This is the second part of the travel diary from the trip I took with my dad to Singapore, Thailand, and Malaysia in 1999. The trip was before my sophomore year of high school, and was my first experience outside of the US. In the first week of the trip we explored Singapore for a few days before going on to Kuala Lumpur and the Taman Negara rain forest. Once again, my present day comments are in italics. Now we move on to Penang, a Malaysian island once known as the Pearl of the Orient.

Days 7-8: Penang

I like Penang.  It is a dirtier, older version of Singapore.  There are tuk-tuks, trishaws and people on bikes everywhere.  It isn’t a particularly beautiful city, but it has a real flavor of south east asia.

I remember taking a ride on a trishaw (basically a bicycle cart taxi) around town when we first arrived in Penang. Besides that, we walked everywhere during our trip. Since then, whenever I am abroad I much prefer walking around the cities that I visit.  I use public transportation when the distances are long, but taxis are an absolute last resort. In most cases, I’d rather walk from point A to point B so that I can really see what the surrounding areas are like.  Perhaps this habit comes from Penang where I remember laughing at the overweight american tourists in Hawaiian shirts and sun glasses being ferried around in trishaws. It seemed like they spent more time inhaling the exhaust from the cars and motorbikes zipping around town then actually seeing what the city had to offer.

Today we have had bad luck.  First, a clan headquarters that is supposed to be a very interesting site was closed for repairs.  Then the museum my dad really wanted to go to was closed since today is Friday.  After that, the restaurant we walked all the way across town for wasn’t at all what we expected and didn’t seem to sell lunch.  Now it is starting to rain.

Our hotel room is currently covered in drying clothes.  The clothes I washed back in Taman Negara did not dry at all due to the humidity [in retrospect this is somehow not very surprising].  Hopefully today they will make more progress. There are also lots of rats here, and dogs – the first we have seen this trip.  Hopefully neither of those will end up as our dinner.  Money changers are everywhere in Penang.  They usually also sell jewelry and/or (oddly enough) used books.  Actually, it seems that everyone sells used books.  There was a place that sold “used English books and motorcycles”.  Quite a market niche.

I think I liked Penang because it truly felt different from any place I had been in America. The fact that nearly all the stores doubled as used book stores and money changers, made it seem like the island must be full of sailors and expats from all over the world. Ironically enough, the picture of the money changer above is not one of my own, but from the Penang tourism web site.

It rained again our second day, and it rained hard.  Some streets were so flooded that we had to retreat and find a different route.  We took a driving tour around the island.  Unfortunately because of the weather our guide didn’t want to go around to the other side of the island where the roads are apparently even worse.  Still, we managed to visit a few interesting places, various temples (including the snake temple), a nice museum, and a batik factory.  We also went to a restaurant with very good seafood fried rice.  For dinner we went to a hawker center by the ocean and had some great satay.

I remember the open air market was filled with little grill carts and stands selling satay – deliciously marinated and grilled chicken or beef, typically served with a peanut dipping sauce. There were other stands with seafood, since Penang is of course an island.

Yesterday we also went up Penang Hill.  The ride up was on a small train [I think it was a cog railway] and it was very steep.  At the top we were treated to a very foggy view of the city.  We had dinner at a hotel at the top, probably the best (and most expensive meal) to date.  As we ate, the view cleared which was nice.  We also got to see the hotel’s resident vipers!  There were two or three of them and nine babies – all very deadly.  They were the same kind of snake that we later saw at the snake temple.  After dinner I also spotted a pretty large monkey in a tree.  It was a nice excursion, and much more successful than today’s.  Tomorrow we fly on to Bangkok.

The vipers were living in the vine covered lattice above the restaurant’s outdoor terrace. They had closed off the terrace because of the snakes, but our waiter was still excited to take us out and show them off. They were a beautiful bright green color, but it was a little unnerving to be so close to a family of poisonous snakes. In the end, I was glad that we were staying downtown in our little hotel rather than in the fancy (and potentially deadly) one on top of the hill. Maybe our hotel had rats living down the street, but at least that was a good indicator that it was not infested with poisonous snakes.