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We think the journey to Penang was a scenic one, although were not sure as we feel asleep quite quickly when the train departed! It was a comfortable train that was comparable to those in the UK, we even had an LCD TV in our carriage playing Harry Potter! Which Nicole loved, and it helped the 5 hours go by quickly.
After the train to the town of Butterworth, we boarded a large ferry across to Penang Island, 30 minutes from the coast. The ferry was a big metal cage with wooden benches and locked metal boxes containing the life jackets that were suspended above us. We made it across safely and topped off our journey with a boiling hot walk through the streets of Georgetown to our hotel.
Georgetown is renowned for its arts and food culture. In 2012 the town held a art festival that hosted many local artists. The artist decorated the old town with street art focusing on the life on Penang locals. They all look similar to bankys works with cats, people and messages of peace. It's one of the major attractions in the area for tourists. We spent a few days hunting some of them down, using the tourist map provided. The old town, a UNESCO world heritage site, was only a short walk from our accomodation. The initial walk from the pier to our accommodation on Chilua Street gave us quite low expectations of what we might expect to see. The streets were similar to the vast majority of Asian streets; unfinished, dusty and blocked with numerous obstacles and a major lack of pavements. However, upon finding the old streets we were suprised to find them pedestrianised and tourist friendly. The old town was a collection of colonial buildings similar to Hanoi and Hoi An in Vietnam. The shop houses sold tourist items while food carts selling flavoured ice balls set up down the streets. A nice part was seeing that some of the shop houses and streets were still used by locals selling fish tanks and set up as local resturants. We found it so relaxing exploring the streets and shops away from the noisy main roads.
The food scene is meant to be one of the highlights of Penang and we couldnt wait to explore it. Food has been a huge part of our travels, as you can tell from all our photos! We dived straight into a local Indian for curries and rice galore for lunch and dinner... Sadly we woke up the next day with seriously bad stomach aches and sickness. So we decided to try the Chinese version of food next, hoping we wouldn't be ill this time, the homemade noodles were delicious in the local cafe. However Nicoles chicken meal didn't sit well her stomach. So the food hype was sadly lost on us. Plus with awkward dietary requirements of vegetarian nut free food, we weren't able to tuck into the street food.
It was a good idea to get out of Kuala Lumpur for a few days and see more of a country other than its skyscraper capital. It was worth the 10 hours of travel there and back.
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