Penang (Georgetown)

We arrived in Georgetown, the main part of Penang Island after a 6 hour journey via minibus. We had managed to haggle down the price of the minibus from 70 Ringgit to 50 Ringgit. We are getting good at this haggling malarkey! We checked into our hostel which was really nice and had an ensuite shower, very posh! Our first night we headed to a massive food court called Red Dragon, it had around 40 food stalls plus entertainment (well a Malaysia guy dressed in a swanky suit singing karaoke!) We then had a walk around Georgetown which was really buzzing; there are no real pavements so you are fighting for space on the road with cars, buses, motorbikes and street vendors selling food. It's a great atmosphere and everyone seems to be out and about.

Next day we went sightseeing and managed to check out some really nice Colonial building such as the city hall, town hall and Queen Victoria clock tower. We also went to Fort Cornwallis and took lots of photos of us with cannons! We also went for a walk along the esplanade and checked out little India (which actually was little). We had lunch at a local food court by the esplanade and tried out the local drink Coconut shake which was awesome! The coconut shake itself was lush but they also top it with ice cream and when you get to the bottom of the shake there are lots of pieces of coconut for you to eat. Was an action packed morning/afternoon and we even had time to move into a new hostel. Even though our hostel was lush it was £9 a night so we checked into a more basic hostel with a shared bathroom for £4 a night. I can't believe we think £9 a night is too expensive! Anyhoo our new hostel was called Jims place, owned by a bloke funnily enough called Jim! He is a hippyish Malaysian guy in his 60's with a white goatee and feathers in his long hair. He was a legend and had some great stories, especially about being in the army under British rule in the 60's!

That night we went to Little India for dinner at a restaurant and ended up paying too much for an average curry, so we learnt another lesson, eat from street vendors rather than restaurants, it's much cheaper and generally the food is better. We then headed back to Jims place and got chatting to a 59 year old guy from Margate who has been travelling for 23 years!! My god did he have some unbelievable stories to tell, after about 3 hours of him telling us these insane stories Jim kicked him out and we went to bed!

We arose pretty early the next morning and headed to Kek Lok Si temple, the largest Buddhist temple in South East Asia and my word was it HUGE! It must have taken years to build but it was stunning. We spent most of the day there and took some really good photos. When we left the temple we saw a guy on the street making some food on a wicker basket, folding it into a banana leaf and wrapping it in newspaper. We were intrigued so we went over and it turned out he was making Indian Pancakes which is basically ricey noodles things with a pile of brown sugar, a pile of cinnamon or something and something else (Lorry's description!). Anyhoo the bloke let us try one for free and it was lush, you just mix it all in with your hands and eat it out of the newspaper. We had the free one and decided to buy one; it cost 1 Ringgit (20p!!). Love it! That evening we had dinner at one of the street vendors and had some banana and coconut pancakes for pudding along with a couple of fruit juices all for under £2! (Yes we know we keep banging on about the cheap prices!) Had our 5th night off the booze!

We decided to stay an extra night as Jim said he would sort out our Thai Visa's for us, we ended up deciding to buy a 60 day visa instead of having to worry about doing a border run when we were in Thailand. It worked out pretty cheap too. We went to the Thai embassy in the morning to give in our application and passports and then headed off to the Botanical Gardens as we heard that some monkeys hang out there. We waited at the bus station for a bit and some Malaysian guy came up to us and started chatting to us for bloody ages! He was asking us all sorts of questions about London, Religion and Politics, we didn't know any of the answers to his questions, to change the subject Lorry asked which bus he was waiting for, the bloke replied none, he just comes to the bus station to talk to people....why us!!

After our ordeal we got to the Botanical Gardens, at first we couldn't see any monkeys and after an hour of looking at plants and trees we decided to give up, however on our way out we heard some rustling in the trees and next thing we knew we were staring at loads of monkeys! They were just hanging out in the trees munching on leafs and swinging around, there was a baby monkey with the group and he was mega cute! The monkeys had really big white eyes and didn't mind us standing right by them, we just sat and watched them for about half an hour and then realised we needed to get back to the Thai embassy to pick up our visa, on our way out we saw even more monkeys this time a different species and they were just chilling out on the grass. On our way home we stopped off at Little India and had a few Samosa and Pakoras from one of the stalls, it filled us up so much that we didn't end up eating anything else that night meaning our dinner cost us 60p!! We chatted to Jim for a bit said our goodbyes and headed to bed around midnight, ready to be up at 6am to travel to Langkawi. We knew we wouldn't have a problem waking up at 6am as our hostel was next to a mosque and at 6am every morning a call to prayer blasts out of the speakers, we had been cursing it every morning but it did act as a good wake up call for us the following morning!

Langkawi

Instead of taking the direct boat to Langkawi which is what most tourists do we decided to be like the locals (and save some money) so we got an early bus to the Jetty then the free ferry Inland to Butterworth, then a bus up to Alor Setar, then a local bus to another Jetty and finally a ferry over to Langkawi. It took us twice as long as the direct boat but cost us half as much, we have found that if you take the local transport instead of the tourist transport it takes longer and may be more uncomfortable but is much cheaper and actually quite fun!

