Georgetown, Penang

We ended up spending twice the amount of time in Georgetown than planned, eventually staying there for eight days. This partly was because we'd found some cheap accommodation (the Tune hotel - £12 a night with airconditioning and wi-fi, it's part of Air Asia - the region's budget airline), there's food at every turn and some interesting places to visit. We also needed some time to sort out our itinerary and book some flights and places to stay for the rest of our month in Malaysia.
One day we took the slow train up Penang Hill - the funicular railway, which took about half an hour. It was a few degrees cooler up on top which was really welcome after the 34 degree heat of downtown Georgetown. I don't how Cliff is managing to run in this heat. We had a wander around the top, had a look at the Hindu temple and then went for a cream tea (Liam had cucumber sandwiches as well, what what!). There were fantastic views of the city and the bridge over to the mainland and a lovely pool (not for swimming, unfortunately) with lily pads and some striking flowers. We'd decided to walk down the hill rather than taking the train back, as the route would take us to the botanical gardens and the guidebook said it was an hour walk. Well, the guide book (in this case, the Rough Guide) strikes again. We've discovered numerous inaccuracies in our travel books as we've been going, some small errors but some pretty major ones. It didn't take a hour, it was nearer two and you'd think that walking downhill would be easy, it's not. It's blooming hard. We did see a rather striking giant millipede as we started out, which Cliff allowed to walk all over his hand. We also encountered lots of monkeys on the route down and some of them were quite aggressive. As we got closer to the bottom, we started seeing runners and even a couple of mountain bikers making their (very slow) way up the hill.
The botanical gardens was a welcome sight and we bought cold drinks for us and peanuts for the resident monkeys. Liam witnessed a theft when a small monkey Liam had nicknamed Standley, because he was always standing up on his back legs, suddenly nabbed the trolley bus driver's meal. And we also witnessed a stand off between a very mature monkey and a dog over a peanut. Very odd. They are lovely gardens, Cliff had been there early (about 8am) on the previous Saturday during his 17 mile run (!) and had seen loads of people running and exercising - most of them were running away from the monkeys I expect. They can pretty much see a packet of peanuts from a mile away and and a whole load of them will run after you for them. Liam loved it. There was a very welcome bus waiting for us as we left the park. I don't think I could have walked another step.

Another afternoon we took a bus out to the Penang Butterfly Farm. They had literally thousands of butterflies just flying around, as well as scorpians (in an enclosure) and water dragons, iguanas, turtles, snakes and beetles. Definitely worth a visit.

We spent a couple of hours at (apparently) the world's largest toy museum in Batu Ferrengi on the north coast of the island. It was good fun, they had a wide selection of film and tv related toys and Cliff and Liam have already decided to re-start Liam's (?) collection of Simpsons figures when we get back. They also had a chamber of horrors featuring the more gory figures. I used to quite enjoy reading Clive Barker but some of the figures they had from his books here were very disturbing and actually made me feel a bit sick.

We lunched a few times at a Chinese veggie place on Jalan Dickens called EE Beng. Very cheap (about a £1 each) and excellent fake meats. This is where we saw a poster for Goat Nan - goat's milk which read 'just like human milk' - of course the standing joke is now 'Goat Nan - just like mama used to make!'

A less successful meal was had at White Coffee - I ordered eggs on toast and the eggs had been cooked for ooh about 20 seconds. It turns out this how Malaysians like their eggs cooked - i.e not at all. And they advertise them everywhere as 'half-cooked eggs'. That should have been a big clue.

Another culinary high point was Ecco, an Italian place on Jalan Chulia run by a Chinese self-taught chef who grows his own basil for the pesto. Really good food was to be had here. The night we went in, a western guy came in and ordered a salt lassi (a bit like a yoghurty milkshake - I have no desire to try one myself). A glass of lassi was brought to him on a tray and he promptly tasted it and complained that he'd ordered a salt lassi and this didn't have salt in it. The waiter pointed out that the salt is on the table to add yourself as customers have different tastes but the guy just walked out without paying. Cliff reckons that he does the same at every restaurant in town -and eventually gets to drink a whole lassi without paying :) We also went to a place called the New Woodlands, an Indian restaurant in Little India - we went to celebrate our wedding anniversary; fantastic food and again cheap - about £7 for everything. A low point was breakfast at the Blue Diamond, the strawberry jam wasn't 'top notch' as Liam described it and we were joined by a couple of rats, who thankfully kept their distance.
Georgetown has a poorly advertised free shuttle bus (Rough Guide doesn't mention it at all) that runs a route around the city's sights as well as a cheap, frequent bus service around the island with free wi-fi. Not bad.