Full of old world charm, you can spend days wandering around George Town. It's a bustling, colourful city, full of tumbledown shophouses, impressive colonial architecture and countless trishaws ferry everyone around. You'll feel like your being really cultural, while actually just moving from one trendy coffee house to another!

The food here is mouth-wateringly good. From cheap bowls of soup with chunky bread bought at street stalls, to the scrumptious breakfasts and tables laden with literally-every-cakes-you-can-imagine at the contemporary ChinaHouse, we were spoilt for choice. ChinaHouse, especially, is a must if you're ever in Penang: it's 3 heritage buildings, linked by an open air courtyard, have been converted into 14 unique spaces, of which we constrained ourselves to the one with the ridiculous number of cakes. (Even it's website is cool: http://www.chinahouse.com.my)

We even managed to fit in yet another Afternoon Tea at one of the many beautiful hotels. Although I'm not sure what the doorman thought of us as we arrived on the very nice forecourt, full of very shiny cars, and hopped of our bicycles (slightly sweaty). But it's just the best way to get around! One of our favourite days here was spent cycling around the maze of lane ways hunting for street art by Ernest Zacharevic -- really unique painted walls mimicking life in the city.

The rest of Penang is just as laid back and easy to explore. Day two we upgraded our bicycles for mopeds, so we could bomb it around the Island -- taking in Penang Hill and the drive-through botanic gardens. Even catching a bus up to the national park, where we could trek to a secluded beach through steamy jungle, was a breeze... Which kind of made up for the fact that there was absolutely no breeze in the jungle. I've never been so sweaty!