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Penang, or more specifically Georgetown, is a busy place. We were lucky to get space on one of the few remaining buses from Thailand that day and we arrived well after sunset. You couldn't fail to but be anything but impressed with the neon lit bustle of the town as we slowly cruised over the sea on the ferry.
The architecture is a stunning mix of styles and fashions from the past couple of hundred years and the food reflects the heady mix of Indian, Chinese and Malay influences.
We stayed in a lovely quirky place along Love Lane and had to restrict our wanderings to the cooler parts of the day, which were few and far between. The heat was pretty unbearable and after our first day of exploring little india and the fort, etc we got ourselves sunstroke, heatstroke and dehydrated beyond control and we paid the price for several days trying to recover.
As mentioned, the food is diverse. We ate particulalry well in little India and had fantastic wonton soup amongst the busle around a chinese buddhist temple. We even searched out Thai restaurants to keep our chilli fix going and it is turning out to be a bit of an obsession now!
We spent about a week enjoying the atmosphere and avoiding the rats (which were HUGE and eveywhere. We even saw two rats fighting one evening in the middle of the street, completely oblivious to the traffic). Penang hill, which overlooks Georgetown, offered a lovely retreat from the crazy built up heat and offered a lovely view over the island ad the cable car ride was spectacular.
We made a good friend in little India called Mohommed Khan who was a lovely gentle man. He helped us get to the bus station in the middle of nowhere to catch our bus on to the Cameron Highlands further inland, where we hoped it would be a bit cooler!
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