Pinang

We arrived in the evening and got dropped of on a pretty dodgey looking road. In the lonely planet book it says to avoid a road called Love Lane, we looked across the road and saw that the road opposite was called Love Lane, hmmm nice. On the minibus down we chatted to a guy who owns a dive company back in Thailand and he reccomended a place called banana house so we searched along the road a little but and found it, booked a room and headed out for some dinner. Once we walked around a bit we actually found some nice places and it wasnt as dodgey as we first thought.

It was very different to being in thailand, there were traffic lights and pedestrian crossings for one, but it was just generally more modern. I wasnt too sure if i liked it at first as i prefered the chilled out set up in Thailand but got used to it eventually. We headed round the corner to try and find some authentic Malay food and found a cool little restaurant and spoke to the lady who gave us loads of usefull info and also sorted us out a selection of malay food which was really nice of her.

Next day we were leaving so we got up early and headed out to try and do as much as we could. We went and booked our overnight train tickets to Kuala Lumpur, 1st class sleeper off course ;) and then got ourselves a bus ticket to take us to Pinang hill, the highest point in Pinang. Before we got on the bus we walked around the side streets and found a really nice few streets with a lot of indian influence, the smells were amazing and the difference in the culture was huge from just one street down. The bus was nice and air condidtions whcih was awesome as it was bloody hot that day. We drove through some more underdeveloped parts of Pinang on the way and it looked really cool seeing the locals going about their day and how different it was to back in the UK. We arrived at the base of the hill and searched for a cash point as none of us had any money to pay for the funicular railway to take us up the hill! The bus driver told us there was one very close but when we asked the people at the hill they said it was long walk back....Gem had a brainwave and went to see if we could use her american dollars and managed to find someone willing to exchange them for her, good work Gem! We got our tickets and started the climb up to 806 meters above sea level. It took about 30 mins in the sweaty heat but the view when we reached the top was amazing. We could see the whole of George Town, the mountains to the right and the forest behind us, the sea infront and mainland Malaysia in the distance. We spent about an hour waling around the top of the hill, took some photos, had some lunch and chilled out before heading all the way back down again.

Next we headed to the Kek Lok Si Temple which is the largest in S.E Asia. We saw it on the way to the hill and it looked huge so we started walking in that direction. We had to walk through the area i mentioned earlier which was cool, we were the only white people that i could see and we did get looked at a lot but not in a bad way and everyone was polite to us which was cool. We carried on up towards the temple and finally got to the base. We had to walk up thorugh some strange alley market area before we came to an opening where there was a large pong filled with turtles. We walked round it and started the climb up the steps to the entrance of the temple. The temple was huge, there were so many rooms to see but we just checked out the main ones. There is a 30.2m bronze statue of the Avalokitesvara - Goddess of Mercy or Kuan Yin at the top which is the main attraction but we arrived 5 mins too late and the lift that takes you up was closed :(. We could still see it from the bottom and got a few pics so it wasnt that much oif a pain.

After the temple we got a taxi back because it was getting late and we had to catch a ferry back across to the main land to get our train from Butterworth. The ferry was free which was nice and the station was cold which was even better. We sat in the waiting room at the train station for an hour or so and found some of the nicest cake ive ever eaten to keep us occupied. Our train pulled in and we went to check out our first class beds or so we thought.......NO bloody beds just seats!! was not impressed so we spoke to the ticket office and she said that their trains dont have beds "so why did the ticket lady in george town tell us first class beds?" it was a legit office so it wasnt some con, the lady just didnt understand or lied to us, ahh well, the seats didnt look to bad so we got comfy and tried to settle in for the night ride.

Next Stop Kuala Lumpur