Go to Penang, Malaysia

Time to blog! That means I’m sitting in the common area of our current hostel and sipping instant coffee. We’re in Langkawi, Malaysia right now, but I need to make sure to note our four days in Penang before I forget.

Penang Island sits off the northwest coast of Malaysia. It’s capitol, and awesome hub for street art and food, is George Town. Leah and I rented a room in a nice office/condo about ten minutes south of George Town. The room was newer and cleaner than most places we’ve stayed. The downside was that it wasn’t a hostel our housing with any staff around. No coffee, no breakfast, NO DRINKING WATER. There was a kitchenette with a water boiler downstairs, so we really could have made some drinking water, but it would have been hot and nobody wants to drink that when it’s so hot and humid outside. We had to remember each evening to buy extra bottles of water to bring back to the room with us. Oh and the beds were just as hard as sleeping on the tile floor. Not cool, but I’ll take a stiff bed and no drinking water over bed bugs any day!

We did a good job of sleeping in and being lazy each morning, which we first felt guilty about, but did eventually overcome. After getting our asses in gear each morning, we’d be out on our feet all day and evening. We spent one day doing a touristy walk around George Town, seeing all of the street art, eating all of the street food, and searching for toilets. I can’t say the food was better here than most places we’ve been, but it was much more abundant. Hawker is the name given to an open-air food stand. There were hawker centers all over the place. When it came to a conglomerate of stands under one large tent, it seemed that the tent owner sold space for the hawkers, and also sold drinks, but no food of their own. I’m making this assumption because when we sat down at a table, one person would come to you immediately and ask what you wanted to drink. If you didn’t order a drink, it cost you RM 0.40. That didn’t matter to us too much because we were certainly always ordering water or coffee for RM 1 or 2. That was just a new experience we found.

The street art is scattered around the downtown George Town area and is really fun to search for. Many places hand out free, simple tourism maps that show you all popular points of culture, food, and art. We made it a fun scavenger hunt and it was totally worth it. The art was really amazing. In my opinion, you can do all of the George Town stuff in one day. We did skip going to Fort Cornwallis, which I regret, but we could have done that as well if we didn’t sleep in.

The other awesome thing to do in Penang is hiking, or trekking as the rest of the world calls it. We were aware of a popular destination called Penang Hill, the highest point on the island, so we decided to take a Grab (local version of Uber) to a trail head and venture to the top. I believe most people experience Penang Hill via a short railway ride. If everyone went on foot, hardly anybody would go! As we approached the trail head, we met a group of locals who saw us looking a little confused. One asked if it was our first time, which it was. He said, “follow me!” and started up the hill. … Ugh, OK! At first, I was a little upset because we were following a handful of locals with walking sticks, and I wanted to run whenever it was possible. I quickly let go of that disappointment as running was never an option up this hill, and even if it was, the leader could hike faster than I could run. We hiked through the rain forest for a few miles while the leader would occasionally turn back to us and ask if we were OK. At one point he also repeatedly banged his walking stick on the ground quickly. I heard something large scurry into the trees. I asked him if he was scaring off a monkey. He said, “No monkey. Snake.” How big was that damn snake!? I don’t care. I don’t want to know. He led us to a stellar resting point along the trail. It had numerous covered structures, an old gym, a new gym, a stove, and toilets. I have no idea how or when people humped all this equipment into the jungle, but it’s awesome. We used some of the workout gear, some of which was just based off your body weight, but some was actual plate weights. Again, who brought this up here?! The snake-repelled man made us coffee and gave us biscuits as we rested. It was here that we met a couple from England who stumbled upon our hidden fitness fortress. They had been looking for the peak of Penang Hill all morning but could not find their way. I have to admit, looking at a map, there does seem to be a mess of trails out there, all crisscrossing and zigzagging. A different old man in our group offered to take them to a ways up the trail to an intersection where he could point them the right direction. We joined. We made the rest of the trek to the top with this couple. It was fun, it was tiring, it was more slipping on wet, packed mud and tree roots. We saw a millipede the size of my foot, and another large bug we found out later was a giant red centipede, which can be very dangerous with their bites. We took some pictures and rested in the cool breeze at the top of the hill, and then joined the mass of wimps for a ride down the mountain on the rail car.

The next day, we hiked the northwest corner of the island, through the national forest to Turtle Beach. The trail was more of the same jungle terrain, but a little easier than the day before. The beach was beautiful and pretty empty. The beach is off limits to swimming because of a killer undertow and an abundance of jellyfish. We walked down the beach to see a sea turtle sanctuary, which turned out to be underwhelming and said. It was a small room with pictures of turtles, skeletons of turtles and historic turtle ancestors, and information on human activity that is killing turtles and ruining the chances of baby turtle survival. They did have four tanks of water with turtles in them. 3 of them each housed a large turtle which constantly tried to climb out, and the other was full of baby turtles the size of silver dollars. They were all really cool to see, but I felt bad for their simple captivity. I don’t know the ins and outs of what the sanctuary does, so I don’t want to be too judgmental on their practices.

We hiked back out of the national forest and caught a city bus to take us near a hash we previously found online. We met up with the Penang International Hash Hounds. This was a really neat group of locals and ex pats. This was another paper-chase style hash, like we had done in Melacca and Kuala Lumpur. There’s not a lot of deciphering the meaning or direction of marks here. That would be overkill. It’s hard enough to walk through the jungle, the hares don’t want to confuse and lose people along the way. Guess what, we hashed up into the jungle and up and up and up we went! This was different because they didn’t care about staying on existing trails. They took us bushwhacking. At times, I felt claustrophobic in there. I’d reach up to swipe a giant leaf from my face, and there would be another behind it, and again, and so on. It’s hard to climb the side of a loose-dirt hill when you can’t see a damn thing through the leaves and sweat in your eyes! The whole trail was just over two miles, which is short by standards, but it was harder than any 7 mile trail on flat ground. We were fed some light snacks and then a full dinner afterwards while being able to buy cans of beer if we wanted. The RA’s brought ice into circle and called out a few trail crimes and had the accused sit on the ice and drink while we sang to them. Similarly to the rest of Malaysia, they sing the same three hash songs over and over again. Hot Pocket tried to put an end to that and sang them “I love my girl,” which left them all wide-eyed, covering their ears, and shaking their heads. I couldn’t tell if it was mild disapproval, confusion, or shock. It was fantastic. I was called to drink on the ice for wearing a shirt from the Man Against Horse Race I’d previously run. The RA asked me if I beat any of the horses, I told him two. He proceeded to ask me how it was possible that I could run faster than horses, but came in towards the end at the hash, behind a lot of the old men. They concluded that I wasn’t slow, but all the old men were faster than horses! We had a really great time with them and would love to go back someday!

I think that’s it for Penang, and I’m starting to sweat because there’s no AC or fan in this common area of the hostel. Time to switch from hot coffee to iced coffee and find some cool air. Check back later to read something about Langkawi. It should be good because I absolutely love this place.

NairBare