So since my last entry, our last night in Krabi wasn't really anything to report about just chilled and spent the last of our baht … so we we're penniless until we reached Malaysia!! Had to meet for the bus nice and early at 6am the next day and it was already quite hot at this time! Got on this little mini-bus which really was quite small and shabby and began the first leg of our journey to Penang. Met an 'eco-friendly' English family on the bus - a mum, dad, daughter who had also just graduated and an 11 year old boy. They had literally packed up their lives in England and decided to travel South East Asia for a year!! They were nice people, obviously a little hippy, they'd built an 'eco-friendly' house in England, but wanted to move to Cambodia after travelling and put the kid into an international school - interesting! Anyway they swapped buses half way as were going somewhere else in Malaysia which gave us loads of room in the little bumpy rectangular box on wheels! We kept meeting the two Swedish gents we'd met on the Phi Phi trip at various stop points who were on their way to Kuala Lumpur which was quite amusing. On our last part of the journey, once we'd reached Malaysia we got chatting to this young English couple and funnily enough the girl (whose name I never found out, as it got to that point that we keep finding ourselves in where we'd been talking for so long, it just seems rude and awkward to ask names…so you just don't!!) was from Hurstpierpoint and worked in Burgess Hill (two towns close to where I live at home for those of you unaware) - so small world!! We arrived in Penang after another stupidly bumpy journey (mental note to self - wear sports bras on long bus journeys)!! Luckily we were literally on the next road away from our hostel so didn't have to trek far with our heavy bags. We were slightly dubious as it was our FIRST dorm stay but the hostel seemed pretty decent, which was surprising as we were staying in the old Town of George town which was…old, and pretty run down, yet had random modern-ish restaurants, bars and hostels dotted about. Anyway we checked in, climbed the stairs, turned the key…and…were extremely pleasantly surprised with our neat, clean, modern 6 bed dorm! Our roomies weren't there at the time and we were starving from not having eaten all day due to having a severe lack of the correct currency!! So we asked where was good to eat and headed out in the rain to a little Malaysian night food market eatery! It was an impressive place and quite an experience - we sat on plastic tables and chairs, made a drinks order then had to wander around these market stalls choosing what took our fancy and ordered an eclectic ensemble of different dishes that were cooked and bought to us from the various vendors. Naturally we ordered way more food than we needed to, but being Ben and I…we happily consumed it all and most of it was pretty delicious. The place was absolutely buzzing by this time (as we did start pretty damn early). So after heaving our fat arses off the chairs and realising that it was only 8pm and probably not socially acceptable to head to bed quite that early, we plodded along in the rain to find some sort of drinking hole with a bit of life inside…which didn't turn out to be the easiest task! We eventually found a Christmas clad place with a band finishing up their set, played a bit of table football and pool and decided to have one more cocktail before bed…and then we met Rodney and Mark. Ahh Rodney - what a guy he was!! They were two middle aged Australian men who worked for the quarantine department and were on a business trip around Asia. So we got chatting to them, and after a while Mark (the older one) left but Rodney asked to stay with us, so we'd perked up a bit by this point and agreed to stay for ONE OR TWO more…a good couple of hours later and god knows how many more cocktails supplied one after the other by the delightful Rodney, we stumbled home (after declining his offer of seeing his delightful 5* hotel - as tempting as that was against our shared dorm!) When we got back to our hostel we had to wake up the person on night duty to let us in, then crept up the stupid wooden stairs, tiptoed 'quietly' into our room, Ben went first to turn on his bedside light so as to not wake up everyone else in our room…and suddenly…everything was hilarious and the quieter we tried to be, the more funny it got. Obviously all of our stuff was packed up in our bags still so we had to scramble around in the dark, rustling bags, dropping things, which of course made everything EVEN FUNNIER! One of the girls in our room got up for the toilet and we were convinced she wanted to throttle us. The funniest part of all was that we had a fear that we'd be sharing a room with massive party animals who would come stumbling home at god knows what hour, make loadsa noise, turn the lights on and wake us all up….and we turned out to BE those people!!!

The next morning we awoke, and yep you guessed it, felt like death warmed up. However as we only had one full day in Penang we had to drag our delicate little selves up and out to see some cultural things. We had some food then trekked round the streets in search for some appealing cultural excitement. We opted for a museum (which was pretty boring anyway), I made it half way round the first room then had to run to the toilets and saw the contents of my breakfast all over again - iced coffee made with carnation milk is not the nicest thing to taste once…let alone twice!!! Ha! Anyway I couldn't carry on after that, so back to the hostel we went to bum in the common area with a couple of Aussies watching Quantum of Solace. It was actually quite nice to have a bit of a bum day, all this sightseeing being tourists and walking round for hours on end starts to get pretty hard work after 5 weeks of it!! That night we went out for a drink with the lads (I had diet coke) and a few other travellers. We ended up sat back outside the hostel with about 25 other backpackers drinking a few beers, chatting and chilling and surprisingly stayed up til 2am exchanging stories of fun and horror, comparing tans and backpack weight, speaking about our homeland and what we missed and of what adventures we all had to come. Oh and we made friends with our room mates who weren't actually that annoyed with us it turns out!

End of part one…next blog will be part two!!