Trotamundos: beaches

Penang is an island state located half way up Malaysia’s west coast, its capital is George Town, the former colonial capital for the pesky invading British. It is

Malaysia

’s second biggest city and purportedly home to the country’s finest food.

Accommodation has been a constant thorn in our side since we crossed into Malaysia and in George Town we found out why: we’re currently in school holiday period for Malaysian children, the big six week holiday which English children have in the summer, meaning everywhere is astonishingly expensive.

While we’ve found food and transport to be comparatively priced here compared to other countries in South East Asia, the accommodation is triple the cost and half the quality. A room that we would pay £6/$10 for in

Vietnam

costs in excess of £20/$32 here.

In our efforts to find decent, reasonably priced accommodation in George Town we ended up staying in three different hotels during our four night stay:

The first place, Muntri Inn, was £14 (71ringit) a night for a tiny cell-like room with no window and a shared bathroom. The walls were paper thin and the included breakfast was merely a loaf of bread and a toaster.

Next we checked into the Wai Han Hotel, which was in an appalling state of disrepair but was undeniably cheap at just £5 (25ringit) per night. Unfortunately, while during the daytime it was bad, during the night it was by far worse; we came home after a night drinking with friends to find the reception area full of prostitutes, and were kept awake all night by the noises that resulted from their business.

The winning hotel was 54 Love Lane Inn, which appeared to be the busiest place in town and we could see why, the room was nice, breakfast was included and it only cost £11 (55ringit).

Colonial George Town.

George Town is really nice, albeit a little hectic with bus loads of tourists swarming around frantically photographing everything in sight. The city has retained a lot of its colonial heritage (it’s a UNSECO site) and the old white buildings with their shuttered windows are completely at odds with the Korean-style skyscrapers found further out on the island.

There’s a lot of pleasant street art around George Town and many art galleries, shops and trendy cafes. We enjoyed wandering around the town, mainly in the evening when the heat was bearable, looking at the art, watching the funny Asian tourists with their matching t-shirts, listening to live music out on the street and generally soaking up the atmosphere.

Metal work depicts the history of the town.

Street art.

To the north of George Town, Penang has some good beaches with warm clear water and coarse white sand. With some difficulty we managed to find an un-crowded beach and settled in the shade of a tree to enjoy the warm breeze. Little by little fruit started rolling onto the beach, brought in by the tide: oranges, bananas, flowers and, believe it or not, money, began to litter the beach. We think the strange collection must have come from an offering table that Asian people lay out to honour their ancestors, often containing money, flowers and fruit, perhaps fallen into the ocean from a boat. Did we eat the free fruit and take the money? Of course we did!

As for boasting Malaysia’s finest food I can confirm that the food we ate in Penang was indeed better than anything else we’ve had thus far. We tried Bak Kut Teh, a delicious pork rib soup, Nasi Kandar which is basically Indian Food served on a banana leaf, Poh Piah a type of fishy egg roll, and Roti Gangnam Style which has nothing to do with Psy or Gangnam and is simply half boiled eggs on toast with a lot of pepper.

The best food we’ve eaten in Malaysia has been in the hawker centres (or food courts), which are always packed to the rafters with local people. As in

Singapore

, there is an infinite amount of food on offer, however here there’s more of a party atmosphere, beer is served to your table and there is often live entertainment on a central stage.

How To Get To…

The Beach: We took the bus #101 to …, cost 2.70ringit one way. The journey takes about 45minutes or longer during heavy traffic periods.

We chose Koh Samet purely for its proximity to Bangkok. With only one week off work for Christmas, we didn't want to spend too much time travelling around Thailand (much unlike us), rather, we just wanted to relax somewhere on a beautiful beach.

We stayed on Vongduern beach at the 'Seahorse Bungalow 2'. The beach was not as I expected but not in a bad way. First of all, the tide came in so far that in the morning there was only a very narrow strip of sand, it didn't go out until late in the afternoon. There was a full moon the week we were there, perhaps that's the reason for the high tide.

