Wednesday, 5 November 2014

Thailand to Malaysia- first stop Penang!

UWe finally arrived in goerge town, penang at 10pm after a long 12 hours of travelling in the most uncomfortable mini van ever. Crossing the border into Malaysia was very easy and quick.

George town is a heritage site and is very quaint and full of character. I loved George town. There isn't a lot happening here but the town is very interesting and has got alot of english history, the place really reminded us of home. We packed in our 3 days, it felt good getting off our beach bums and exploring some culture.


Day 1: We followed the map to seek out all the famous street art dotted around the town. This meant alot of walking but it was fun finding the street art. The street art was a project that started in 2012. George town commissioned artists from all over the world to paint murals on the buildings around the town.

The town has a huge Indian presence so instead of a chinese dinner again we finally managed to change up our diet and eat Tandoori chicken, Indian curries and naan bread. The food is so cheap here too. 


Day 2: We explored george town a little bit more and walked to the street art further away from the centre of town. George town has a museum about its history and some more street paintings that are 3D so we took in the local history and learnt all about British Malaysia before its independence. 


In the evening we visited the local shopping mall and watched the film 'Fury' (with Brad Pitt) at the local cinema. We were able to sit in double seats as a novelty. Penang is a quiet town at night, alcohol is very expensive as it's not the culture here so we had some evenings in. 

Day 3: we attempted the local bus service out of George town to see more of Penang. It was surprisingly easy to navigate and only cost us 2 ringet for a single (about 50p).

We got off the bus at Penang hill and went from the bottom to the top in a vertical tram. It was pretty fun and the view at the top was high. Apart from the view there was only a mosque, cafe and an owl farm at the top so we didn't stay up there long. 

Once we were down from the hill we walked across the town to see a huge buddhist temple up another thousand steps to the hill top. This temple had a really pretty pagoda and up another vertical tram there was the largest buddah statue we have seen so far. The views here were also pretty good. 


We had a stroke of luck getting the public bus back to george town as we flagged the bus to us when we saw it on the street, only to realise there was a queue of people behind us waiting to get on the bus too. We actually managed to subconciensly flag the bus down at a bus stop (we only got the bus to penang hill before so we had no idea where the bus stop was in the town).

Before we went to dinner we walked through a place called little India. George town is famous for it's architecture so the photos of the town look good.  
This was a very good chocolate fondu!

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