Penang 3

We have splashed out today and gone the full buffet breakfast. SP had a ball with fruit and steamed red bean buns; that child would eat papaya until she exploded if we let her. Today they're playing pan-pipe music over the speakers, but I wonder if they missed their market as all the South Americans that were here for the 'Love the Earth' conference went home yesterday. I think the Kazakhstanis that were here - there were dozens of them - might have gone too. I will miss them, they were loud and wonderful and played water polo in the pool incessantly.
We have taken the easy route and arranged a car to take us to half a dozen sights today, doing the full-tourist and going to the butterfly farm, the spice farm, the fruit farm, and any other farms we can think of along the way. This mid-range travel experience has been eye-opening. I can't help wondering how much easier life would have been on all those other back-packing Asian trips - is this our sixth trip now? - if we had occasionally spent a bit more money instead of being so budget obsessed.
Yesterday we went out the botanic gardens which was nice, but all the special exhibits were closed, as per usual Dylan-and-Katie-Style. There were monkeys of course. We saw some long-tailed macaques, and some other lovely dark creatures with very long tails and pale snouts and white rimmed eyes (leaf eating monkeys maybe?). However, SP was by far the most interesting thing in the park if the behaviour of the other visitors was anything to go by. Lucky it was D in the centre of this, I would have been very edgy. SP took it all in her charming-stride of course.

Penang 2

Written retrospectively

FRIDAY 23^RD October

Is today Friday? Already?

Penang is, like most tropical South East Asian destinations we have been too, florid and fecund and fetid. The light is luminous; this place gleams. I love it. I feel at home, apart from the feeling we are about to be skittled every time we cross the road. I’m not sure about having SP in the pusher around the roads as she goes out front; she goes first and is so vulnerable. We wandered around Georgetown for a brief while today before we got too hot and over it. We looked in Komtar – one of the biggest shopping centers – round and round for a while but it was a little boring. We didn’t feel overly inclined to buy anything, except perhaps shoes, but we had gone into town with only a small amount of cash.

In an old shop-house painted emerald we tried cendal for the first time. Delicious and syrupy: a mess of coconut milk, tapioca worms, red beans and shaved ice stained with brown sugar. I’d like to learn how to make it. We have resolved not to eat any junk food this trip, nothing preserved in plastic; local food all the way. Dinner tonight was wonderful Indian food from the little strip of shops over the road from the hotel. We started with cheese and cashewnut croquets. We ate spicy prawns, fried reddened and crispy chicken, potato and cauliflower curry with paratha and naan bread. We drank mango lassis and salted lemon juice. Afterward we finished it with carrot halwa and icecream and semolina pudding. SP sat in a fabulous pink retro highchair, scattering paratha all over the floor and crushing the croquets in her little hands. She smiles at everyone who walks past, like a film starlet. She makes friends wherever she goes, our blue-eyed babe. Local people and tourists alike are fascinated by her. She gets waved at, and high-fived, and her hands held and cheeks stroked and picked up out of her highchair and cuddled by random people we meet in restaurants. I think she must be very gregarious, like Dylan. She has just learnt to high-five back, which naturally we think is the cutest and cleverest thing we have ever seen. Lots of people have guessed her age right here, I think babies must be smaller overall here than Australian babies, so people don’t automatically think our tiny girl is much younger than she really is as happens at home. I think she is suffering a little in the heat despite our best efforts to keep in the shade or the airconditioning. I also think the 3 hour time difference has knocked her around more than I would have expected, although I suppose it would when you’re little and can only stay awake for a few hours at a time.

Penang 1

Written retrospectively...

Our card reader has bitten the dust so photos will have to wait.

Thursday 21-10-2010

We are in Penang. SP is asleep in the middle of the bed beside me.

Our hotel overlooks the sea, which is grey and blends in with the dull and hazy horizon. There is a view to the left of the beaches –such as they are – and the highrise hotels that line it below the green hills. I think our hotel would have been very nice about 30 years ago, or whenever it was built, but now it is quite tired and badly in need of upgrading. The hallways and lifts smell overwhelmingly floral, like someone has emptied an entire can of air freshener in each one. Our room, however, has the tropical and slightly mouldering smell that is so familiar to us. I don’t mind it; it’s better than the blossoming scent outside our door. The staff are lovely, one and all.

It’s funny to think how much I worried about transport safety before we left. How were we going to get from place to place with SP? When we arrived at the airport, we waited an age for a teksi before we were finally at the head of the line and jumped straight in. The traffic was very heavy, alternating from not moving at all to bumper to bumper at 80 kph. Then creeping creeping creeping. The driver suggested there might have been an accident and then the flashing lights slowly appeared round the corner. ‘O,’ said our driver, ‘dead on the spot’. And there was the shapeless body, covered by a white sheet, blood seeping through and bright like raspberry cordial. My heart fluttered in my throat like a trapped bird. Alive one minute then dead on the side of the road the next; abruptly a public spectacle, a traffic obstruction.

Nearly away!

Woo! Exciting! On Tuesday D, SP, and I are all off to Penang via Bangkok for a week or so, and then my aunt's place in Thaton in far Northern Thailand for another week or so. We haven't been to Thaton for a few years and I am very much looking forward to it, it's like our second home. It will be the shortest overseas holiday we have ever taken; we are easing ourselves into travel with a munchen. Even stranger, we have even booked our hotels in advance instead of just rocking up on the doorstep and hoping they have a room for us. This pair of backpackers is now a trip is going to need to do things very differently from now on. In Penang we intend to wander about eating fabulous Malaysian food and not much else. We might even sit by the pool at our hotel for hours at a time (it's where the WiFi is ;-)) When we get to Chiang Mai we're going to hire a car and drive the few hours out to Thaton. And then not do much at all because that's what holidays are all about.