PENANG

We made it to Georgetown, the main town on the island of Penang, at 6pm as planned after a pleasant journey sustained midway though by a sandwich and an incredibly sweet cup of coffee served as usual here with condensed milk, just in case it wasn't sweet enough in the first place. Two local buses later and we were in the resort town of Batu Ferringhi on the north of the island, where we had booked a room at Ali's Guest House. This was a great place, only a minute's walk to the beach, with our room overlooking a palm tree-shaded courtyard. It also had free wifi so Duncan was able to call his Mum to wish her a happy birthday.

After a long lie-in caused by a late night doing some in-depth research into the local brewing industry, we finally staggered onto the beach in mid-afternoon. The long, sandy beach was virtually deserted apart from a few unnecessarily energetic types jet ski-ing and paragliding. As we sunbathed and enjoyed the first proper beach holiday of our trip, a guy claiming to be an expert in Chinese massage approached us. Assuming that he was just another one of those hawkers who work the beach, Duncan wasn't interested but Emma had just been saying earlier in the day that she needed a massage so chatted to the guy who, in the meantime, was feeling her wrist and saying he could feel that she had neck pain. Duncan was just thinking that he was a pain in the neck. The massage guy had a stack of letters from grateful clients, including one from Walton-on-Thames (Emma's home town), so she thought it must be fate so agreed to get a massage from him. This involved going to his office a ten minute walk away later in the afternoon. He was running late so told us to come back later still but, when Emma finally got see him, he gave a really thorough 45 minutes pummelling which seemed to be worth it in the end. He finished just in time for us to get back to the beach to see a beautiful sunset over the sea then we had dinner at a restaurant with tables on the sand.