Penang – Day 2, circumnavigation with a professor

The weather not only behaved itself, it became what one usually expects from a holiday destination. Once again, no sunscreen for me as I know my really olive skin can handle this equatorial ozone overload. My blisters are starting to heal thanks to open thongs (fresh air, salt water), and generous doses of Betadine. So I’m all set for another long day of exploring.

Professor Sam (I’ve since had it explained to me that I’m not using the right terminology, but this blog is not intended to be wholly factual, as you may have already figured out) picked me up around 10-ish and we headed to the chinese clan jetties. There are 7 or 8 jetties, each belonging to one Chinese family, or clan. They build outward towards the sea, rather than up or in. This view is looking back to Georgetown from the end of the Lim jetty.

Once again, temples are an important part of any tourist’s agenda in Asia. This is a very large one on a big hill in Penang, and I have a feeling this one is Buddhist, judging by the thousands of little Buddhas lining the walls.

Next stop was Penang Botanical Gardens, where I proceeded to frighten Sam when I suggested we stray off the beaten path and up a deep, dark, twisty, steep jungle path (which happened to be quite well paved). Originally we were looking for monkeys, but none were in the park. Instead I started looking for bugs and other interesting things. Once we stopped puffing and panting from the trek, I noticed large bullants, black termite type things, and this – a spider trying to cross a pond whilst being stalked by a couple of spider-eating inch-long fish.

Sam thinks she saw a sea snake (would that possibly be a pond snake?) so we shot through and headed back to the car to continue our search for monkeys. We found theme eating Hokkien Mee in the car park. Well, this one had western tastes and was sampling condensed milk instead.

And this one seemed to subscribe to Cleopatra’s theory that strawberry milkshakes would be great to bath in.

Once we got enough of the monkeys we continued west and eventually stumbled upon the world’s first tropical butterfly garden. There was so much to see here, lizards, snakes, tortoises, fish, plants and some pretty amazing butterflies. This is not one of the most amazing ones, but let’s not hold that against it. It just happens to be one of my better photos from the place.

Filed under the “really cute creature” category is this white squirrel. It’s not albino because it’s eyes are not pink, and it’s mate was brown, so I guess it’s just blonde.

In the “not so cute but I hope it tastes good” category are these scorpions. I say that because there’s a pretty good chance I’ll be eating some roasted ones in either Philippines or Vietnam.

I saw a few of these iguanas being paraded around Bangkok streets, where tourists were charged 20 baht to pat them. This is the first that actually looks alive and has any color. Perhaps it’s relatively happy.

I reached the leaf and stick insect display and spent about 10 minutes trying to actually find one. They really do have amazing camouflage, and I only found one leaf and two stick insects. Here you can see why.

We spent quite a bit of time at the Butterfly Farm, and I could easily have found a quiet spot in the garden and read a book for a day. However, it was time to move on. After another 5 minutes driving through Durian, Mango and Coconut trees planted in very precarious mountain sides and valleys, we entered the Fruit Farm. This was a lot of fun and very informative. Not only did we get to sample about a dozen different tropical fruits that I would struggle to find at home, but we were treated to a very funny and educational discourse from one of the farmers. He had an anecdote or phrase for every fruit and introduced to the group some ways many of the fruits could be used by a husband or wife to annoy each other.

Arriving back in the shop I found a jar of me. Actually it’s a herb from the sunflower family, probably used for cooking.

One of the fruit trees in the orchard is home to a giant moth.

The final stage of our tour around Penang was a return to the fishing village from the night before, to get some decent sunset/dusk shots. The previous night I had left my SD card in the laptop, so didn’t have enough internal memory to take a decent shot. This was my chance to rectify that.

There were about 7 or 8 kids po ttering around in the mud left by the deeply receding tide. This guy was a little more focussed than the rest so I watched him for a while. He was skating around on a board, with a bucket on top then, when he saw bubbles of a certain type, would stop and start reaching down as far as he could with his hands.

These mantis shrimp is what he was fishing for. The locals called them millipede prawns. Each would fetch him about 20 ringgits (approx AUD $6.50).

I’d had two very long but enjoyable days in Penang, and I was exhausted, so an early night was required. Penang itself doesn’t seem to sleep, and there were still plenty of people enjoying themselves on the main road directly under my 15th floor window at 3-4am. There’s no rest for the wicked, or me. So, with little sleep to fuel me I took a midday plane back to KL, where the rain met me again.

