Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Good evening from Kuala Lumpur,
Yep we are in Malaysia. Thailand has been amazing but it was time to move on. First stop was to get a train to Penang, A small island off the west coast. Our train through was a sleeper coming in from Bangkok and wasn't due at the station in Surat Thani untill 1.30am! We arrived at the station at around 5pm. After a walk around a run down town, small night market and an hour in an internet cafe we found a bench in the station to call home as we waited in the humidity for our train. We both finished our books is all I'll say, but the only other entertainment was a terrible thai Whitney Houston tribute playing above on a sorry looking T.V.
We did eventually arrive in Penang. It was raining and the town looked like it had had better days. Our hostel was situated on love lane, which sounds nice and when we got there it looked good, grand looking old town house. However, the room was bare, tiled floors, dark, questionable bed sheets and they used some over powering toilet cleaner which stank!! The first night wasn't to bad, after a fantastic Indian meal we slept ok. The second night was a bit rough though and on top of the smell of chemicals, we had a barking dog out the back which did not stop all night. Thats was it, we moved the next morning to a much nicer place, simple and clean and much more homely and quiet!
Malaysia is much more diverse in it's people, especially in penang. Indian, Chinese and Malay all live side by side and its seems in relative harmony. The blonde on my arm is getting a few more stares though! All this does combine to create some fantastic food. Indian style is by far our favorite, with little Indias in every town, they are the place to eat.
We didn't find Penang our favorite place to visit, we explored a little. The best part was going up Penang Hill via railway and enjoying the spectacular views. Watching the rain cloud drift across the town, unload, create a rainbow and drift away was interesting. The Penang Bridge is also fasinating, an 8.4k bridge connecting the island to the mainland, and it was fun to drive across it on our way to Kuala Lumpur.
We found a great deal on a hotel so we have little bit of luxury for 3 days. We have enjoyed KL much more than Penang, built on an old rainforest swamp, the place is hot, humid, rainy, seedy, modern, busy, new and old all at the same time. The Petronas Twin Towers were a spectaular sight from anywhere in the city, from standing right in front of them to viewing them all lit up at night from our hotel. We were fortunate enough to be there when the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra were playing on sunday afternoon. More of a family day, but the hall was modern and stylish. The set included 3 popular pieces of music, more like an introduction. But the final piece was music written to accompany the story of Roald Dahl's little red riding hood from his revolting rhymes book. The narrative and music were fantastic and we had a good laugh. But apart from eating well and sight seeing it is time to move on again. One more stop to Melaka in Malaysia, before we head to Singapore for 2 nights, then Sydney for 2 nights, THEN Christchurch in New Zealand. Its going to be busy but I can't wait.
Will blog soon.
Chris and Bex
- comments