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So i've missed out quite a few days of blogging recently. Mainly for your benefit guys, as the last week or two since coming back hasn't been massively exciting. Apart from playing badminton with Monty a few times and spending a day filming a Phillippino church charity day, i've been mainly wandering about and staying at hotel chilling a lot. The filming at the charity event was quite interesting, it was reasonably similar to those deep south United states style church gatherings, where people spring up and shout "Praise the lord!" and "Hallelujah! I feel Jesus in me!" and so forth. Our job was being the event camera men, filming everything that happened through the 7 bloody hours of it! Only had one battery, so when that ran out I had to use the mains adapter and cable, which frustrated the hell out of this Liza Lizardo (made up wrestling name maybe?) lady in charge, as she wanted me to move about catching all the angles. They fed us well, in fact they gave us a massive box full of packaged dinners to take away, they obviously knew me well!
Didn't have the foggiest about what the plan was with the video, but I was charged with having to edit it. Very limited instructions were given and I had to go off and try and find out from that Lizardo lady what she wanted done. But after some twoing and frowing with her about meeting her up somewhere we both knew, Evonn mysteriously and suddenly took the editing laptop and video out of my hands and I had nothing more to do with it. Well confused I was, I could have done the edit easily and quickly, and now both of us haven't a clue what's going on. That lady still continues to harass me about where the video is, this getting stupid!
Anyway, lets get on with talking about my trip to Penang.
After some debate with Amir and Johan, it was deemed that going by coach rather than the train would be cheaper and quicker. I would still have to endure a 5 hour coach journey to get up there though, rubbish. When I got to the coach station, some girl bundled me towards a booth for one company and chucked me into a coach waiting outside the station, felt like I was getting ripped off somewhere but it only cost 35RM (£7) to go a few hundred miles, bargain really, although it did take another hour before they got the coach full and we actually got under way. My neck ached after the journey as the surprisingly luxurious seat's headrest angle was bit strange, so I was at an odd posture for the whole journey with no way of adjusting it (I think the seat was broken)
When we finally got to Penang, around 11pm, I was immediately greeted with a bunch of ferocious piranha like taxi drivers all baying for my wallet's flesh and blood. None of them running on a metre, just shouting quotes at me. Jumped into an indian guy's taxi after getting him down to 30RM (nearly the same as the coach ride, but to only go 5km!) from 40RM, he takes me on a very round a bout tour of the area. This was nice of him, but I think he was trying to justify the fare somewhat. He dropped me off a hotel he recommended, the glamorous (sic) Oriental hotel. Nice bunch of people running the place but the décor seemed to have been frozen in the 1980s, like nothing had been updated for over 25 years. Still, although well used looking, it was clean and presentable, plus only 85RM a night (£17.50). Before hitting the sack, I decided to go on the usual scouting mission around the area to see what sites of interest were around where I was staying. Walking around Upper Penang street, proved that England isn't unique in it's style of frantic nightlife. Comforting familiar scenes greeted me as I check out the main clubs and bars drag of the island, something very akin to Guildhall walk on a Friday night. Lots of alcohol, pissed up fighty blokes, women who leave little to the imagination (yippeeee!), copies of Route 66 and The Fleet (bars in Pompey), dodgy blokes hanging around offering you even dodgier stuff. It's like I never left home.
The next day I decided to go on a full on trek of the further surrounding areas. Walked up Burmah street for a few miles, trying out coconut and pressed sugar cane drinks from the stalls along the way. Stopped off in a small camera shop a mile along, to buy a power lead to charge up my camera, as the other one was still in another camera case. Chatted to the friendly guy working there, whilst his kids ran about screaming their heads off, and actually got some good tips on where to go for food about town (priorities people!). A little further up the road I checked out two Buddhist temples, which extremely decorative with gold and huge buddha statues, one housing a 25m long lounging buddha, and the other across the street, not wanting to be outdone, had an extreme amount of elaborate gold and carved decorations surrounding their largish standing buddha. There were a lot of murals depicting the main stories from buddhist scripture, so I learned quite a bit about their religion in the end, as it was lost on me back in RE lessons at school.
Walked back along Gurney drive, bumped into the German girl called Christine after having to reverse my tracks down a beach promenade path that had only been half built. Accompanied each other back into town where we chatted about where we were both from, why we were over here, how crap the German and England footie teams were etc. She was over helping to manage an electrical engineering company in Buttersworth, on the main land, but had been given some down time to relax around Penang for a bit. Seeing as though we were getting on pretty well I professionally gave her my card and said to give me a call if she wanted to meet up later on for company and drinks.
In the evening I grabbed a ricshaw to the Northam Beach cafe, the old guy, who was slowly cycling the bike round, took the wrong way around the one way system, so still had to walk 5-10mins to get there, cost 30rm.
Busy food court with cheesey hotel singer in the middle with horrible midi instrumental music of covers playing behind. Nice waitress helped me out with drinks and suggestions of food, could not believe she was 63! Looked more mum's age, maybe it was the possibility of her having dyed hair. Served us fried oysters, oyster with tabasco and lime, and a singaporean fish noodle dish, all washed down with tiger beer.
Later on in the evening after flaking out for a bit from bloody hot long walks I bought some decent shirts from a surf shop next to the hotel, and went out to the bars down the road to get my social beer face on. Stopped off at a decent venue and people watched for a while, oh how the milling rabble were after my own pompey's heart. After a nod and a raised glass to a couple of guys, called Jack and Patrick on the table next to me, we started getting a chin wag on about the ladies over in England. Both of them wanted to see if they could luck with our indigenous population, as they were planning to go over there for a holiday. They seemed a bit worried about their heights and build wouldn't be good enough to attract, I assured them they were fine, and told them some tips to help their pulling power (me being Cassanova of England and all, ha!). I couldn't quite help feeling that they would probably have a bit of a task on their hands, as I don't think the ladies of our graceful lands would put oriental guys on the top of their 'Most Wanted' list (I could be very wrong). In thanks for the advice they left me with a few beers they hadn't opened, left in the icebucket, and headed off to a late night Mois club. Why the hell don't get free beer every time I dispense with the pearls of wisdom?!
I went off to play pool with some guys from the bar calle Izzi and Mike. Went over to the S club for the last 30mins of the night.
After dodging a few seedy guys asking me "You like Russian, Chinese or Malay? Good price I get you." and some persistent taxi drivers desperate to give someone a lift, I finished round one of Penang with a chilled but knackered self, bed came as a saviour.
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