After our 11 hour boat/bus journey from Koh Lanta we finally arrived at Penang, Malaysia. Our Thai visa was due to run out so we needed to leave Thailand and this gave us the perfect opportunity to finish off touring the north of Malaysia as we only focused on the south the last time we were in Malaysia.

Penang, once known as the Prince of Wales island is not one of the most physically beautiful islands we have visited but it has it's own unique charm due to its colonial feel. It reminded us of Melaka in south Malaysia (and we loved Melaka).

We chose Georgetown as our base, again named after the Prince of Wales, who later became King George IV. After visiting our top choice hostels only to be told that they had no rooms we settled on a Chinese run hostel which turned out be ok (and cheaper). After filling our tums with delicious noodle soup from the hawker stalls we retired to bed!

The next day was spent wandering around Penang following the guidance of our Lonely Planet, we did a walking tour taking on Penang's history, architecture, food and imagery. We visited the museum, supreme court, city hall, town hall and Fort Cornwallis names after Charles Cornwallis who surrendered at the Battle of Yorktown to George Washington effectively ending the American Revolution. The Fort itself was nowhere near as impressive as the forts in India. Nick enjoyed revisiting Penang after his last visit 10 years ago. Again, we got our dinner from the hawker stalls. We swear that they serve more delicious food than the restaurants and it helps us to be under budget after the theft in Thailand which made Helen go way way over budget.

On our last day in Penang, we visited a shopping mall as Nick was hoping to buy Helens xmas present (a logitech iPad keyboard) but they didn't have any in stock. We grabbed some Hainan Chicken Rice for lunch and headed back to our hostel to chill out for an hour before our bus arrived. Literally, as we sat down in our hostel, we were told that our bus was here. We were convinced the bus was an hour early however, we managed to get our minibus in the nick of time (it turned out that our clocks were still set on Thai time). Cue a lot of laughter from the hostel staff! Thanks(!) luckily we didn't book an early morning bus otherwise we would have missed it completely.

Our next destination is Tanah Rata, Cameron Highlands.