G'day all,

Ah, quite a lot has happened since we last blogged! Starting from where we left off last time... we went and ate some great food on Monday night... Had some duck with rice/noodles, and chicken satay! Tuesday was very chilled, had a wander around town. Went to the Penang musuem which was quite intresting from the historical and cultural side of things, but quite small. We then walked the streets, looking at old colonial buildings and temples as we went.....

Wednesday was a good day, started off by hunting down a fix of Roti Chani for breakfast, and then visiting a temple just around the corner from where we are staying, called the 'Temple of the Goddess of mercy'. We got chatting to a man outside who was selling these tiny 'wishing' birds.. literally the samllest birds that we have ever seen. He told us, that you would take them into the temple, make a wish and then let them go as it was good luck! We then got a bus out of town to the biggest Budhist temple in Malaysia, Kek Lok Si temple. It sits on a hill, and was quite a walk up a windy road, past what looked like wild dogs? and eating a BIG bunch of fresh lychees.. with stalks still attached and all! Mmmmmm! Once we reached the temple, the size of it all was pretty stunning. Building after building all filled with buddah's, from the massive one's (the centerpiece), to little ones covering every inch of wall space. Amazing decor throughout, everything was carved so intricately and in such detail. Wouldn't like to even try and guess how long it took to build. Lots off pics of it all anyway, so have a look =)!

Took us about 3-4 hours to walk around, and we even climbed to the top of the 100ft+ pagoda, a total of 194 steps. It's also known as the pagoda of 10000 buddha's. The whole thing is literally covered in them! I (Ben) even climbed it twice so that Nin could take pics of me at the top.... there was an amazing view over Penang and the surrounding hills from the top, probably sat up there for the best part of an hour taking in the view and snapping plenty of pics!

That night, we went out for dinner and had a few local specialities... the first was 'Char Keoy Teow', which consists of flat rice noodles, veggies, prawns, cockles and Chinese pork (sweet cured). As that only came to RM8, 2GBP we thought we would treat ourselves to more, and then had Char Hor Fan.. with amazing rice noodles, and Hokkien Char with yellow noodles. Amazing how many different types of noodles there are, must of had about 6 different types already, whereas in the UK you can only really get Egg noodles, or rice noodles in the supermarket! LOVING the food, so much.. kind of craving bread though and crunchy salad lol!

Had quite an odd day today. We woke up very late and tired after all the walking yesterday. Went to try and get some breakfast but everywhere had stopped serving it, so had some naan breads and dips and samosa's etc. Very good. We tried some verdai, which is like a fried dahl and garlic bahji. mmm. We then tried to make our way to the snake temple! We got on a bus and after about 45 mins the bus driver stopped and said, "where was it you wanted to go?". We said the snake temple and he told us we had gone past it ages ago! Ahhh. We got off and crossed the road and got on another bus going the other way. That took ages and when we got off that one someone said we had to get another bus to the temple! By that time it was about 5pm and we were pretty sure the temple would be closing soon so got a bus back to the main town. We then thought we would go up Penang hill and get a good view of the whole town lit up in the evening whilst eating some good food. That was another very long bus journey and when we eventually got there we found out it was closed for a year for renovation!!!!! OMG!!! By this time we had spent about 4 hours on buses and not actually got anywhere! So we went to a little outdoor food courty place and had a wicked clay pot rice n pork n chicken thing. Was amazing and we were the only white people around lol.

Then got another bus back! lol. Were sitting there very tired and this old guy came up to us and told ben to put his feet down. (He had them up on a little bar in front of us). Ben said ok, sorry and this guy had a right go at us! Saying something about Iraq and Afghanistan and was going 'Fook you, fook you' Ben was just very appologetic and he just kept ranting on! Very funny old man. Obviously didn't like us at all! However, an old indian guy behind us started chatting to us and basically said the other old man was a bit mad and to ignore him lol. Turned out the old Indian man was 71, and was born in Penang and had lived there all his life.... he even remembered when the Japanese occupied the island in WWII. Interesting guy!

Have met some funny people at our hostel. There is this mad old English lady who lived in Thailand and is here because of the violence. She's very odd. Kept farting and told us how she needed a poo and telling us about the sweat running down her crack! Haha. Gave us lots of good tips though. There is this water machine she told us about round the corner where it is 13sen for a litre! (3p!) And its good water too, we have it in the main fridge, cooling down at the hostel lol. Then got chatting to another English guy who used to live in Brighton! He even knows Mayfield quite well. Small world ay?

Going to go to a massive spice farm tomorrow. Looks quite interesting! And then up to Batu Ferrengi, another bay up north to eat at a little Indian place called 'The Net' that Ben remembers. Should be good =). Also going to check out a place further up the coast called 'Muka Head'. Its a Malay national park, and you can camp out by the beach.. should be pretty amazing. At the beach, Green Sea turtles come to lay their egg at this time off year, so we might be lucky enough to see some....!

Anyways, best go get some sleep, busy couple of days ahead!

Love to you all and big hugz!!

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