Day 91 - George Town

We both had a nice lie in this morning but missed the free breakfast so we got ready and headed out to one of the restaurants around the corner for some grub and to plan for the day ahead.

Today we're going to walk around George Town where we're staying to see all of the sights. A lot of the buildings here do look very english and are protected by UNESCO so they are not allowed to be changed.

As we're walking along there are some really cool looking buildings like the court and the town hall. We walked down one of the side streets so that we could walk along the sea and there was a little garden with Koi and Iguana's in it. Si said we weren't allowed in but the gate was open so we thought why not :) There were loads of Koi in a little pond all different colours and a cage with about 5 Iguanas in it.

We continued on our way and came across Fort Cornwallis, we were about to turn around when we realised that you had to pay to get in but when we saw it was only 4MYR for both of us (about 80p) we thought we may as well go in! The fort itself isn't that big so it doesn't take you long to walk around it and there are only 8 points of interest in it really. There is the entrance to the fort that has a bridge over what used to be the moat, the statue of Francis Light (the fort was built on the site where he made his historic landing in 1786), the Sri Rambai Cannon (its a really big cannon), the gun powder magazine (the room they used to store all of the explosives, a few arches that have notices on them explaining the history of the fort, the lighthouse (you cant actually get to it though as its fenced off), the chapel and the cell where you can close the door and be behind bars!

It was nice for a wander around and while we was in one of the arch rooms reading about the history we saw a lizard shoot across the room so we followed it and took pictures :)

After the fort we continued around the main roads and saw a few temples and the clock tower before heaing into the nearest bar to cool off and have some lunch. We then went to book the van to Koh Samui at the place we went yesterday but the guy that gave us the good price wasn't there so we'll try again tomorrow.

We returned to the hostel just in time as it soon started lashing it down! We've now sorted a place to stay on Koh Samui and have a few places in mind for the other 2 islands but think a bit more research is needed first to see what areas are the best for the other 2 islands.

I decided to have a look see on google to try and find out what the lizard was that we saw earlier and after a lot of seaches I discovered that it was a baby monitor liazrd how cool is that!

We head out for some tea to the local reggae bar and sampled some beer we'd never heard of before called Jaz .. quite nice. I wasn't that hungry so I asked the guy if I could just have a small portion but he just laughed and said they only did big portions :(. Whilst waiting for our food we got to write our names on their wall along with all the other travellers messages, we both said if we ever came back here we'd have to go to the same bar to see if it was still there. The guy also gave me a free vodka and orange with my tea and made it clear that the drink was only for me and Si wasn't allowed any HA!

After tea we came back to the hostel for a spot more research, booked a place to stay on Koh Samui (it looks gorgeous online we're both expecting there to be a catch when we get there cause of how cheap it was!) and emailed a place we've seen for Koh Phangan to see if they have any rooms for us. We're still undecided about Koh Tao and have also been looking at Koh Samet but now that we know where we're staying for the next few days there's no rush.

We had another look into the van we were going to book to Surat Thani and came across lots of reviews that quickly made us change our mind about booking those tickets. Apparently its fine in the mini van from Penang to Hat Yai but you then transfer to a larger coach where people hide in the luggage compartment and go through your stuff whilst your sat on board and take anything they think is worth selling ... think we'll be getting the train instead!

Anyway by this point it was getting quite late so we decided we were best sorting out the travel plans in the morning.