Our last stop in Malaysia was the island of Penang and it's capital city of Georgetown. As with Melacca and Singapore, Penang was acquired by the British East India company as a trading post back in the day and Georgetown itself was planned by the company's main man in the area - a chap called Sir Francis Light, who also ran the town until he died. Because of it's fair winds, and duty-free trade the various influxes of people over the years have given Georgetown a distinct cultural mix made up four main groups - Malay, Chinese, Chinese-Malay (called the Baba Nonya) and Indian. Though this is also typical of most towns in Malaysia as far as we can tell, Penang is the most obviously diverse of all the places we've visited. This makes for a wonderful mix of culinary and architectural landscapes.

But wherever you go there are always reminders of home. The first night we met a girl from London. Now I realise that's not wholly surprising in itself; the interesting thing is that she was recovering from dengue fever. The hospital had said she was ok to fly home and so she'd been released that afternoon. She looked like she was having quite a rough time and was counting down the hours until she could leave. Dengue fever sounds really horrible - we've been burning through the mosquito repellent ever since we met her.

On our first full day we went to the Penang Museum. At the museum we learnt about many things including what Sir Francis Light did with his slaves when he died, Malay wedding costumes and foot binding. On that last one I'm still a little bit traumatised by the three-inch long shoes - we thought they were some sort of "training" shoes for girls, but no, they were/are worn by fully grown women. But I digress, we've been to quite a few museums now and I think that the Penang museum was among the best, though that could be because we had a chance to sit down at the end and learn a traditional board game. It was good fun. Si won, mind. But, y'know, that's ok...

On the way home we got fogged. As we came to a set of crossroads I noticed two men in different spots on the street both wearing face masks and both carrying what leaf blowers would look like if they were made by Harley Davidson. "Is this a scene from a James Bond film?" I thought. "Could be" came the answer as they both simultaneously fired up their machines with deafening roars and we watched as thick smoke came bellowing out to engulf the street. We looked down the road and there were more men fogging the drains that run along the street as well as the occasional house. T-shirts over our mouths, we asked someone what was going on and he said "mosquitos". When our hostel reception got a passive fogging again the next day we found out that the smoke is actually kerosene mist which coats everything and messes up the mosquitoes' life cycle. They take dengue fever seriously here; and thank goodness for that.

The next day we saw two more museums/show-houses. The best one was the restored mansion of a self-made chinese tycoon. My favourite fact about Cheong Fatt Tze (also known during his lifetime as the Asian Rockefeller) was that he threatened first to buy and then to out compete a German company after they refused to sell him first class cruise tickets to the US on account of him not being white.

Our last day we went on a cooking course. This was the highlight of our time in Penang. We went to the "Spice Gardens" and first were treated to a great guided tour of the grounds and the various spices being grown. It was a fascinating insight both into spice horticulture and eastern medicine. In fact, I may go for acupuncture when I get back to blighty - that's just how good it was.

Then we started the cooking; the class that day was on a hawker food dish called Ke Taw Mee. The best food we've had since arriving in Singapore has been hawker food. You find it in hawker centres where small stalls/carts amass together in a particular area (either a street or purpose-built building) and each individual stall sells a small but unique range of food. If you pay more than £3 for two meals and two drinks then you're eating at a posh place. So a chance to make some of this food ourselves was pretty exciting.

As we were the only people taking the class that day, our chef and teacher Pearly Kee could make special arrangements for me to cook vegetarian food. I was really grateful for this, as I know that "not even any fish" is quite a fussy and awkward request to make but I still really wanted to learn some cooking. Pearly was a wonderful and patient instructor who was lovely even when I undercooked my noodles and split my dumplings. The food tasted great despite my ineptitude and it was so cool to make absolutely everything from scratch. We made two versions of the same meal - a "dry" plated version and a soup version - the difference being in the method of cooking the dumplings and the huge amounts of stock that you poured onto the set of ingredients that were in a bowl. When all was finished, we ate both of our enormous meals on the patio with Pearly and her husband; we talked about food, the internet and Malaysia over glasses of iced chestnut juice. It was a really great way to spend the best part of the day.

Once back in Penang we went to see the clan jetties which are houses on stilts out in the bay. They were built by the poorest of poor Chinese families who couldn't even scrape together enough money to buy land at the time. It felt a bit odd to go such a long way to see what are essentially just people's houses, especially when those people don't seem especially pleased to see you. But they're a unique place and well worth a visit. And given scattering of houses selling touristy things, I don't think all the owners mind too much really.

As with so many of the places we've seen, we barely scratched the surface of Penang before we had to move on. The next morning we set off bright and early (actually not bright at all - more like downright sleep deprived) for Thailand.