So today I slept in late since I needed to get some rest after last night. After taking a shower and getting ready, I went walking around town, looking at shops and hawkers and some of the sights in Georgetown and I got some banana juice and fresh mango for breakfast aka lunch.
Gotta admit that my little sightseeing tour wasn’t that interesting and it was boiling hot in the afternoon sun. So I decided to go to a temple that was recommended to me and was supposed to be really pretty. Once I found the right bus rush hour had started and so the ride took me about an hour. Luckily I met Oren, 29, from New York on the bus so at least I wasn’t all by myself (Oren’s half Israeli half Slovakian and quit his job as a property manager back home to do some traveling – he’s been on his trip for 4 1/2 months now and will go back home after 6 months). From the bus stop it was another 15min walk up the hill to get to the temple. Maybe it was our poor time management but let’s just blame it on the traffic. Anyway by the time we got to the temple it was 5:45 and the Kek Lok Si temple closes at 6pm so we just had a quick look around and then went back down the hill. While we were talking I got a lot of good tips and recommendations for Laos from Oren, which is convenient since I don’t really have anything planned for Laos yet.
After a little discussion with a taxi driver that refused to turn on the meter and wanted to charge us 4 times as much we decided to walk to the Penang hill train station (turned out it was only 1.4 km and not even a hard walk – good thing Oren’s got his experiences, I would’ve totally paid for the taxi). So then we took the funicular train up the hill to watch the sunset – which unfortunately we kinda missed (timing wise it was just not our day). But we still had a great view over Penang and some really delicious mango lassie!
Back in Georgetown we had dinner at the hawkers street food market – after we got flash-frozen on the bus ride home (apparently Malayans love AC just as much as Americans) – and I tried some curry mee (noodles with seafood in some sort of broth) which was really good. Then we just hung out at the hostel with some other travelers and talked until 2am. I just love this place !
P.s. I’m pretty much the youngest backpacker around and it seems like I can’t find people my age to hang out with or at least not that many. Maybe deep inside I’m already in my mid to late twenties.
Jetties, Street Art & Fruit of Georgetown
lenacatherine 