Singapore in two words: “TOO HOT.”

Never the less, we managed to escape the air conditioned goodness of the hotel and shopping malls for a few hours at a time. Long enough to hit the streets of Chinatown and Little India, and eat anything that looked good.

Well, the truth is, Singapore’s heat is actually quite manageable. Most of the underground rail stations link directly up with a shopping mall, and many malls are interconnected, so navigating the central areas of the city is just a case of moving between air conditioned havens. Unfortunately you have to go outside sometimes, it’s unavoidable. Move slowly lest you drown in your own sweat.

I could get used to this. I really could.

Finally it was time to leave Malaysia. We hopped on a bus for a 4.5 hour ride over the border.

I sat there listening to gangsta rap and watching the palm trees zoom by, thinking how strange it is that Australia is such a white country, when it feels so much like it should be part of the Asian continent proper. It sounds strange trying to describe it now, but if you replaced the palm plantations with sugar cane, the trip could’ve been through Queensland. Penang’s botanic gardens provoked Lili into joking, “Uh, sorry but this is just like Australia..”

Whatever.

We made it to Singapore and into 5 Star Luxury Accommodation in our ocean view suite. Awwwl right.

We were staying in Chinatown, basically, so we went out one night to capture pictures of the lantern-adorned streets.

Everything was bathed in their red glow.

Don’t for get to keep an eye on 50×50 as I scramble to try and hit my goal of 50 shots…

Ugh. Worst bus trip ever? Not quite, but almost.

In Malaysia the bus drivers but the aircon on some kind of sub-zero setting and attempt to make an ice rink in the back of the bus. All the air vent thingies are fucked and if you aren’t dressed for winter, so are you.

We thought we had it figured out, but we were still grossly underdressed, and spent the entire trip shivvering in the cold, even after stuffing the aircon outlets full of scrap paper - how many times have I had to customise the busses I’ve ridden on now?

Anyway, finally we made it, and amazingly I don’t think we got sick. Eventually we found a fancy hotel and took their most expensive room.

I have to confess, I wasn’t really into Melaka. It took a while to open up to us, and once it did I was too travel weary to really care that much. Some good food though. Amazing shaved ice treats. I dunno, Melaka holds promise, and I know Lili’s itching to go back for more.

Our last day in Penang was sort of weird. That empty feeling when you know you’re leaving. You’ve sort of exhausted most of the touristy options and eaten some of just about everything, yet you don’t want to regret wasting the last few hours when you could be making a few more lasting memories.

At the time it felt like we wasted a lot of time, but truth be told we just seem to have big expectations.

One thing we DID do is head to the observation deck on the 60th floor of Komtar tower.

Then we hung out for a while longer before heading to the bus station for our overnight trip to Melaka.

Continuing our effort to pack in some activities, we ate lunch and then headed for Penang Hill.

A rather lengthy local bus took us to the bottom of the funicular (you know, ancient near-vertical railway system using cables and, I think, monkeys in cages for power?)

We bought tickets and hopped on. Lili was terrified. The view was awesome. Penang just stretched out around us. After fighting off the monkeys we went back down. Lili was terrified again.

We booked a bus to Melaka, which meant we suddenly needed to fit everything into about a day and a half.

First up, the Botanic Gardens. We shared a taxi ride with a Canadian couple, then Lili and I wondered around. Within about 30 seconds I was soaked through with sweat.

Totally worth it to see the family getting chased by monkeys though. lol

We ended up in the ghetto. Err.. well, more like, you walk a block north and you’re in the thick of the shadier side of George Town, apparently.

Anyway, we were trying to get to the start of a Lonely Planet walking tour, just for something to do, and randomly opted to take Stewart Street.

After turning the corner, we were immediately hailed by a gaunt aging Indian dude with mirrored aviators lounging in a folding chair. We sauntered up to see what this jovial man wanted, and ended up spending somewhere between 30 minutes and an hour talking to the guy.

Once a lecturer at Sydney Uni, where I study, and a visitor to a total of 30 countries at one time or another, this man now sits in a chair half crippled from a stroke, apparently accosting tourists in order to get interesting conversation and money for booze.

He told us his highlights for a visitor to Penang (There are only TWO things you need to see in this city!) and then wowed us with feats of English language trickery - how do you form a correct sentence with 3 consecutive ‘because’es in it? How about 5 ‘and’s?

But there was something off about this guy. I think it was the way, throughout conversation, scrawny junkies would come up, without needing to utter a word, triggering an elaborate process where by our host for this interlude would remove small green packages from his mouth, palm them off to a huge man with incredible scars on his arms, and receive payment from the customer, occasionally triggering a simpler process where he would shout abuse at the person until they coughed up the rest of the money.

After one such transaction he shook his head sadly, “They try to take advantage of me because I’m half blind from my stroke.”

What is the world coming to when lowlifes such as these think they can get away with pulling the wool over the clouded and fucked up eyes of a world weary English professor? Can you tell me that?

Anyway, we got advice to visit a nearby Chinese clan temple - built by the Khoo clan, the most powerful in the island’s history, founded by a 14 year old penniless immigrant Chinese boy.
“How?”

Well, “opium”, I speculated.

The friendly professor of drug dealing nodded vigorously, “Yes, that, or perhaps piracy.”

So we flew to Penang, arriving in the middle of the day. After flying over translucent blue ocean for a while, the plane dropped altitude and we were suddenly below the tops of the brilliant green mountains, still over water, then beach, then runway and we landed, greeted by about 30ᴼC.

After a taxi into George Town, and lucking into a reasonable room at the first guest house we tried, we went out and ate.

Penang is pretty much about two things. The first is food. You don’t even need to be a huge food nerd like Lili to figure this one out - Malaysia seems to successfully pull of the multicultural thing, with Malay Chinese, Indian, and of course Muslims, in seemingly equal measure. So you get food from all of those cultures. Then you get Penang which is, to the mind of a Malaysian even, a food lover’s paradise, and hopefully you get some idea. They build shopping malls as an excuse to build food courts, and the food courts are like food markets.

Since we’ve been here we’ve eaten a lot. It’s nothing to have three meals for dinner.

The other thing? What? Oh, the second thing Penang is all about? Friendliness, or cheer, or something. Everyone is happy to talk to you. You sit down at a table with some other people at a night market, and you’re likely to end up in a conversation with someone who wants to tell you about where they’re from, find out where you’re from, etc. The taxi drivers _will_ talk your ear off. Restraunt owners follow you down the road, long after they’ve stopped trying to sell you food, to offer advise on places to visit, which busses to catch.

It’s utterly mindblowing.