Hello from Penang!

After arriving from Hong Kong a very early yesterday morning we've made the best of a very very hot couple of days.To say it's humid here is an understatement - the midday heat here seems to last from dawn til dusk!But one mustn't complain, it could be raining!

We started off yesterday morning with the latest favourite meal - roti bread and curry, all for 50p - definitely a winner!We took the boat over to Butterworth on the mainland and sorted out our bus over to the east coast tonight before taking a bus to a town called Air Itam, where we visited the Keh Lok Si temple, an enormous complex of different prayer rooms and pagodas, culminating in a 35m statue of Kuan Yin, the goddess of Mercy.All very pretty and more gold Buddha's than you can shake a stick at!Naturally as with all things Buddhist, you can donate to have your name on a mini Buddha/roof tile for the latest building that they're working on - we passed but others obviously hadn't as there were thousands of the mini Buddha's all over one of the prayer areas!

After we left the temple we got the bus back to Georgetown, Penang's main city, where we are staying.Dinner that evening comprised of massive grilled tiger prawns and noodles in the night market down the road from our hostel, and our new favourite beverage, a pint of lime juice with a good dose of duty free Bacardi!Might be having a few of those this week!

Today we took the bus up to Teluk Bahang on the north coast of the island, where we had a rather trial-and-error breakfast that involved a lot of pointing and eventually resulted in some form of noodles in thai curry tasting broth - not bad for an amateur.Luckily here when most of the meals cost about 80p, we can just about afford to have a couple of goes at ordering, just in case we end up with something unexpected!

Teluk Bahang is just a small beach town but it was nice enough and we decided to walk back to a spice garden a couple of km back along the road, much to our regret when we realised that shade and breeze doesn't come in abundance at midday!!The spice garden was lovely with lots of water features and different spices growing along terraces.We spent most of our time in the gift shop however, marvelling at the locally produced spices and other products (and standing rather obviously under the AC!!)

This afternoon we had a walk around Georgetown, looking at all the temples and colonial buildings that seem to be in abundance here, although with a mixture of Chinese and Indian cultures thrown into a town that hasn't long been independent of British colonial rule, its unsurprising!Dinner consisted on another night market affair - satay, rice and noodles this time - still only £2 each with a drink - if it wasn't so hot I think we'd eat all day here!!

We're going to the Perinthian islands tonight for (hopefully) a bit of tanning/snorkelling - might be a long trip, they're on the other side of Malaysia to where we are now!No internet there (barely even electricity to be honest) so will be a few days before the next update.

Hope everyone's well,

Love Katie and Martin

(photos to follow - you wouldn't believe the internet connection here!)