Penang – Day 1, around Georgetown

I checked into my hotel in Georgetown at 7am and slept for a couple of hours before deciding to walk around the town for the day, to see what I could find.  There was a lot to see!  One thing I discovered over the day was that I don’t really need sunscreen in this part of the world.  I guess the ozone layer is pretty thick here.  The weather was fantastic for the two days I spent here.  I took a ride on a trishaw, and discovered that the drivers are usually homeless – they sleep on the trishaw at nights.  Penang is very expensive compared to KL, and they can’t afford a roof over their heads.

A couple of men were playing checkers on the street, with bottle tops.

There is a tower in Penang called Komter. Like so much of KL and Penang, it was under renovation, upgrade or construction, but I was still able to get up to the top floor, which I think was the 60th or something. This gave me a 360 degree view of the entire island of Penang. I circumnavigate this tomorrow.  In the middle of the Komter observation deck is a very tacky wedding area. I don’t know who would want to get married here, but it looked like somebody was planning to do so that night.

For lunch I chose to eat from one of the many street stalls. This is an example of how many of them look.  I ate the Chicken Rice, as it seems to be one of the traditional and very popular meals in Malaysia.  I have to say I was expecting a whole lot more than what I experienced, after seeing Anthony Bourdain wax lyrical about it in one of his travel/food shows.  The rice was fluffy and well-cooked, but the roast chicken was almost cold.  I found out later that it is meant to be.  You have to add chili to get flavour, as the savory flavor we expect from roast chicken simply wasn’t there.  On the flip side, it cost me about $2 for tea, fresh juice, and the chicken rice.

Since Thailand, pretty much the only rock music I’ve heard outside Rock City has been The Scorpions. I first heard a “best of” album at poolside in Patong, and I’ve heard it regularly throughout Thailand and Malaysia.  Seems they’re huge in Asia.  Of course “Winds Of Change” is the real reason.  If Asians knew what their primary musical style was, I’m not so sure they’d be so crazy about them.

A phone booth with simple instructions on what to say once your dialee picks up.  I like it.

The tailor you go to when you’ve been asked to host the Academy Awards.

There are temples, shrines and mosques (and even some churches!) everywhere in Thailand & Malaysia.  From what I can gather, Hinduism has many gods.  My Indian is not at it’s best right now, but I think this temple is honoring the Goddess of breast implants.

And for those like me who don’t have time to stop for anything, there is always the fast food option. Self-installed in just 5 minutes, you can use this one to pray that the car to your left is not about to veer into your lane without indicating (as they always seem to do over here).

This is generally how the Hindu temples look in Malaysia. Penang and KL are both made up primarily of Indians and Chinese, with authentic Malays being in the minority.  Therefore Buddhism and Hinduism are both very popular, even though this is a Muslim country.

Once again, forgive my Indian translation, but I believe this could be a temple worshiping the Gods of Guitar Hero and Rock Band.

I walked past this very run down hair-dressing salon which advertises itself as “delux hair saloon”. Hate to see the budget ones!

A street-side shoe repairer still has work to do on a very quiet day.

The beggars are not as aggressive here as they are in Thailand, but I am glad I was not the only one to ignore them. It is very difficult to walk past without helping.

The street sweepers are human here, and they just walk into moving traffic without a care in the world. Here a couple of locals trade views on an upcoming footy match.

After a very long day walking around town I was picked up at my hotel by a friend of friend – Communications professor at Penang University, Sam.  She and her friend Kash took me to the best (but messiest) seafood experience I’ve had yet. Below you see the just caught trays and boxes of clams, pipis, whelks, crabs, fish, prawns & squid.  You load up trays with what you want, and they cook up a storm with it.  And boy, do they do a great job.  With the exception of the yucky orange crab fat, everything was stunning. I particularly loved the butter prawns.  Thanks Sam!  Only thing missing was some nice wine or beer to compliment the seafood – this is a Halal restaurant, so no alcohol allowed.

A view from the restaurant.  What a great way to spend a balmy evening.

In keeping with my ongoing obsession with macro bug photography, I present you with the unidentified giant bug that was crawling up my hotel room wall when I arrived home from dinner. I’m sure it was harmless but I relocated it to the outside corridor all the same.  Oh, and it had wings – don’t think having this thing dive-bomb my pillow at 3am would be that enjoyable.

OK – that was a very long post, but there was a lot to see in Penang. Tomorrow we have day 2, where Sam takes a day off work to drive me around the island.