Never judge a book by its cover!! a lesson i am quickly learning!!

After vowing to leave Penang as quick as we could on our first night, we have grown to love it here, and will tonight be spending our 6th night here, and will actually be quite sad to leave tomorrow!! If you had told me i would still be here now on Monday i would have laughed in your face! After our first night we packed our bags and found another hostel, which was the catalyst in our change of opinion, our first night in the prison cell was not enjoyable but once we found a nicer hostel we felt much more at home! We moved our bags to the new hostel and found the bus to the beach, we were starting to enjoy penang!! We had a few hours in a cafe on the beach then headed back to georgetown, found a bar with some football on and treated ourselves to a big meaty good old beef burger (the food here is immense but every now and then you need something western!!).

On our trip we had picked up a tourist map and a bus timetable and could now get anywhere on the island for about 20p! We almost rented a scooter but getting out of georgetown was too daunting, the traffic is horrific! The following day we got on another bus and headed off to the national park and took the jungle path to monkey beach!! We got about 5meters down the path and were attacked by monkeys, so ran back to the start screaming and dragged a security guard with us to scare them off, his trick was to make his fingers into a gun and shout "pow pow", a trick i mentally noted! now past the monkeys we embarked on an 90min walk through the jungle to monkey beach, on the way we saw metre long lizards, somethings which looked like dog sized squirrels, loads of little lizards and thankfully no more monkeys! monkey beach was pleasent and chilled on the beach for abit with a couple we had met on our trek then decided to get a speed boat back rather than walk again...trekking in the jungle in this heat is tough! This was the second time i judged a book by its cover, the couple we met were a norwegian guy and his thai girlfriend, she looked about 12 and jumped to the conclusion he was a bit of a pedo and picked up a young lady on his way down, tunrns out she was actually 28 (i dont know what they eat in thailand but she looked amazing for 28) and he was a thoroughly nice guy!! From here we jumped back on our bus and headed home, stopping via the beach for a pizza!!

Next day was a lazy day, we got to the beach and sat for the whole day, mostly in the shade as the sun was now out in full and its far too hot to sit in, hurts after about 10mins of full on sun!! Chloe didnt come out the shade once and ended up like a lobster!! very pink!! The highlight was heading to a bar up the road for dinner who had a live band on, bloody hilarious, they played all english classics but with a twist, first was the over the top drummer who loved his symbol, and secondly the singer who had trouble pronouncing his words, the best song of the night was the robbie williams classic... wangers (or angels as its known back home!). both our mouthfulls of food went out when he sang "im loving wangers instead!"

Yesterday we headed off on our trusty buses again and our destination was Penang hill, we got there got some tickets for the lift up but had a two hour wait so jumpedon another bus to kok li sum temple (thats the wrong name but i cant be bothered to look it up), the biggest temple ive ever seen!! quite impressive as temples go, seen alot of them already, but this one was the best to date!! walked about and got a lift up to see some masive statue, met a nice irish lad, spent some time walkin with him then headed off back to penang hill! Penang hill is basically a big mountain, the lift up takes half an hour but at the top you get spectacular views over the island, worth the journey up and putting up with the Indian tourists (more about these in a bit), i think we have a couple of photos of the view to share with you lucky guys!! Once home we ventured out for our first curry of the trip, we had been put off before as the menu is impossible to work out and they dont speak good english, but we took a gamble, pointed at a few items on the menu and had the best meal we have had to date...and ridiculously cheap!!

Today, our final day on penang we head to the botanical gardens, and our buses let us down, we had to wait an hour to get on one and then took 90mins to our destination, but we did get there! the gardens are 3km square and fairly pretty, but full of monkeys! and again they picked me out to attack, i walked into a family of about 15monkeys to get a picture of a baby one, there was 2 malaysian guys and another english guy already in the middle of them, playing with the monkeys quite happily....i walk up and two turn at me, growl and show their teeth and one went right for me....i panicked and threw my water at it and luckily that seemed to be enough....but im still abit confused as to what im doing wrong when everyone else gets to play nicely with them!! bloody monkeys!!

Anyway, to sum up we've both really enjoyed Penang, a beautifull island which is only let down by its capital, georgetown, and the tourists from India who are the rudest, most arrogant people we have ever come across! One even said he thought he was more superior to us because of he had dark skin! Unfortunatly they holiday in groups of about 50 and have been almost everywhere we go, where they push everyone out the way, shove to the front of queues, and force you out of bus seats! take them away, get out of georgetown, avoid the monkeys, and Penang is well worth a visit!! Sad to be leaving but also looking forward to some fit beaches on langkawi!!

Right im off for another curry...hopefully order the right thing again!

Much Love!!