The coach journey here to Penang went smoothly, well apart from being stopped in the middle of nowhere by 2 armed police in camo gear….turned out they just wanted to go through the motions and check our passports, but nevertheless it still put us on edge. The journey took about 5 hours and we were dropped off in the city centre of ‘George Town’, the state capital of Penang.

I feel a little disappointed with George Town, considering it is one of the largest cities in Malaysia and also one of the main tourist places; there isn’t much to actually do here, add to that the bad weather and it isn’t much fun.  The place feels much more like Bali/Indonesia with many more people around, shop owners heckling you and next to no pavements, you have keep one eye on the traffic at all times.

The first day was spent trying to arrange our travel from here to Singapore.  That turned out to be a disaster, we (stupidly) thought that Malaysia being a Muslim country wouldn’t celebrate Christmas so there was no need to book any travel too far ahead.  However the schools here still break up over the holiday so most coach and train travel is fully booked with people travelling home etc. for the break.  We went to the station to book our train to Singapore but were informed it was fully booked until the 27th December!  After much research back at the hotel the choices instead were to get a 10-14 hour coach or spend 10 times more and get a flight.  Me being the princess that I am chose the flight, I think 14 hours on a coach would be the end of me.

Yesterday and today has been spent walking around seeing the many pieces of street art around the town and eating/drinking our way through all the Malaysian cuisine on offer. Whilst sat eating a curry one night, a Hare Krishna parade passed us, where floats and cows and people singing marched down the street handing out free bombay mix.

There isn’t much else to report, the town has a Little India and China town but they are quite small, our evenings have been spent watching Game of Thrones and drinking the free white coffee at the hotel.

Next stop is Singapore which I’m looking forward to, we will be spending Christmas there.  We are getting a flight from here at 21:55 tomorrow, it only takes 1 hour 30 minutes.

Artwork

More artwork

Panda

Squeak

Lots of tourists, spot Helen!

Outside the hotel

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