The Day After
Trip Start
Jun 04, 2011
1
9
10
Trip End
Ongoing
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Bukit Mertajam, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The extremely friendly and helpful front-desk staff at our hotel.
Eventually I recovered and I headed off to Megamall with Tim, Andrew, Steph and Alex.
Steph and Andrew were moving back home onto the island and Alex had a plane to catch so he brought his luggage with him.
James turned up at Megamall with Ivy and we offered Alex a lift across the bridge but James took so long choosing a suitcase that we ended up having to tell Alex he was on his own. We did give him sort of a lift though... from the downstairs parking garage to the taxi-stand at the front of the mall. I think if there'd been no taxi stand it would have been Andrew and Stephanie taxiing.
Anyway, back to the hotel for A&S's luggage and then we went for an excursion on the island. In the meantime we picked up Duncan and Dan, as arranged,
but James had miscalculated and we didn't have enough seats in the van after all. Duncan ended up riding bitch in the middle seat in the middle. (I used middle twice because he was in the middle row and the middle column.)
First thing to do on the island after the gruelling 14 km drive across the bridge was food. Here's another bloke with a machete and coconuts...
And here's the Assam Laksa which I'd been dying to try after reading about it. Fish and tamarind are the main ingredients. Though Ivy's mother had made some one over the days we were over there so I'd gotten to try some of hers without any noodles though. I thought Ivy's mother's was better than this on. I don't much like the look of those buckets either... did I eat stuff from out of them?
Looks like it was mainly just me eating. Or probably Ivy did too... after all it's tough work driving a seven person van around all day.
She's already got the singlet on... I though any day she'd turn up and have these great truck-driver arms!
On the island we saw a couple of temples and a huge Buddha. I just don't understand Buddhism. There's supposed to be nirvana and rejection of earthly possessions and all that yet they love constructing these huge, golden Buddhas. And the aesthetics of any medieval church are much more impressive than gaudy Buddhas.
The view of one of the temples from down below. They look pretty exotic but...hmmm.
The engineers were trying to work out how they got the huge crane up there. The scale doesn't show up so well in this photo. James did insist that I clamber up onto one of those tracks but well... who's knows when we'll see any of those pics again?
Up top, by the big Buddha there was a bit of renovating going on. I was a bit confused by all these roof tiles with inscriptions on them. Then over on the other side I saw that anyone could pay about $5 and write something on a tile and it would later be used for the renovation, perhaps to be viewed on google earth? I should have paid the money and written 'Go Richmond' on a tile. That would have been a pretty good test.
And the view from the top.
The usual high-rises in this part of the world. I found Penang a bit of a jumble.
The other temple was completely deserted. There were cups and teapots for anyone that made it up there to use. I doubt they'd last very long in Australia unsupervised. I also doubt whether many of the decorations would last long either.
The view from this side of the island was a bit more rural and tropical... except for the high-rises in the middle of course.
We ate at a so-called Hong Kong restaurant but it was pretty ordinary and the staff was stupid.
There was one particular dish that we were pretty specific about and it took them three goes to get it right.
Back at the hotel someone suggested going out for a beer so it was me, Tim, Dan and Duncan roaming the streets at 1 in the morning looking for somewhere still open. This basically meant any place with tables set up outside selling food.
We eventually found a good spot but not after some ex-local who now lives in New Zealand tried to send us in the wrong direction. I don't think he had enough respect for my direction asking abilities.
On enquiring about where the toilet was, Dan was pointed in the direction of an alley on the other side of the road. After beer after beer and lots of visits to the alley... it was time to move on as it was really beginning to stink over there... and it was pitch black dark in the alley so it was a bit creapy... who knows what insects and rats were wallowing in it.
On the way back to the hotel Duncan found this stop sign.
I had to stop them from trying to carry it back home. Didn't they throw the book at some woman who tried to steal a bar mat? This would have taken a bit of explaining.
