Day 28...Penang (Georgetown)

After an absolutely fabulous day yesterday today began with us staying awake in Bangkok airport in preparation for our 7am flight to Penang/Malaysia the next morning. Bangkok airport is absolutely freezing coz the A/C just blares out so I wish I had packed my jumper at the top of my bag. We just found an seating area and basically sat there from midnight till round 5am when we could check in. We got through the night mainly with Starbucks Tea and chocolate before setting off for Malaysia at 7am. The flight took round 3 hours of which we slept the whole way through and only woke up when we landed!

We got to Penang and knew we had to get into the city to find a hotel for the night before we headed off to Langkawi in the morning. We met a German guy in the airport who lived in Georgetown and he offered us a lift to the bus station. We got a bus within minutes of buying our tickets which was lucky. The weather on that day was gorgeous, so the bus trip into town was a bit of a sweat job. We evetually got to our preferred area which was the Chinatown (as most of Georgetown is)There was a little old lady at the counter of a hotel which we checked out (and actually stayed in), she proved very helpful as not only did she have a cheap room, but she also organised our ferry tickets to Langkawi at no extra charge and had them delivered to our rooms within 15 minutes! This saved alot of hassle finding the ferry port and what have you and meant we had more time to discover Georgetown in the time we had.

Malaysian food is basically a combination of Indian and Chinese, as we are absolutely sick of Chinese food, we went for the Indian slant on things. So after a lovely Indian lunch we decided to go to the pier area first which was a lovely walk, followed by the a trip inside the 5 star Eastern and Oriental hotel - its like the burj of Georgetown, very posh. We then went to Fort Cornwallis which was a fort for the city built by Captain Fraincis Light to protect the city from the attacks from the French and Pirates - very interesting stuff, few cannons, looking towers etc, each gallery area had a/c so we stayed everywhere longer than what we would have normally just to cool down! After that we decided to go for the obligatory beer, we went inside a purple pub and had a jug of Tiger, all the bars here give a free buffet of food when you are drinking which is kinda cool, but you could easily knock back a few jugs with all the snacks they provide which is the idea I suppose. We only had the one jug anyway and headed off to the Komtar Building which was to have a view over all of Georgetown. Its 232meters above the ground so we thought it would be a nice way to see the city. We eventually got to the building anyway but we weren't to sure where to go which is a bit strange for whats meant to be a city's major tourist attraction. We found our way to a lift and headed up to the 65th floor with this grumpy looking fucker of a lift attendant. Christ you could just tell he loved his job. Anyway when we got there expecting a mob of tourists with cameras flashing at every angle but we were the only ones up there. We got our tickets which included a free postcard (which was shit), a drinks coupon and money off gift shop items (which were also shit) We went to go have a look at the view hoping it would compensate. The supposed viewing tower was actually just a construction site, there were these Malaysian lads just sitting around listening to crap music as they painted. To be fair the view was great but the feckin windows were so dirty it was hard to see what effort they had put into it. This seemed all the more stranger to us as all we have been hearing about since we got to Asia was 'Malaysia 2007' which is there promotional campaign for tourism. Judging by this 'tourist attraction' Georgetown certainly isnt ready. I felt sorry for all the staff in there, they were sitting around doing nothing and the the bar staff practically begged us to have a drink. We didnt and just bought something in the gift shop and went on our way, dissapointed and thinking wot a waste. They must need a good marketing guru! (jen u fancy it?).

Anyway we were getting tired a this after our exploits in Chang Mai and our night in Bangkok airport so we decided to just get some dinner and head back to the hotel for an early night. We walked around looking for a restaurant, the part of the city we ended up in was disgusting,it smelt like dead dog (and we would know). We of course ended up in a bar having a few beers and then went to this crappy restaurant where the steak was really expensive and shit. After this we gave up and went back to the hotel with the overall impression of Georgetown not being very good. I think it was the least inspiring place we had been so far. Although we had Langkawi to look forward to next- Paradise Awaits!

Team Domro