Friday 12 October. We’ve arrived in Penang after a tedious journey from Istanbul. We left our hotel at 11am yesterday (Thursday) and took off at 1.30pm (local time) for Singapore, arriving at 4.30am (local time). Then we waited until 9am for our 75 minute flight to Penang; caught a cab into the old city, Georgetown, and to our hotel, the Penaga. This is a throwback to the British occupation of Malaya, everything sumptuous and in good taste. Our four-poster bed is huge, the bathroom has a double spa bath, and we have our own balcony with an overhead fan, overlooking the garden. We just had time to take it all in before a shower and a lie-down about noon. Refreshed, we were on the streets about five to begin our exploration of this historic city. There is nothing spectacular about Penang (that we have discovered so far, anyway); it is full of interesting narrow streets with various colonial and post-colonial architecture, with the occasional mosque, temple, house or monument to celebrate its colonial past. We were a bit late for the open-air markets but no doubt we will have time to explore a few of them (including the fresh seafood market just down the road) tomorrow. There are small restaurants and street-side eateries everywhere and we eventually settled on an open air cafe, obviously popular with the locals, and had a delicious meal of rice pilau, fish, prawns, squid, stewed lamb and chicken tikka, washed down with fresh watermelon and carrot juice. Delicious, but just a wee bit spicy. We continued walking and passed the oldest mosque in Penang as well as a temple or two, and we found the waterfront, which seems to be mainly a working waterfront and not exploited for tourism. Then back to our room about 9.30pm, cold drink sitting on our balcony, tepid spa bath and off to bed.
Tomorrow: begin exploring in earnest.
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