PENANG
After our little bus mishap, we finally arrived in Penang around 9:00PM. What we had begun to learn in KL, refer to the picture below:
Despite this logo being on every single cab, no one uses the meter. You had to haggle for every single cab ride. They usually just had set rates but some cab drivers would really try to screw you over so you had to low ball them a bit to get them to the real level. So we hop in a cab from the bus terminal to the Hutton Lodge where we are greeted by this man, Nathan.
Hutton Lodge - Penang
After a day at the Batu Caves, I saw a whole lot of Tamil dudes, but Nathan looked like he was some like Tamil God or Bollywood actor / porn actor. Guy was absurd looking. He had the most perfectly groomed beard, crazy amounts of jewelry, and wore bright white dress shoes every day. We also learned on our final day that he was indeed not a woman slayer.
Nathan, even on his days off, straight chills at the Hutton Lodge. He lives around the block and has been in Georgetown for 4 years, but his life is the Hutton Lodge. So on his day’s off, he drinks free Tigers, gets slammed, smokes countless gig’s and charms those staying in the Lodge. Count Quinn and Eric among those seriously charmed. And mark Quinn as the man Nathan had his eyes on. Never remembered my name or Eric’s always remembered Quinn’s and always wanted to know where he was when he wasn’t present. You can imagine the ensuing jokes, which I unfortunately will leave out.
Anyways, our final night in Penang, Nathan tells us around 10:00PM that he is going home and that he won’t be in early enough in the morning to say good bye to all of us, so he wanted to say his good byes then. In an extremely awkward moment, Nathan gave about a 5 minute slurred drunken speech about how much he would miss us and how we were some of his favorite guests and so on and so forth. The final line was the real kicker. “And one last thing guys, umm…I just want to say…I love you all so much!” and then we parted ways. All 8 of us look at each other with the exact same thought in our head, “Did that just really happen?”. Yes it did. Nathan you will always be remembered. I just wish had more pictures of you.
So that went a little backwards, lets get back to the beginning. I’ll just do day one here. So we had our free breakfast, which btw had nothing on that of the Classic Inn. We got some nasty coffee, some weird random bread every day then a couple of slabs of toast with weird jam on it. We still ate it, but we most certainly missed our roti.
We hit the streets of Georgetown having heard that it was the first outpost of the British East India Company, had cool architecture, and the best food in Malaysia. We quickly grabbed some bagged iced coffee (it really just came in a big plastic bag) and headed out on a walk. We first ended up in Penang’s Chinatown, which was nothing like the one in KL. This was just a market that every day people go to, to pick up daily food, clothes, etc. It wasn’t really to interesting, so we quickly walked through and headed towards Little India.
This was a far larger part of town and a great deal more interesting to me. Little India had countless little shops selling incense, Hindu gear, jewelry, and hand tattoos. Due to the fact that Chris' Korean purchased memory card exploded or something I have no pictures of Little India and neither does anyone else for some reason, but I do promise it was cool.
We next wandered to the Jetty's on along the bay of the island. These are supposed to be old fishing villages inhabited by Chinese fishermen. I spoke a little Chinese, wandered a bit, they were less than spectacular. Here is a picture of me below at the jetty's.
We saw a cool bar nearby called QEII I think and decided we were in dire need of a mid day cocktail. It was ridiculously hot out. After being in the Korean winter (when we left it was in the teens every day) this seemed like the Gobi Dessert. Anyhow, the bar overlooked the harbor and had a really cool set up. Definitely would recommend a stop here while in Penang.
After the pit stop, we wandered a bit longer, until we were informed that there was some great Chinese man who had a big purple mansion by the ocean in Penang. You could only tour the home twice a day, once at Noon and once at 3:00PM. It was the worst tour I've ever been on and the house was not cool at all. If your ever in Penang and hear of some purple mansion, don't waste you're time. I don't even remember its name.
After the disasterous tour, Quinn, Eric and I headed back to the Hutton Lodge. This is where my next disaster occurred. I went to a local Malay joint and asked the guy to get me his favorite thing on the menu. It was this fried rice dish with a bunch of vegetables and anchovies. It was delicious, loved it, best thing I had eaten up that point on vacation and this was day 4 of the trip. Little did I know it would be the last thing I ate for more than 48 hours. Quinn, Eric and I were playing cards while the girls sat near us playing Phase 10 when all of a sudden my stomach started to feel a little weird. I didn't the bathroom for the next 12 hours. Now maybe it wasn't the anchovy thing that gave me food poisoning, but I was the only person of the whole crew that got sick, so I really have no idea what else it could be from. Anyhow, it was Zoe and Jo's last night with us as they were headed to Phuket the following day to meet up with some college buddies. I gave it my best to get better for the night, but in the end the food poisoning got the best of me, although I did my best to not let it hamper my experience over the next couple of days.
I woke up rather early this morning, still feeling a little weak, but definitely didn't want to miss out on anything. We were playing on heading to Monkey Beach, a beautiful beach located in Penang National Park. It was about a 50 minute cab ride to a small fishing village, shown below here:
Once we arrived at the National Park, we were immediately haggled by people selling us they're services to take us by boat to Monkey beach. We eventually found this incredibly nice, yet incredibly strange woman who we haggled down to round trip 130 Ringgit ($45 USD split between 8 of us, ridiculous for a 7 hour day private boat). The woman just screams "Captain Jack Sparrow, come out!". I think she thought we thought it would be hilarious, we didn't. We would be forced to call him Jack the rest of the day because unlike most Malay's he spoke very little English and didn't tell us his real name, or maybe we just didn't understand it. Jack would also serve as our personal monkey guard and beer go getter. He was a good dude. Here's a picture of our ride below. See our main man Jack in the back.
