MONDAY 12TH TO TUESDAY 13TH MARCH 2007

Got the bus from the local station to Georgetown in Penang. Asian logic struck again with the telling us its only one bus all the way there and it turned into 3. The bus made up for it tho! instaed of the normal 50+ seats on the bus this one only had 24 padded luxury reclining ones letting us travel in ultimat comfort. When we finaly got there we dumped our stuff at a hostel, had a it of a wander round and then went for a Malaysian street vendor curry with these lads that we'd just met. After waiting for the rain to ease off (the heavens really do open over here) we tried to find a decent lively bar to no avail. In Asia bars seem to outnumber people so that each bar only has a few people in them.And with the beer being expensive because its a Muslim country its was even more the case here.

Got up early to try to avoid the heat and did a tour of Georgetown on foot stopping at: 1)the Hainan Temple (a chinese place of worship), 2)the Penang Museum (which was really informative telling us all about chines customs and the history of Georgetown), 3) the Goddess of Mercy temple (which was packed with people wafting insense sticks and setting caged birds free), 4)little India (which was packed with food stalls with Indian music playing in the background. The look on the guys face when kym ordered 2 plain nans was priceless!I think the quote was "but we have every flavour in India miss"-classic Kym. 5)Fort Cornwallis (a colonial fort-where we got some funny pics with staff dressed in colonila attire. 6)Khoo Kongsi (a clan house-part temple,part meeting hall for Chinese of the same clan which had some amazing artwork on the walls and lastly 7)Kapitan Kelling Mosque (we were given a tour and learnt about Islamic traditions, praying practicesand their condemnation of suicide terroists)-dont worry Rach-we took plenty of photos!

After an exhausting day in the boiling heat we trudged to the bus station and collapsed on the night bus to Khota Baru