Along the beach were several restaurants, each one pertaining to a resort or bungalow complex. The restaurants had these large square sun beds covered in pillows with a small table in the middle (very comfortable) and you could sit at one all day long, having only ordered one bottle of water from the restaurant, costing you 50p. Due to the high tide, the beds were often laid out into the sea, so you could just jump off and swim whenever you got too warm. You could also leave your things there in the care of the restaurant, go swimming or walking along the beach and they would save your table for you all day.

At night the restaurants were lit by candles and torches and some local children would perform an incredible fire show that was impressive and at the same time deeply disturbing - some of the children couldn't have been more than 7 years old and were hula hooping a burning metal ring! That's dangerous kids!

I was so impressed with the hospitality of the Thai people, they were so friendly and to my surprise there was no aggressive competition to get you to go into a certain restaurant, nor were there pushy waiters trying to lure you in with drinks offers or discount. Everywhere was so laid back and relaxed, it was a refreshing change.

To my surprise the island wasn't swarmed with backpackers and professional hippies, in fact we were among the youngest people there. There were many older couples and families there, not many couples unaccompanied by children. Vongduern beach is not a lively beach, the bars and restaurants start closing up at 11pm, but this didn't bother me and Ric, we were happy to go to bed early and get up early the following day for more sunshine. We did find some clubs and bars on other beaches but they didn't tempt us to stay out past bedtime (we must be getting old).

One night we decided it would be nice to wake up extra early and watch the sunrise. How romantic. We woke up to the alarm on my phone, dressed and snuggled on a sun bed on the beach together, happily anticipating the first rays of sunlight to break the horizon. It took approximately one hour for me to realise that my phone was set to Korean time and not Thai time, meaning we'd gotten up at 3am instead of 5am, and that we still had a fair few hours to wait before the sun made an appearance. Disheartened we went back to bed. While I lay in bed contemplating my mistake, my body started to itch all over. Within minutes my skin was on fire and I felt like a thousand red ants were crawling over me, biting me. I rushed to the bathroom to assess the situation and found I was covered in so many bites I looked like I had chicken pox. I woke Ric up and insisted that he search the bed for the culprit but we found nothing. Finally I went into an antihistamine induced sleep only to wake up in the morning with all the bites gone! I wondered if it was all a bad dream but the mysterious bites continued to appear throughout the week, only to disappear hours later. I still don't know where the bites came from, but at least they weren't mosquito bites, only Ric got them!!

From our beach we went walking to the beaches to the north and to the south, each time trekking along the shaded paths that lead over the rocky headlands. To the south we found this wonderful beach that was so quiet. All the "bunglows" were made of wood and looked really rustic, there was even a tree house! There was no one around and we had the beach to ourselves. To the north we visited about six different beaches, each one different, each one beautiful.

One thing we had to do whilst in Thailand was get Thai massages. After a day of swimming and sunning we went for a massage each. The beds were large and comfy and had a view of the sun was setting over the sea. The massage was amazing and only cost £6 for an hour! The girl who massaged me was really beautiful and very friendly, she didn't speak English but she bowed at me and smiled a lot. Ric's masseuse however, looked like she was chewing a wasp and whenever he opened his eye's she yelled at him to sleep!!

The food in all the restaurants was amazing, such a lovely change from Korean food. Ric was so excited about the abundance of fresh seafood, he had fish everyday (much to my distaste), he had barbecued white snapper and crab. I just loved having fresh fruit and vegetables, tasty curries and food that wasn't pickled and soaked in chilli.

The island was beautiful, white sand, clear turquoise sea - just like in the photos you see of Thailand, only I didn't believe it could be so perfect. There are no roads on the island, only dirt tracks, and the transportation is limited to motorbikes, quads, and these bright green pick-up trucks with good suspension that serve as shared taxis.

It was a wonderful carefree relaxing few days there and the time went by far to quickly. Even Ric loved it, and he previously claimed to have never been on a beach holiday before because they're "boring". We read books, played cards and scrabble, snoozed, drank and ate all day long. It was heaven. But if you don't believe me, check out the pictures: