4/12/2009

A fairly comfortable 4 hour ferry journey south and we arrived at the port town of Georgetown. The first thing we could see as we approached were the skyscrapers, showing how this really was Malaysia's second largest city.

After consulting our rough guide we headed for the backpacker area on Lebuh Chulia on the border of Little India, insearch of cheap, comfortable accommodation. We found a nice place called Stardust that was set above a nice small cafe and was clean and cheap. With the evening drawing in we set our bags down and freshened up then went out in search of some dinner. We walked for about 10 minutes before finding ourselves in the heart of Little India - a barrage of sounds, smells and colour.

There was indian music playing from all the shops and restaurants and countless curry houses. After wondering around and taking it all in we settled on a small restaurant for a good hearty curry. Its was yum and worked out at only 2 pounds each.

Walking back to our hostel, with our bellies full and our senses overloaded, we unsurprisingly bumped into Birdie and Danielle again. They were sitting outside their hostel with a drink playing cards and we were walking past. So we stayed and chatted about what we had all been up to since we last saw them in Koh Phangan and had a drink or two. We arranged to meet up the following morning to spend the day exploring.

Meeting at 10am after breakfast the following morning we walked to the local bus stop in search of a bus to the Botanical gardens. On the way we stopped by at Fort Cornwallis, which turned out to be shut as it was Sunday. Whilst trying to figure out what bus to catch Birdie had a chat with a local 'taxi driver' who said he would take us to the botanical gardens then to Kek Lok Si Temple for 30 Ringgit, bargain.

Jumping into his 1980s proton, we made it to the Botanical gardens in one piece. We strolled around leisurely until we bumped into a gang of cute and cuddly monkeys. We with us a packet of pistachios so started to feed them and they loved it, eating out our hands, until Steph showed one of the monkeys a glimpse of the open bag of nuts and it went for her - showing teeth. Steph lept up and ran off screaming but luckily the monkey didnt follow. Learning our lesson that they were wild we kept a respectable distance after that.

Whilst in the gardens we also saw a whole range of spiders, flowers and turtles in the lily pond. We also saw some sort of giant black and orange squirrel, which was cool. More wildlife in a day in Malaysia than we had seen in 8 weeks in the rest of Asia.

After there we made our way to the Kek Lok Si Temple, it was amazing, and luckily for us the day we got there was the grand opening of the new 80 foot high statue. Very impressive. After talking a walk around and the cable car up to the statue we walked to the bottom of the hill for some local stall food for lunch before catching the local bus back into town.

That evening we journeyed back into Little India for another curry, this time finding a stall that did the works for just over 1 pound each!! Washed it down with a few beers and talked about where we were all going from here. Birdie and Danielle had booked themselves a week in Borneo to see the Orangutans - very jealous, while we were heading to Australia via Kuala Lumpur and Singapore.

Parting ways for the third time this trip we left the pair of them and went to bed, ready for our bus trip to Kuala Lumpur the next morning.