Malaysia - Penang

It was time to move from Thailand (we needed to dry out more than anything else) so we decided to spend a few weeks doing Malaysia before hitting Singapore.

After a good trot on the journey's front recently we had abit of a rougher ride into Malaysia involving alot of hanging around for no real reason, having to change buses 4 times for no real reason and being scammed out of our remaining Thai Baht, so we were pretty relieved to finally arrive in Penang 16 hours later.

Whilst we were in Thailand a fair few people had told us not to bother with Penang as it was abit rubbish but I recon you need to see these places for yourself and make up your own mind. Once we got used to the fact there are open sewers running down the side of the road and there are rats the size of Alsatians it kind of grew on us.

The first thing that hit me was the cultural diversity of Malaysia, the people come from a number of different ethnic groups - Malays, Chinese & Indians but they all get along really well so it makes for a pretty vibrant atmosphere and you can imagine how good the food is given all those influences...

On our first day there we went armed with our Lonely Planet to have an explore around China Town and Little India. We dropped in at a Mosque which had been flagged as a highlight and we promptly found ourselves sat with a "Religious Consultant" who began reading and then singing to us from the Quran. It was a slightly bizarre experience although pretty enlightening, I decided however that I was a good Catholic boy at heart - it seems to have served me well thus far.

I would have to say that the highlight of our stay was Penang Hill, which is a massive hill (didn't see that one coming) 821 meters above sea level. We had heard that it is possible to trek to the top so being the energetic young lads that we are this seemed like a wicked idea. After a quick trip to 7 Eleven for some supplies we arrived at the bottom of the hill ready for our exhibition. Now its pretty difficult to imagine what a 821 meter high hill looks like but I didn't expect it to look like a bloody mountain! I'm ashamed to admit that we actually ended up opting for the wusses route and took the "scenic" cable car ride up there. Once at the top the views were amazing, you could see the whole of the island including the infamous Penang bridge (21 km's long) which connects Penang island to the rest of Malaysia which I had incidentally missed on our drive in (you'd be amazed at how tiring a 14 hour bus ride can be)

Not to be defeated by the hill, plus the fact that we had lugged 4 liters of water to the top in order to keep ourselves hydrated we decided to trek down to the bottom. Turns out this is alot easier in theory than practice. We had two attempts at getting back down but without a map and minimal sign posting our homing instincts were pretty rubbish and we managed to walk in two complete circles back to our stating point, so it was the cable car back down again for us.

On a positive note Malaysia has served us well as a rehab clinic, we were shocked to find that a beer here is nearly as expensive as home (2.50 a pint) so it has been fruit shakes all round - bring back The Blue Posts I say....

Our next stop was the Perhentian Islands.