lost4good

Tuesday March 4

Two weeks in Penang at the end of our month in Vietnam and month in India. Narda in italics Terrell the other.

Our original idea was to fly to KL then take the train to Butterworth and the ferry over to Penang Island. Just a note on business class. The flights Kochi to KL and later KL back home to Adelaide were a bargain. Usually business is three or four times more the regular price. In our booking, the economy flights were much cheaper than previously and to upgrade to business was not much more. In the future we doubt we would do anything under seven hours as business if we want flatbeds like we had to Adelaide. But saying that it is nice for the extra leg room and extra service on flight and to eat ones self silly with some drinks thrown in, in the business lounge.

A 4 ½ hour flight leaving at half past midnight! Business was just upright big arsed seats, which were not comfortable. I did not sleep at all. Oh well. We did enjoy a couple of solid eating and drinking hours in the business lounge though. The airport in Kochi is really nice. Check out the comfy seats!!

We had planned to take trains to Penang but we were so buggered that we booked a last minute flight on Batik Air, which was fine, apart from the bumpy landing. So we spent the whole day walking around the airport. I was so tired that I slept for 1 ½ hours on a row of somewhat padded chairs. Slept solid, with Terrell, my guardian angel watching over me.

We took a Grab Taxi to our new home at Straits Garden Suites on the (scary) 23rd floor, It’s a nice clean modern apartment and I just keep the curtains drawn and pretend I’m on the ground floor. 😂

And now we have ditched Grab for the much-more-fun buses. Our number one fav is the double decker, on which we dash up-stairs to secure the best set in the house (or bus) which is right at the front. You don’t get that view from a Grab Taxi, I’m telling you right now.

The last few days we have settled into a routine in our little sky high flat. Every other day I do ten laps of the pool and the days in between in the heat therapy thing we bought in India for my knee.

Yesterday we saw the movie “A complete unknown “ about Bob Dylan” I enjoyed it and got a better appreciation of him. There were not so many Dylan fans…..4 others in the whole theatre. Maybe not such a Malayan thing.

Being a Dylan type of person; I lived in the Village, NYC, in the mid-1960s – doing the beatnik/hippie life and have always been a fan. Haven’t quite gotten Narda to the Dylan-level I am…who knows? Maybe it takes a few decades (more).

A couple of days before we saw  “Micky 17” a sci fi movie set in the future where a person dies but can live again by being printed. Entertaining, good sound effects and a little humour. 

Our forays into old town Penang have been frequent. Lots of wall art and street food. We take a bus from our flat. And then walk. We have visited a couple of Indian restaurants and ordered the same food each time which included Mali kofta both times. We tried to order it in Bombay too only to be told by the waiter that it is “ sweet”. So changed our order. Now we realise that for the Indian the taste is not spicy but mild….using cashews.They call that “sweet”.  We love it.

Probably the most viewed stuff in Penang is the street art. Urban murals throughout the UNESCO-listed historic district depict life & culture in Penang. As you would know, The Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic is perhaps most commonly associated with Penang’s street art. He came to George Town on a tourist visit and was surprised (and no doubt relieved) that he could paint his murals in the city without any official interference. Of course, my son thought the same of Adelaide when he was in the first ‘creative’ years of adolescence but unfortunately Adelaide did not follow good old Ernest’s wall art philosophy.

street art stuff – in sections – these are the most icon ones

then there were a lot around the streets that were made with metal, and had sayings…

We walked to the cruise ship port often…

We also met some friendly poms sitting drinking their beer 🍺 at a table. We got chatting and joined them. They are older than us but seriously into travel, having also been on many cruises. They live somewhere between Liverpool and Manchester which has been our stomping ground in a previous trip.

George Town is the colorful, multicultural capital of the Malaysian island of Penang. Once an important Straits of Malacca trading hub, the city is known for its British colonial buildings, Chinese shophouses and mosques. Beyond the old town, George Town is a modern city with skyscrapers and shopping malls. Verdant Penang Hill, with hiking and a funicular railway, overlooks it all. ― Google

We spent most of our time in the old section.

Then there was the expensive ferry ride to Butterworth which set us back. 91c each.It was a nice scenic ride. At the other end you walk into a shopping centre where I bought some PJs . Then had lunch at Subway.

March 15 2025

Today was the most random yet. Terrell had researched a trip to the Botanical Gardens which was recommended to us. He found that 101 bus would take us there.

So we took a connecting bus from our flat and discovered that the 101 no longer goes there. The nearest bus required 25 minutes walk past the wall through the gardens. Too long and my leg was not up for it.

So plan B. The lovely ferry was nearby so we paid our $0.45 and got off at Penang Sentral. (Just love that phonetic spelling in Malaysia) 

It’s a great trip. (this was our second trip on the high seas – taking the fifteen-minute ferry)

We thought we’ll take a train a few stops up the track, have lunch, then return. We underestimated the commitment needed for this. The trains don’t go that often and on this occasion were also full. 

