Georgetown on Pulau Penang, Peninsular Malaysia: April 19-24

April 19->24

Our first weeks in Malaysia, we moved fast from place to place, each one completely different.  Our path started in the NW, moved east to meet Byron on the Perhentian Islands, then south again to Kuala Lumpur.  Before Malaysia, each place was for weeks, making ourselves comfortable and settling into routines.  Here the routine was packing up, moving, new places and new people all the time.

This is a map of the downtown bit of Georgetown; Georgetown is a city on the island of Penang.  It feels like being transported into what I imagine Europe is like, but full of Malay, Indian, and Chinese people.  And Street food, tucked away markets, huge temples in the suburbs, and beaches and jungle nearby.  This is when we were with Helga, with our endless giggles and shenanigans while Sean sat by speechless.  Can you believe it?!

We spent our first night in a shitty dark room with Helga and her moody friend across the hall.  The next day we hunted for a better place.  We ended up choosing one that Sean sold to us by describing it as a creepy old-school orphanage.  The ceilings were incredibly high, taller than the room was wide, and the only furniture was metal-framed child-sized beds and a wood desk that looked like the kind of thing you’d find in an old Catholic school with mean nuns smacking your hands with rulers. 

Georgetown itself is beautiful to look at, each neighbourhood pretty different from the previous one.  Little India with its smells and colours and intricate temples covered with hundreds of gods; Chinatown with its hardware stores, dollar stores, baked goods, alleyways and oily street foods; the main hostel drag with its coffee shops, restaurants, fruit smoothies, fast buses, crazy traffic, and dozen corner stores; and the ocean front with fancy shops, garbage-coated rocky beaches, coffee and tea stalls, and wandering people.  And a couple of markets here and there, with cheap fruits and veggies, stinky fish, rats running around, and cages full of foul. 

Main street at sunset.  Cornerstores and bars and internet cafes.   

City buses are the way to go in Georgetown, standing by the right road and waiting.  Just like home. After wandering the city for a few days, we took an awesome day trip to Penang National Park.  A long bus ride to get there, gathering snacks and paying for the entrance ticket, and we’re on our way into the jungle.  A tiring hours-long hike in the jungle, listening to birds, looking for monkeys, and staring at the floral eye candy.  We could hear birds, but mostly couldn’t find them.  Until we got to the beach and I went to pee on the other side of a sand dune… I looked up and saw that the ‘leaves’ of a tree were ten percent fluorescent green pigeons that matched the sun-backed leaves perfectly.  Man, you could stare at the tree for a long time without even noticing. 

The highlight of this trip is the inlet that sometimes mixes with the ocean when a sand barrier is broken.  So the water is stratified: on top fresh warm water, and under cool salty ocean water.  You can see the layers if you look closely, because where they meet, the difference in density means that light reflects off the bottom layer, making a kind of shimmering mirror in the water.  And the mudskippers, or Darwin fish, little fish that can breather air or water, and with their silly little fins as feet, hang out right where the water meets the sand. 

The beach at the ocean is ridiculously hot, with cedar trees between the inlet and the sand.  Hot sand and murky water with giant waves, it was fun to swim, get a little sun-burn, and go off climbing boulders on the other side of the inlet across the bridge. 

Well it was some good beach time in the end, book-ended with jungle walking and staring at the flora. 

 Fancy Chinese building on a side road

 Helga and Sean attempting to order a meal.  I don't remember why they were so confused.

 Playing with garbage on the shore.

 Art on the side of a building.

 Aesthetically pleasing levels of decay and order.

 Clever graffiti off the main road.

 Logistics:

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Coming and going: most tickets to Georgetown from elsewhere are well priced and take you right where you want to go.  Leaving, on the other hand, you can be clever about.  The bus tickets they sell from town are twice and sometimes thrice the price they aught to be.  If you have time, you can take a 10cent walk-on ferry across to Butterworth on the mainland, where the bus station is conveniently right next to the ferry terminal.  From there, they sell bus tickets and normal prices. 

Within the city, and without: city buses are cheap and regular, even to places that are more than an hour away.  A lot of the accommodation provides a little piece of paper like the one in my scrap book, that have the bus numbers and destinations.  All you have to do is ask someone where to catch your desired bus, and go there.  With change.  When you’re on the bus, you tell the guy where you’re going, he tells you the price and gives you a ticket.   Going to any of the major sites on the list, you will absolutely know when you get there, since all the sites are well signed  and pretty giant. 

Those confusing Indian restaurants:  If Penang is your first stop in Malaysia, as it was ours, and you have no idea how to do anything in the Indian restaurants, this is for you.  Don’t sit down and wait for a menu.  Well, you can, but then you only get one dish.  If you waltz on straight up to the display case that looks like a buffet, go ahead and help yourself.  Grab a plate or ask for rice, and dish out all the food you want.  They staff has a look at your selection, has a look at you, and chooses your price.  They’re pretty fair about it, giving lower prices for smaller portions, cheaper dishes, and a smaller number of dishes. 

If you’re vegetarian:  Across Malaysia there are tons of vegan Chinese restaurants.  They almost never say so in English, so I recommend memorizing the symbol for veganism. Ask someone Chinese to write it down for you, and you’ll see how common these restaurants are… and how you’d never recognize them without the symbol.  I remember it as being a capital E attached by the backbone to another backwards E, making a tree with three horizontal branches.  And under that there is an explosion of short lines that kind of have a bottomless tent involved.   These restaurants work the same way as the Indian ones: you can use a menu, or go all out at the buffet.

Finding accommodation that’s nice and budget: Get off the main hostel drag, and look along the street that’s parallel to it to the north.  And persevere.  This is one of those strange cities that have a huge variety of accommodation quality in the same price range… and all kinds of shitty places for all kinds of crazy prices.