Following our swift exit from Langkawi we arrived by ferry to the island of Pulau Penang quite late. A lot of places were full and we finally managed to find a reasonably priced guest house on Love Lane in the Chinese district as we were eager to get out and sample the culinary delights on offer - Penang is known as one of the best places in the world to buy hawker (street) food.
We quickly found some beef noodle soup and chicken satays for dinner which came in total to less than £2 for both of us and were then a bit shocked to find that the cheapest beer on offer was over £3 for a small bottle! We returned to our room tired from the day of travelling hoping to get a good nights kip. This was not to be as it turned out that the wall to our room didn't reach the ceiling so the light from the corridor came in and there was a local bar opposite full of noisy drunk Malaysians until 3 am. When that bar finally closed our noisy neighbours returned keeping us up even later, along with people showering in the middle of the night. Arghghgh! We decided to move the next day as we thought nowhere could be this bad. We were however mistaken as the dorms we chose were equally noisy and cramped.
Having said that we loved Georgetown which was full to the brim of rustic colonial architecture and amazing food which we obviously made the most of! We also spent an afternoon in a huge pet store which had puppies, fish, snakes, hamsters and raccoons for sale . It had a pet hotel and beauty salon where we saw a very smug looking bichon frise getting a haircut. It sounds a but weird but it was like being in a zoo there were so many pets!
By this point we hadn't really slept in 2 nights so caught a bus up to Ferrangi which is the beach area of the island and booked ourselves into a hotel with a pool. There happened to be a Hard Rock cafe next to the hotel so we split our time between there and the pool. Although the food has been great out here it was a treat to have something homely for a change!
In order to get back to the mainland we had to spend another night in Georgetown. We decided that it would be third time lucky and we would find somewhere decent to stay. But this wasn't to be and we ended up in another hostel with questionable wc's and a noisy room from the traffic outside! It was quite cheap though at less than £6 a night so we put the money we saved towards extra coffee the next morning before our mini bus to the Cameron Highlands.