I forgot to mention that on the night before my birthday I made an impulsive decision to eat a fried cricket. Ben was having none of it! It was a big cricket! I ate over half of it in one bite but it was disgusting. It was crunchy and tasted like cardboard or something. Yuk. There was no way I was sticking it's head and big eyes in my mouth but at least it was something else to try!
On our second night in Penang we ventured to Little India near to where we were staying for a curry. It's a very atmospheric area, with lots of incense shops, very loud calls for prayer echoing around from the mosques and lots of curry houses. We went upmarket for our first curry as we had seen street stalls and not known what anything was. It wasn't really cheap but a lot cheaper than a curry at home and it was really nice.
Yesterday it rained all day again. Ben was finishing his article and I was looking for where we could stay at our next destination. It was pretty stressful, it's a week of school holidays that started yesterday plus the end of Ramadan, Independence Day and the Muslim new year so everyone is heading for the same places as us. We finally found somewhere but couldn't get a bus today so we leave tomorrow.
The rain finally stopped late afternoon yesterday so we had a wander to the sea and paid 40p too much to go into a rubbish fort! At least we'd done something though! We got back to our street which takes about 3 minutes to walk down and it started chucking it down. We were soaked. We found an Indian street cafe in Little India last night and had more nice food, a whole feast for £5!
Today we were booted put of our hotel as they were full up and we weren't supposed to stay there this long. They only gave us 30 minutes notice though and I was asleep so had to pack and get up in double time! We only had to move next door. It's slightly cheaper but we're in our first dorm room! It's a room of 4 with cubicles of 2 bunk beds. You get a mirror, cabinet, light, plugs and curtain in your cubicle so it's pretty good. I'm impressed! There are also lockers underneath the bottom beds. We've both taken a top bed as the bottom ones have open windows and a few mosquitos buzzing about. We can't see each other though as there's a big wall so we might have to learn morse code! No one else is in our room which is good.
For lunch we wandered around China town which was very Chinesey and had some kind of buffet which wasn't great but it was cheap. We also watched a little of some kind of Chinese Buddhist ceremony from a balcony at our hostel which involved people putting on lots of different hats, lots of fire and some kind of rapping. It was definitely rapping and not chanting. Apparently it was a big leader from Tibet hosting the ceremony.
For tea we went to one of the many 'famous' hawker stalls. Street stalls basically but known to be of a high standard in Malaysia. We had nasi goreng, fried rice with chicken. It was pretty good. Then we had some beers and spirits at our reggae hostel, listening to lots of reggae and watching as much football as possible.
Tomorrow we have a 7am bus to the Cameron Highlands. It's countryside very high up where they have lots of tea plantations, you can go strawberry picking and there are waterfalls and butterfly farms you can do your own treks to. I really can't wait. It'll be cold but it sounds like you just spend your days drinking tea, eating scones and dipping strawberries in chocolate. Nice! I hope the weather perks up though, I would like to do some trekking.