back, some of the houses we walked past that were built on the hillside were incredible. Before we knew it the time was about 5pm, and by the time we got back down and back on another crazily slow bus we made it back at about 6:30pm. Since we had now sorted our next stop we thought it was time to get looking at some of the islands that Malaysia has to offer, we were looking at 2 main choices all along and they were Langkawi off the West Coast, or the Perhintian islands off the East, the weather is meant to be better in the East, and in fact the best time to visit is August/ September so that was a pretty easy problem to solve. The next one, accommodation wasn't quite so easy, there is very little in terms of anything on the Perhintians, no roads, no big resorts, temperamental power, but amazing beaches and waters. This all adds up to the good places being expensive, and/ or going really fast, after countless searches online reading reviews from here there and everywhere I'd narrowed it down to a couple, all of which were fully booked - one didn't have a website so their number was saved for the evening and we headed back to that same market for dinner, the same dinner actually. This time the only difference was we got an extra one of the bread things so it was one each and a shared rice again, remembering to take our water to make sure we didn't buy anything else out. There was one road in Georgetown that seemed to have all the bars along, an for some reason all 'German' places - by that it was names and that was about it, but we thought it was worth going to have a look and see if the F1 practice in Spa was on, it was! The only downside being that alcohol is ridiculously priced here, £9 for 3 pints wasn't good at all, but we drank as slowly as we could to make sure we got our money's worth from watching the TV's. Saturday, we actually wanted to look around the town today and get as many of the tourist sights done that we could, another thing we wanted to keep a look out for was the street art that was around the old parts of town. There were paintings around the town as well a iron works (see pictures so you know what I'm on about) We went and rented some bikes out and made our way to Fort Cornwallis, paid a massive 20p each entry I think and had a walk around for a little while, making the most of being out in the sun. Cycled past a few of the local governmental buildings which were pretty cool but not overly interesting before heading back to nearby where we were staying, stopping at an Indian restaurant for lunch, a naan bread, veg biryani and some potato/ veg in some sauce. It was whilst eating lunch we saw the first selection of motorbikes that day, which was a bit unusual to see the latest bikes against such an old backdrop of the buildings and their cars (all bloody Proton's - I guess being locally produced helps, but they are awful) We weren't bored as such of the buildings but wanted to try and find some more of the art and we managed to stumble across a really good area of the town, only after a few minutes of riding we stopped and locked the bikes up and walked around again, this was the sort of area we had expected I think when you read about the town. The small streets, traditional shops and buildings, with the old Chinese temples set within them, oh and the not so traditional mass collection of bikes - this time we could read some of their T-shirts and could see it was some form of charity ride that had been organised. We walked around in the heat for an hour or so, a few shops selling souvenirs and finding a load of the art work that was painted and sculpted around the buildings in that area of town. We walked back to the bikes and as we had left them next to a cafe we thought we'd stop and get a drink, that was until we saw they sold home made chocolate peanut butter ice cream - so we quite quickly made the choice to have some of that each. And what a choice it was, most amazing ice cream! We got back on the bikes and rode around for another hour or so, going down to the Clan Jetty and having a look around there, before making it back for about 5:30 to ours, getting a free drink and then going back out to drop the bikes off. On the walk back from taking the bikes back we had a look in somewhere different as knew we couldn't really go back for the same meal for a third night in a row, however much we were tempted too. We found a nice little place and decided we'd go back there for dinner after we went back to the hostel for a bit longer. Headed back out and got some nice noodles if I remember correctly before deciding to go and watch the qualifying in the same place as the previous night, Becky had wanted to have Guinness for ages but it is 'Foreign Extra' here so it was fizzy, not that it made any difference as I still think it tastes awful. Sat down drinking very slowly again, watching the f1, until with about 15 minutes to go they turned to some football, so we just got our drinks and walked to the place next door that was still showing it. Sunday, up sort of early and pack away again - second stop for Malaysia, the Cameron Highlands was next.