Wednesday October 22nd- arrive Penang

Happy Birthday mom! Today I got up for port as usual around 7ish and went to get some breakfast. It was cloudy and rainy which really excited me because I had a walking tour in the morning. They told us last night at the logistical pre-port that we will be tendering to the shore, meaning we are anchoring in the bay and taking the life boats to the dock. I predicted that this would be fun for the first ride and then just a pain after that, and even though it is only the first day, I was right.

There was no diplomatic briefing this morning so as soon as the ship was cleared, the first couple SAS FDP's were given priority for the first couple tenders. The life boats can hold max 95 persons and would run on every hour to the shore, and every half hour back to the ship the entire time we are in port. My FDP was for architecture and it was a walking tour of the Chinese heritage sites in Penang. We were on the first tender by 9:00 and gathered on the pier waiting for others that missed the first tender. The travel time was about 10 minutes each way for the tender. We didn't get moving on our tour until a little after 10, and our guide was a local Malaysian who loved to talk. We started walking down on the main street running parallel to the water and it started to pour! Our guide kept stopping every two minutes to tell us something different. We walked for about 15 minutes in the pouring rain until we came to the oldest Chinese settlement in Penang. It was not anything special, just a few rows of houses on stilts along the water. Malaysia is what I would call the melting pot of Asia. The three main groups I saw were Indians, Muslims, and you "typical" Asian. This tour was focusing on the Chinese aspect of Malaysian culture.

After the little Chinese settlement along the water, we also got to look into the temple at the front of the settlement. One thing I noticed is that there are temples everywhere. They are usually Buddhist and are decorated with lots of art work, statues of gods and always have incense burning in them. It was still raining at this point and the group of 30 arranged for trishaws to take us to our next stop. A trishaw is a bicycle pushing a two person carriage, but has three wheels (hence the name). It was only a short 10 minute ride to the Khoo Kongsi (clan house or community house). It looks like a classic Chinese architecture building with lots of flare, colors and statues. It is considered a masterpiece of intricate architecture and wall carvings that depict ancient stories. We spent a little bit of time here and the tour guide was talking the entire time. We could barely understand what he was saying so it was painful to just stand and listen to babble for 15 minute increments.

From the clan house, we got back in our trishaws and went to visit the "blue mansion" or Peranakan Mansion. It is a huge mansion that was owned by a Chinese tycoon at the formation of the city. It is an open air house and has a courtyard in the center that is open to the rain. That is called the heart of the house and it is full of plants in a marble 20x20 area (roughly). It just a big blue house that has lots of interesting artifacts in it from the Straits era it was built in. From the mansion we again rode our trishaws to Kuan Ying Teng, the oldest Chinese temple in Penang. It was very similar to the temple we saw at the settlement of houses we stopped at first. The people inside light incense sticks and offer them to the gods and start with a bundle of the sticks, moving around the temple and offering them to many different gods. It was interesting but we felt like we had already seen it. It stopped raining while we were in this temple. It was also already 1:30 pm and the tour was supposed to end at 1 so people were stressing over not being back at the pier in time to meet their friends.

After the temple we walked to a museum that was not open so we don't know what was inside, but everyone was antsy to get back so we all dispersed and went separate ways. I had a little bit of time before I was supposed to meet Ari, Lacey, and John back at the pier at 3 so I wandered a little bit and got some lunch. I got what is called chicken rice, just rice and chicken breast with a sweet chili sauce poured over it. The street food here is safer to eat then India but it's still a gamble eating it anywhere. Luckily I was okay this time.

Only Ari and John were waiting at the pier when I met them, who knows what happened to the others, but we got in a taxi and went to a big chocolate shop. We were able to try lots of different kinds of chocolate. From here our plans were to go to a mall and then to a huge night market. The mall we went to was huge and had lots of expensive stores in it. We walked around a bit to kill time and then went to Chili's for dinner. I know I know, but we wanted good food after India, so we decided to treat ourselves to a nice American meal.

After dinner we went to the night market which was pretty far away. So far we were finding Malaysia to not be as cheap as we expected. India was dirt cheap so it is hard to compare. The night market was set up alongside the road and was about a mile long stretch of stands and stores selling knock off DVD's, hand bags, watches, clothes etc. We didn't buy much because we are saving it for Vietnam which is supposed to be a lot better than Malaysia for cheap shopping. We rode a bus back for 2 ringets, less than $1 to save money on taxi fares which were about 40 ringets to get us to the market. The currency exchange is about 3.5 ringets to $1. The bus was a fun adventure but we eventually made it home by about 12. The last tender goes to the ship at 1am so we didn't want to cut it close because if you miss that one, you are stuck for the night.