We get to the beach. We're one of maybe 5 - 10 other people there. It was our first beach time, and after being sun burned from just walking around Penang the past few days, I decided to try tossing on some Korean SPF 50. Well, I will never do that again. I forgot that Asians like to keep as white as possible, its a status thing. This stuff turned your skin white, and did not come off. I took tried repeatedly with sand, leaves, ocean water to get this stuff off, I but I ended up looking like a ghost the entire day. I was still feeble from the food poisoning so fending off the monkeys wasn't really my thing that day (though I'm not sure it would have been my thing anyways) and I spent the majority of the day sleeping or resting my eyes in the shade. Here are some pictures of the beach itself, I'll get to the monkeys in a second.
These monkeys sucked. According to Jack, there are two sides of the beach with different families, each warring over the food of the people that come to the beach. We initially lie our stuff down on a table, only to be ushered back by some guy telling us that monkeys stole some of our chips, and that more will be on the way now. We see crumbs falling from the trees, and sure enough a couple of monkeys are chowing down on Julie's pizza chips. Sounds funny? At first it actually was. Then the war with like 25 monkeys began and it was not funny as they ravaged through other unassuming peoples food and nearly attacked us on various occasions. I threw a coconut at the head monkey, bad idea. The thing did not back down, started dashing at me, I obviously got terrified and dove into the water. Quinn stood strong once, pointing sticks at them, although he later admitted he was terrified the entire time. This other Russian woman who was vacationing the world solo was feeding them all Mangos, not scared of them at all. She had to be in her 70's. Was orange tan. Wearing an entirely innapropriate bathing suit with a Maria Menonous like slip, and was taming these little guys. She also started the war. One of the monkey's only had one arm, I'm very curious how this happened. Anyhow, heres some pic's of the monkeys doing their damage.
Anyhow, after 6 or 7 hours at the beach, we headed back, took a treacherous walk down some wooden planks and ended up back right where we started. You can see how happy I was versus Quinn and Chris.
We headed back, had a pretty awful dinner at a nearby touristy joint where I got fried chicken doused in maple syrup, then I went back and fell asleep almost immediately. The others would have they're first experiences of Thaipusam, which I would enjoy the following day.
all photos by Quinn Hubertz
published by Samuel Schofield
Once we arrived at the National Park, we were immediately haggled by people selling us they're services to take us by boat to Monkey beach. We eventually found this incredibly nice, yet incredibly strange woman who we haggled down to round trip 130 Ringgit ($45 USD split between 8 of us, ridiculous for a 7 hour day private boat). The woman just screams "Captain Jack Sparrow, come out!". I think she thought we thought it would be hilarious, we didn't. We would be forced to call him Jack the rest of the day because unlike most Malay's he spoke very little English and didn't tell us his real name, or maybe we just didn't understand it. Jack would also serve as our personal monkey guard and beer go getter. He was a good dude. Here's a picture of our ride below. See our main man Jack in the back.
We get to the beach. We're one of maybe 5 - 10 other people there. It was our first beach time, and after being sun burned from just walking around Penang the past few days, I decided to try tossing on some Korean SPF 50. Well, I will never do that again. I forgot that Asians like to keep as white as possible, its a status thing. This stuff turned your skin white, and did not come off. I took tried repeatedly with sand, leaves, ocean water to get this stuff off, I but I ended up looking like a ghost the entire day. I was still feeble from the food poisoning so fending off the monkeys wasn't really my thing that day (though I'm not sure it would have been my thing anyways) and I spent the majority of the day sleeping or resting my eyes in the shade. Here are some pictures of the beach itself, I'll get to the monkeys in a second.
These monkeys sucked. According to Jack, there are two sides of the beach with different families, each warring over the food of the people that come to the beach. We initially lie our stuff down on a table, only to be ushered back by some guy telling us that monkeys stole some of our chips, and that more will be on the way now. We see crumbs falling from the trees, and sure enough a couple of monkeys are chowing down on Julie's pizza chips. Sounds funny? At first it actually was. Then the war with like 25 monkeys began and it was not funny as they ravaged through other unassuming peoples food and nearly attacked us on various occasions. I threw a coconut at the head monkey, bad idea. The thing did not back down, started dashing at me, I obviously got terrified and dove into the water. Quinn stood strong once, pointing sticks at them, although he later admitted he was terrified the entire time. This other Russian woman who was vacationing the world solo was feeding them all Mangos, not scared of them at all. She had to be in her 70's. Was orange tan. Wearing an entirely innapropriate bathing suit with a Maria Menonous like slip, and was taming these little guys. She also started the war. One of the monkey's only had one arm, I'm very curious how this happened. Anyhow, heres some pic's of the monkeys doing their damage.
Anyhow, after 6 or 7 hours at the beach, we headed back, took a treacherous walk down some wooden planks and ended up back right where we started. You can see how happy I was versus Quinn and Chris.
We headed back, had a pretty awful dinner at a nearby touristy joint where I got fried chicken doused in maple syrup, then I went back and fell asleep almost immediately. The others would have they're first experiences of Thaipusam, which I would enjoy the following day.
all photos by Quinn Hubertz
published by Samuel Schofield
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