The Last of Malaysia

I meant to post this right as I was leaving Penang, but I ended up on a beautiful Thai beach where I completely lost track of time.  I think it's been something like 5 days since I got here.  Oops.

Anyway, last time I posted I was in Penang (Malaysia) and had just spent a day walking in the wrong direction. The next day, I walked in the right direction.  This is what I found:

This is the Hainan Temple, which was really beautifully Chinese-like.  The special things about this temple were the ridiculous number of red lanterns, dragon statues, and beautiful stone carvings.  Inside, there was a hole in the roof and a pretty garden in the center.  This is my favorite temple so far.

Who's this guy?  I think he's Confucius.  That makes sense for a Chinese temple, I think.

These are some of the stone carvings.  Apparently, the temple was built in 1895, but they had Chinese workers come over and fix up the stone carvings in 1995.

These are all the red lanterns.  Really, there were a lot, and it definitely made the temple more fun-looking.

So, after seeing this temple, I ran into Ahmed again.  Ahmed was the Canadian/Iraqi guy who I met in Kuala Lumpur and who came with me to the Cameroon Highlands.  What are the chances of that happening?  Apparently, he decided last minute that he wanted to sit on the beach in Penang one last time before flying back to Canada.  So, naturally, I went with him to the beach.  We took a bus for about an hour north to the Penang National Park.  Here I am on a swing by the beach after we took a long and sweaty walk through the jungle.

We decided to reward ourselves for doing such an intense jungle trek by going out for dinner in Batu Ferringhi, which is the beach resort area where all the rich people stay.  It sort of looks like Vegas, right?

 Since we're by the sea, people here like seafood.  This is the Golden Thai restaurant, where you can walk along a path of fish and choose one for dinner.  Half the fish were already dead in their tanks, so we decided to go elsewhere.

This is a sea creature who is in a tank much too small for him.  His antenna things were touching the corners of the tank, and he had to just sit there like this... poor guy.

This is a restaurant shaped like a boat.  How cool.

The restaurants compete with eachother by putting up lots of lights.  Though this place had a camel, I don't think they actually serve camel.

This is where we went out for dinner.  It was a halal barbeque.

Here's Ahmed enjoying the barbeque on the beach.

...and me doing similarly.

The next day, I went on a walk to see more of Georgetown.  This is the WWII memorial.

This handsome young man is Captain Light at Fort Cornwallis.  Captain light was known for coming into Penang before it was yet discovered by other Europeans and establishing a port there.  As I understand it, he founded Georgetown.  A funny thing - there's a sign at one of the churches that says something like "British settlers and locals both loved him for his work."  Somehow, I don't believe that the locals would really have loved him that much for taking over their land...

This Georgetown's coast.  Only 300,000 people live there, but they have a lot of industry and hence a lot of skyscrapers.

This is the clock tower.  I guess it's kind of exciting.  I found it most useful to orient myself during the many times that I got lost.

This is just another example of the kind of colonial architecture that Georgetown is famous for.

This is St. George's church.  It's the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia.  It's kind of funny how I got here:  While walking down the street, I met a Dutch guy named Tom.  The day before, Tom had met a crazy old Malay guy who showed him a free bus that you can take around the city to all of the main historical sites.  Tom and I went to take this bus around, because it was way too hot for walking.  While we were on the bus, the crazy old Malay guy got on.  We all got off at the same stop (at this church) and sat around under a tree for a few hours while the old guy told us all about the history of everything.  Even though the old guy seemed crazy at first, he actually had all of his facts straight and knew a ridiculous amount of history about everywhere in the world.  He said he knew these things because he's psychic.

After sitting around at the church for half the day, Tom and I went to get some tea in little India.  This is a Hindu temple in little India.

















Since leaving Penang, I've started the "breathtaking-tropical-islands" part of the trip.  After leaving Penang, I took a boat to Langkawi, which is a beautiful island at the northernmost part of Malaysia.  After Langkawi, it was time to go to Thailand.  I took a boat to the Thai mainland (to a town called Satun) where I took a local bus to Trang (a town farther north on the Thai mainland), took a minivan to Krabi (a town still farther north), took a sorngtaaou (which is like a pickup truck) to Ao Nang (a town on the beach), and finally took a longtail boat to Ton Sai.  I'm actually really proud of myself for having figured all of this transportation out on my own.  When I was leaving Langkawi, a guy wanted to charge me something like $50 to get me to Ton Sai.  Instead, I just set off on  my own, and I made it there for under $10.  Go me!

So, now I'm living on Ton Sai beach.  It's the closest thing I've ever seen to heaven.  There are huge limestone cliffs with stalactites hanging off them and the sea coming right up to the base.  The town is tucked between the cliffs.  There are no cars and barely any people here, but there are watermelon shakes and palm trees.  I might call it paradise.

I've just taken a day to come into Krabi (which is the big town near Ton Sai), but I unfortunately forgot my camera at home, so no pictures for now.  Next post will be all pictures of paradise, I promise.