What happened on the West Coast...

Penang:

The bus stopped at Butterworth ferry where we took the local walk on ferry for 20 minutes over to Penang, Georgetown.  We decided to stay in the main city, Georgetown in Chinatown in a Chinese guest house that bizarrely baked bread!

The city had lots of noise, hustle and bustle from its huge population as well as many cultural buildings.  Over a few days here we toured around a couple temples and took in the sites.  We visited the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion (once owned by China’s last Mandarins) which is well worth the visit as the guide was great and very passionate about the restoration project.

We also met up with Mai Ling who we met in the Cameron Highlands and she took us out for dinner trying different foods as well as paying a visit to Batti Ferringi for the night market.  I stayed down this way last time on my travels in one of the many guest houses near the big fancy hotels.  This place was so full of western holiday makers its scary.  It’s so more like a hot Blackpool or Spain than the real Malaysia…

On the Sunday morning we saw a Chinese funeral possession go past.  It was more like something out of James Bond!  With a noisy band playing around the coffin, very strange…

We met with Mai Ling for lunch afterwards and she took us to the Tropical Spice Gardens, a wild fruits farm and drove us around some of the coast line.  We also got to see an area that was hit by the Tsunami and saw the people still living in the temporary accommodation…  From here we then got the early ferry for a 2.5hr crossing to isle of Langkawi… 

Langkawi:

This island is a tax free island known for it beach resorts and an ideal place to spend my birthday as well as our next step going into Thailand.  Being my birthday while here we got a nice place to stay on the beach on the Cenang side of island… 

That morning Rachel had come up with an allergic reaction to something so after we had got our place to stay we needed to visit the doc for some potions as the rash all over was getting worse…  No waiting in the surgery, straight in and a doctor who could speak better English than the doctors back home!

It was very quiet around the place, so the huge beach felt like your own.  The next day was my Birthday.  Cake for breakfast set the day off on a good note.  Rachel treated me to an authentic Indian oil massage and body scrub.  That was an experience!  Wearing a loin cloth and looking like I had been caught under an oil spillage at the end of the massage I then got scrubbed and washed down with hot water.

No rice and noodles today.  Rachel had seen a little restaurant that served Italian food.  Run by a European she made great pasta, garlic bread and salads.  All washed down with a couple of cold beers.  Then the surprise!  Rachel had spoken to the owner the day before about it being my birthday, so she said she would make me a cake.  Right result as it was a huge chocolate cake all hand made!  A couple of slabs later we were well stuffed.  The hotel kept the rest in their fridge over night and we had some more for breakfast before heading back to the port to catch the ferry into Thailand to the port called Satan.