We arrived in Langkawi before midday and checked into our lovely hostel called Rainbow Lodge which was recommended to us by Lorry's friend from Cheltenham Rebecca who just happened to be staying there too! We didn't think Malaysia could get any better until we got to Langkawi, amazing Islands, with beautiful beaches, lush food, blazing hot sun and best of all tax free on alcohol meaning you can buy a can of beer in the off license for 35p and it's only about 60p -£1 for a beer in the pubs, awesome! We checked out the gorgeous beach and then met Rebecca for dinner, had a really nice curry and obviously a few drinks! We bumped into the Canadian couple who were in our villa in Perhentian Islands and the girl was telling us how she went paragliding the day before and that she started feeling faint whilst in mid air, next thing she had passed out so was just gliding in mid air unconscious! Her boyfriend could see she was out cold so got people to help get her back to the ground! They recommended we should try it but we may just give it a miss!

Next morning we went for breakfast at the same place we had dinner and had Roti Canai, served with spicy dips. Strange having spicy food in the morning but actually really nice. We bumped into Rebecca and arranged to meet her in the evening at the yellow cafe, a chilled beach bar with hammocks where you can watch the sun set. We spent a few hours on the beach, Hickey went for a run, probably not the best idea in this heat, he was fine after cooling off in the sea though!

We met up with Rebecca at the Yellow cafe that evening, it started to get cloudy though so we didn't get a great view of the sunset but still sat on the beach with a bevy, very nice. It was St Patrick's Day today and we noticed an Irish bar along the main strip so after the yellow cafe we headed there for a Guinness, they were playing some cool Irish tunes, we didn't expect to see an Irish themed pub in Malaysia!!! It was quite expensive in the bar so after a Guinness we headed to the off license and bought some cans of beer, headed back to our room to drink our beer and played cards. After we had drank all our beers we headed out to a bar called Babylon, another beach bar with some good beats. It's famous for its Shisas and every table had them so we sat down and tried some, you can pick from loads of different flavors, we picked guava and mint and it was really nice. We had a few more beers and headed home at 1am when the bar shut; we were tempted to carry the night on at another bar but were low on cash. When we got back there was a cat outside our door so we let it in and it ended up staying the night with us in bed! It was really cute, we let it out at 6am though as it wanted to play and we were very tired and a little hungover! A few things we have noticed in Malaysia is that there are hundreds of cats roaming the streets, all really cute. Not only cats roam the streets though, we saw a bloke feeding some crisps to a goat on the street today! Very strange, even stranger is later on in the day that same goat was play fighting with a Malaysia guy! Loving the strange sights, we did forget to mention in our last blog that when we went to the supermarket in Kuala Lumpur the first thing we saw for sale was a cows head and intestines along with all other parts, it was horrible, Hickey swore the cows eyes were following him, a bloke was even pulling up the cows skin to see how fresh it was, not something you would see back home in Tesco's!! Anyway back to Langkawi! We chilled all morning and early afternoon as we were quite hungover, we also are trying not to be in the sun for too long as we keep burning and peeling as the sun is so strong out here! We went for food at our favourite restaurant called Tomato and had a chilled evening. Rebecca is doing some volunteering at the local pet shelter so the next morning we decided to join her and do some volunteering ourselves, so our morning consisted of walking loads of different dogs. They were all cute, it was a bit sad seeing one of the dogs who had been run over and had no use of his back legs, he just dragged them along when trying to walk, he had his own wheel chair though so we could still take him out for a walk. We left the shelter at midday and went for a shower and some food and then went back to or favourite pastime - sunbathing! Its quite strange out here as the beaches are quite empty during the day as its so hot, it only gets busy around 5pm when the sun isn't so strong, we have started staying out of the sun from 11pm - 3pm, so been having a couple of hours in the morning and late afternoon, still nowhere near as tanned as we would like to be though! Our last couple of days here have all been about chilling, eating and of course sunbathing. Hickey is off the alcohol now after getting too drunk, thought he had lost his card but has now found it. What a doughnut! Anyhoo all sorted now and looking forward to Thailand where we plan to go to Ko Lanta, Ko Phi Phi, Phuket, Krabi, Ko Pha-Ngan, Ko Tao, Bangkok and Chang Mai. Good times!

We definitely did not expect Malaysia to be this nice and instead of the intended 1 week we have stayed over 3 weeks here. We think Langkawi makes a perfect holiday destination as the beaches are gorgeous, its always hot and there are loads of 5 star resorts and things to do, plus alcohol and food is cheap (no we haven't got a job working for Langkawi tourist board!). We have also worked out that Hickey has a double as in both Penang and Langkawi people came up to him convinced they had spoken to him before! I wonder if we will meet him in Thailand!