Day 89 - Kuala Lumpur/George Town

Up bright and early this morning (well 8:30) and we're getting ready to check out and head for the bus to Penang.

We have our last free breakfast here and when Si tells the guy that works here that I love seeing the geckos around the kitchen he immediately shows me 2 hiding under the microwave and toaster :) They were so cute!

We say our goodbyes and flag a taxi down to take us to where we need to get the coach from. We'd heard lots of horror stories about taxi drivers trying to rip you off, refusing to use the meter and quoting really high prices but thankfully we haven't experienced this. The first taxi we got to the hostel used the meter and this one we were able to agree a good price so maybe they are not all so bad.

30 minutes later we're dropped off outside the tent where we bought the tickets yesterday and check in for our coach and are directed to where it will be pulling up. The coach is on time and is similar to the one that brought us to Kuala Lumpur so again even Si has enough leg room!

The journey goes quite quickly and after about 5 hours we're in Penang, the plan was to get dropped off in Butterworth and then get the ferry to Penang Island and then onto the hostel. We missed the stop for Butterworth, as its the main 'station' in Penang we expected to see a station but when they pulled up at a car park we thought is wasn't the right stop and stayed on the bus. Si went and asked the coach driver who confirmed that was in fact Butterworth but he was going onto Penang Island next so it actually worked out better for us ... we just need to stop expecting there to be a proper station/building at the main stops and remember where we are though or next time we might not be so lucky!

Anyway we get onto Penang Island at the south and George Town is right at the top so we hop in a taxi and are soon checking into our hostel on Love Lane. When we saw the hostel was on Love Lane we thought 'aw what a nice name', however when we arrive we discover that its called Love Lane because this is where all the army men used to keep their mistresses! There is even a sign at the top of the street to tell you and a sign above it saying 'where is my husband' HA! There are also supposed to be 'aggresive' prostitutes around this area and apparently its hard to tell if its really a woman!

After check in we go for a little walk around the area and to find some tea. We continue our walk after some grub and just as we're walking back towards our road someone jumps out at us and shouts ... we turn around and its one of the prostitutes (not sure if it was a man or a woman though ... and i'm not sure trying to scare people is the best way to get business) anyway we carry on back to the hostel and again try to decide where we're going after here.

We've decided to skip Langkawi as the weather doesn't look like it will be that nice over the next week which is when we would be going ... no point going to a beach island if you cant actually lie on the beach! Instead of Langkawi we're going to head straight to Thailand and see what all the fuss is about on Koh Samui and maybe a couple of the other islands on that side.

Happy that we'd finally decided what we were doing with ourselves after here we called it a night.