So back to a bus option which took us to a grossly misnamed mall “Pacific Mall’ which was an old dirty huge mall. We asked a friendly girl if there was  a good foodcourt. She replied, “there is a Chinese place downstairs but I don’t think you will like it”.

Nothing else except some very tiny and friendly Malaysian girls selling chips with cheese…..ok…..and then apologising that they had no cheese.   

Blame Ramadam. 

Since it was only 3pm we could not wait with the faithful so we decided to check the Chinese food court that we “would not like”. The place was dark, unwashed tables and full of happily eating Chinese folk. 

Since it was 3 pm and our time to break our fast, we ordered a couple of noodle dishes which turned out to be really yummy from a Vietnamese stall.. Cooked and served to us by a friendly young Chinaman. Cost for both of us $5.86. That included a 25% tip and a lovely smile from the lad.

Time to go home for a nap. The grab taxis are fast, cheap and efficient. We got to go at a high speed over the remaining 13km bridge.

March 13 2025

Ikea here we come. A long ride in a taxi over the longest bridge eva! 25km. Certainly my longest. Needing a cup of coffee we bought one and sat down. No milk so we bought an ice-cream and squashed it all together. Nice

Then off to check out some bathroom cupboards for Leon to install……are you reading this Leon?

Whaddo ya think?

Not sure about the gold taps. The drawers are short allowing for plumbing at the back.

After Ikea, I mean after eating in IKEA….Swedish meat balls and gravy….so glad that some things cannot be changed. We hoofed it on to outletmall which was mainly shoe shops. Amazing. You name it, was there. Except Ecco. Oh well.

Terrell scored but I’ll let him tell you that story.

We tried to find a bus to take us to IKEA but it became too complicated so we took a Grab Taxi – about $12 USD for the 45-minutes or so to Ikea over the Penang Bridge a 25-kilometre bridge, one of the longest in Asia. We found an outlet mall near IKEA and that became our focal point. I bought sneakers, and the groovy tee-shirt below; I have to go to Malaysia to get a shirt that says Melbourne club…go figure. When we got home we took the caravan over to Sacha’s and Georgia’s beautiful new home in the rain forest an hour out of Melbourne (one of two cold weather rain forests in the world; the other is in of all places, in Iran). Sacha says it is like living in a tree house – quite a fancy one at that. Anyway, I wanted to show him my new “Melbourne tee shirt” but I forgot to take it and I forgot about it all together until I wrote this part of our trip, two months later. It is difficult to impress one’s son, but I keep trying.

Narda bought stuff then we took a Grab back home, at rush hour taking an hour and a half to get home. IKEA was the same layout as in Adelaide, NYC (Brooklyn) and everywhere else. Even the food was the same; I had the veggie balls – Narda had roadkill balls.

About the cupboards we found for our bathroom – we of course, went to IKEA in Adelaide and they did not have what we had seen in Penang – why would they? So we will refit the cupboards we have, probably with some scarf of one of Narda’s thousands that she has bought at one time or another in Asia.

On one of our last days we took a bus trip up the coast of Penang island. It was very scenic. Beautiful beaches. 

We went into the Hard Rock Cafe. Very expensive…way beyond our few dollars a day budget so we had coffee and Narda went around taking photos of their Trophy items. She was particularly interested in the guitar of Noel Gallagher, of the rock band Oasis, because, her son, Brendan, now in Lahore, and his wife and one-year old son have tickets to Oasis in August in Manchester UK. I think someone is baby sitting the kid on the night though. The groovy thing is that they have one of our great house-exchanges in a village nearby for the week. Lucky them. As for me in August, I am turning 78, Damn!

The trip home was easy. We had bought business class tickets for these last segments, as they were quite cheap. The short flights are just big chairs but then we got flat beds on the longer leg home. The best thing was the business lounges throughout.

The one in KL was spectacular, almost as good as Istanbul which we did by travelling on Christmas day!

Three years ago. and we arrived on Christmas Eve -and the next morning Narda’s son said, “mum…I have covid” then so did we – but here we are years later. Happy as a clam.

So that’s it folks. 

….and the crocs made it to Pakistan!!!

the crocs story is in our last blog – Vietnam…

here is when he first opened the box…he is a real Bluey fan.

And finally we are finished with our Asia blog for the first part of 2025. As of now we are planning later in the year to go to Pakistan (luckily they stopped fighting a few days ago – this is May 2025), then to Saudi Arabia to catch up with a friend from our teaching in Dalian China days, then Narda is really hoping we get to DC early December, I am a bit worried about going to the USA so that is not finalized, and for Christmas and first week of 2026 we are on an island in Thailand with the Lahore, Pakistan mob; Brendan, Sofie, baby who will be almost two then and Narda just bought him another pair of Bluey Crocs, winter ones, today – size nine (children’s size).