Penang Jetties

12.2.16

Slept until about 8am, it was hard to tell if it was morning in a dark brown ( or is it deep plum ? ) room with no window, other than the small narrow vent type thing that we closed to keep out the smell of rotten eggs and mosquito’s.
The room also has a very strong smell of urine.

Apart from heavy rain on the tin roof, motorbikes, people talking outside and birds that sound like monkeys we didn’t hear anything and slept really well.

After a cold shower in shower toilet B and Johns cold shower in shower toilet A we were raring to go.

We were hungry but couldn’t face curry, rice or noodles and spotted a corner cafe with photos of toast.
We ordered 2 bacon toasted sandwiches.
A few minutes later the waitress returned and said sorry they couldn’t do 2.
Would we like American breakfast instead? We asked what it was and she went off to ask, came back, told us. It sounded good, egg, sausage, bacon and toast. Yes, that’s fine we said.
She then said only one of us could order it as they only had one slice of bread!
We left…the tears are running down my face as I’m typing, its so unbelievably funny in hindsight.

So we went back to the food court we found last night and apart from very vinegary beans and totally unnecessary iceburg lettuce it was a good fry up.
I tried my first cup of Kopi, a very strong coffee with condensed milk, really good.

We wandered afterwards to Little India to suss out curry options for the evening.
The sights, smells and the music were all fabulous.
We even came across a chocolate and coffee museum where they offered tiny little samples of chocolate of all flavours, delicious but very pricey.
We sampled some lovely iced mocha and tiramisu coffee and sat outside with full sized ones afterwards, lush.

We walked miles and miles, around the Heritage Centre with its old Colonial style buildings, then across town up and down fascinating side roads and market stalls and ended up in a very run down shopping centre, where we bought cheap sim cards to give us internet while out and about, and bought Penang Street Art t shirts from a really funny old man.

Georgetown is fascinating, something different at every turn.
Its grubby, pavements are difficult to negotiate around rubbish, cars, generally chaotic, but its buzzing and vibrant and has a great atmosphere.

The run down shopping mall adjoined a posh mall where we wandered. I had reflexology foot massage and John had a back massage.
A lovely older gentleman did my feet, we put the worlds to rights.
He had such a huge perception of everyone earning a fortune in the UK and thought I must be very wealthy to be living in Turkey and not working.
I wondered about showing him our shower and toilet photos but it didn’t seem appropriate.

We saw 2 lots of Chinese dragons performing in the mall in celebration of New Year, which was great, but I’ve a feeling when you’ve seen one Chinese Dragon you’ve probably seen them all.

We had to have Starbucks  caramel frappacinos before leaving the mall.

Stopped and bought air fresheners and mosquito mats that you set fire to to try and mask the urine smell in our room.
Everyone else seemed to be buying clothes and electrical goods.
Oh and John bought a small camera case.

On the way back we found the coastline and followed it where we could.
Not beautiful but good to see our island and the mainland in the distance.

Stopped in a little cafe by the sea, another food court type place

I had another kopi and John had a Tiger beer

Next to the food was a park area where we got accosted by a nice student lady who asked us to complete a questionnaire about Georgetown heritage area.
She took our photo and sent via WhatsApp and gave us a wafer biscuit each for helping.

Across the road was another park where they were getting a stage set up and lots of people were having photos taken with huge silk animal figures.
Seems to be getting ready for the celebrations locally tomorrow evening.

Found our way back to our jetty and gave our feet a bit of a rest before going out for clay pot biriani and some side dishes ordered at random, just guesswork really, mainly very tasty but still not sure how we ended up with a side dish of very bright yellow soft rolls with a concoction of very spicy peas.

Home to work out how to get to Penang Hill tomorrow.
We did ask Nancy / Doris and she said she didn’t know but to ask the bus people, they will help us.
She did know the answer to the cold shower toilet B. There’s a switch outside the door.
Still doesn’t explain shower toilet A as John found the switch inside his area.

Night night from our first day in Penang.