We travelled 8 and a half hours in the mini bus to the thai/malaysian border and got a ferry (yey!) to the island of penang. We were staying in chinatown which was quite grotty and had rats and prostitutes roaming the streets at night! We ate a lovley indian meal in little india when we arrived- i had tandori chicken, cheese ana and salad/sauces and a strawberry yoghurt drink then on to a bar to watch the football. Liverpool won amy yey! At 12 it was my birthday and we requested the 'happy birthday' song from a disabled mobile dj in a wheelchair!

In the morning of my birthday we went for a traditrional dim sum breakfast in chinatown and green tea. I didnt like dim sum and was pretending to eat it without retching and kept taking the custard tart whenever i could as thats the only one i liked! It was a fun experience though and is what the chinese do every sunday. Penang is very multicultural with 60% being chinese, 30% muslim and %10 indian and each one respects the other religion (there was a church, a mosque and a chinese temple on one street!) i liked that about this place and everyone lives in harmony no matter what their religion.

There are certain weird customs like you are not meant to eat with your left hand, or exhange money or objects with the left hand which is hard to remember! We went on a bus tour round penang stopping at the biggest chinese tempple in south east asia (the chinese here beleive in heaven and hell but hell seems to be better cos you can drink and have money and caffiene so people make offerings of money and booze to the statues to bring good luck!) We saw the fort where the pirates were kept away and the wooden villages on stilts in the sea where two families have lived opposite each other for over 100 years before marrying into one another and becoming one (aw cute..) We saw penang bridge which has brought better finanace and economy to malaysia and south east saia and the ships that pick up the chinese men every morning so they can go out to sea and gamble as they arent allowed to do it on the island! The chinese temples are decorated with swastikas which i found weird but apparently hitler stole the symbol off the chinese but flipped it round and they use it as good luck.

At the snake temple we saw lots of poisionous snakes draped over the shrines bu t they didnt bite as they were drugged/sedated by insence that is burned in the shrine. Here they eat python soup which is meant to be good for circulation and cleaning of the blood and they cook it with ginger but if it turns black in the pan they know it has poison in and not to eat it! The king cobra was the deadliest snake but i held the python, i was the only one in the group who wanted to hold one (i was being brave on my birthday!) I started shaking as soon as i held it round my neck and didnt like it so asked him to take it off but he wouldnt as he wanted to take the proffessional photo so id pay and was telling me to smile but i was crying so couldnt! Then he added 2 smaller little snakes onto me and i was crying and shaking and everyone was laughing! Im glad i did it though.. i think!

The chinese teple was beautifl up on a hill it was 110 years olf\d with a huge ornate pagoda which we climbed up to. It had just been chinese new year so it was decorated with 20,000 lights to represent a bright future for the people. It was so humid, hotter than thailand but we had to cover up so we still arent tanned much! The photos are making us look transparent though, i think its the flash- my frekles are out anyway! I bought a lovley traditional fan to cool me down anyway. We saw tutles in the water and fed them which i loved as they are one of my fave animals but as we walked through the markets we saw a little girl getting beaten with a stick by her mother and she was shaiking and quivering against these rusty bars it was awful and i cant stop thinking about it.

Afterwards we went to the shopping centre in penang and i had my birthday lunch of macdonalsds! Very malaysian! That night we went to the night markets as a groupa for my birthday dinner- i had chicekn satay side dish and veg biriyani- there was all different typoes of food in a courtyard and you chose which kind you wanted then ate together with the locals at the tables. There was a guy singing songs and some people from my group requested happy birthday for me again and he was shouting miss jo through the crowds but he got my age wrong and said i was 30! my group got me a pendant with travelling crystals in and brought out a banana cake with yam flab\voured purple ice cream in the middle which was nice- i was home sick on my birthday though!!

The next day we went to cameron highliands. The journey was long and very windey up the hills to 1500 m above sea level but very pretty. Cameron highlands is famous for its tea plantations so we went to see them and had a proper cup of tea afterwards it was so good as i miss tea!! we also went to a strawberry farm which is what this place is famous for, they were gorgeous i could have eaten a whole field! Everything is cute and girly here i like it and the hotel was lovely too it was like where the sound of mucis was filmed! we watched dvds and caught up on rest in the hotel- oh i forgot we went to a butterfly farm too which was nice and a rose garden! god this has probably made no sense but im going to bed now. i will wirttye about juala lumpur tomorrow. miss you !!xxxxxx