Hello everyone – it’s been a few days now so an update is in order, not that we’ve been doing much lately to tell you about. We have had a quiet week in Penang, mostly in and around the main city Georgetown – having a sort of holiday from our holiday! Penang is an interesting place – a real change from Cambodia (apart from anything else, MOST of the litter is put in the right place rather than the whole lot just going onto the footpath…household rubbish included) and a ‘comfortable’ place to be. We’ve been here since Saturday evening, and reasonably quickly learned the way around our neighbourhood (Love Lane just off Jalan Chulia which is right in the Little India and Chinatown areas, for those who have been here before); fathomed out the bus system; tracked down a great place to eat at night; and located the nearest shopping places.

I know I talk a lot about eating but it is important, and we are in a part of the world where food is just everywhere and with such an overwhelming array of smells and tastes and sights to assail your senses. Temptation is literally at every corner, especially in this part of town, and all the guidebooks point to Penang (and Penang hawker food in particular) as being amongst the best in the world. Anyway, the great place we found is called Red Garden and it consists of probably 100 plastic tables with plastic chairs in the middle courtyard surrounded on all sides by goodness knows how many stalls selling every kind of Asian food imaginable. And most of the meals are only around RM5 (NZ$2) for a main course each….my favourites so far are a noodle dish Char Kuoy Teow! and Grilled Stingray! Yum! Back there tonight for a last time and I think the Curry Laksa might be the order of the day. One other thing about the Red Garden – if you’re (un)lucky enough to be there at 9pm, they have live entertainment with some of the evictees from the early rounds of Malaysian Idol performing to the very best of their ability!

Enough food talk! What have we done during our quiet week? In Penang at this time of year at least, there is a daily thunderstorm, usually coinciding with us arriving at our destination and getting off the bus into an extremely heavy tropical downpour! So some of our planned activities have changed a little, but it’s been OK as this week was always intended as a quieter one than a lot of the others. Yesterday was great example: we walked in the sunshine to the Feri, got a free ferry across the channel to Butterworth which is mainland Penang’s major city, got a bus to the Bird Park just as it started to pour, and got off the bus 30 minutes later as water levels on the road we immediately had to cross reached mid-shin height! Despite umbrellas we were seriously wet (although the temperature was still around 25 degrees), so another Malaysian bird park plan bit the dust and we had coffee, and wandered around yet another shopping mall instead.

But, even with the rain, we’ve been to the beach at Batu Ferringghi where I had a swim despite the signs warning to look out for jellyfish….the water is that murky that I doubt any jellyfish would have seen me let alone me see it! We’ve visited the 60 foot clock tower (1 foot for each year) erected by the loyal citizens of Penang in 1897 to mark Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee…we’ve seen no signs yet of anything similar being done this year for QE2. Nearby we strolled (until it started raining again!) around Fort Cornwallis which was first built in 1780 when Captain Francis Light claimed Penang for Britain….a couple of interesting things about old Frank: firstly, they decided to honour him with a statue after he died but couldn’t find any pictures to model it from, so now there’s a fine bronze statue supposedly of him, but it’s actually modelled on his son! And the other thing – back in the very early days of settlement here, the Captain wanted the jungle cleared as quickly as possible so he filled up some cannons with silver dollars and fired them into the bush, and the natives hacked down all the undergrowth looking for them

We’ve gone to the top of Penang Hill in the cable car and whilst up there we looked through the haze at the view over Georgetown and the water to the mainland in the distance, we visited SE Asia’s (and probably the world’s) first Owl Museum and we saw some enormous spiders in the trees. But something else we’ve done almost every day is just wander the local streets near our quaint old Guesthouse….soaking it all in! Every door, and every building seems to have a story and there is such a variety of people to be met as well – hawkers, backpackers, rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers. It’s all just so interesting, fascinating, intriguing….

But it’s nearly time to move on – back to KL for one night tomorrow, then a flight to New Delhi on Sunday. Another chapter about to be written!

[and it’s been a quiet week photo wise too – only about 150 photos here so far compared with around 1000 in the first 3 weeks. If you want to have a look at the very small number that are there so far, click on Malaysia Penang photos]