Day 10: George Town, Penang, 🌫️ Hazy, 29°

🎶On The Road Again 🎶

As usual we were up early and enjoyed toast with real peanut butter! I tasted the tea that I’d purchased at the tea plantation. Very nice! I bought 40 bags of their Earl Grey, and I’ll take home what ever remains at the end of our travel.

We packed our gear and walked down to the bus depot for our 9:00 bus. The lady directing passengers to various buses (there were actually only two buses) remembered AM from yesterday and greeted her like an old friend. Once on we were provided with information about toilet stops and other stops along the way. We managed to get the jist of it.

Driving down the tortuous road that we’d come up just a few days ago, it was nice to see that the massive traffic lines weren’t forming this morning. At least not yet.

We passed through various small villages on the way down from the Highlands.

Cars and motorcycles are the primary transportation on the roads, but I saw 3 cyclists today. I took this photo for my pal Dennis who this morning reminded me that we will be riding when I get home. For an old guy he never fails to use all the tricks. He’s been training heavily while I’ve been gone. Always looking for that edge! The problem is that at our ages the only things that might give us an edge are e-bikes!😂

Where was I? Oh right, the small hillside villages. Except that we would have been intruding, I thought that it would be extremely interesting to walk through a few of them.

And then we were out of the Highlands and on to good quality highways, in fact dual carriageways. Speed limits are 90 and up. While it’s officially two lanes in both directions, consideration has to be given to the outside service lane as well. This is often used by the many many motorcyclists, though they basically ride just about everywhere, including up the middle of the two main lanes. This isn’t too unusual in many countries I’ve visited, and I always enjoy watching them weave though the heavy traffic.

The base country stone in this part of the world is limestone. Malaysia is building many tall buildings and lots of housing at a very rapid pace and they are mining the limestone just about as fast. Of course cement manufacturing and use is one of the largest contributors to global warming. It’s also the most efficient and lease costly method of constructing large buildings, bridges, etc,. So I don’t expect this will change any time soon, though I have read that they are finding ways to introduce captured carbon into the cement. Pretty brilliant technology!

We arrived in Ipoh for a toilet break and then we travelled onwards to the city’s main bus depot. Another huge affair.

The police were closely checking documents for each bus as it departed. Some 300 buses have recently been pulled off the roads in Malaysia for safety violations, etc.

Not too sure what Ipoh has to offer. We never looked into it.

As we approached Penang we crossed the massive Penang Bridge. All 13.5 km of it!

Arriving at the bus depot after about 5 hours, we called a Grab taxi and were soon on our way into central George Town, a World Heritage Site. Our driver in his small Proton car eventually arrived to ‘grab’ us🙄. He was driving a Malaysian car called a Proton. Pretty basic car as evidenced by the air conditioning system!!

Later: now settled into our hotel.

We find ourselves just steps from the Chinatown area. Tonight is the finale of the New Year celebrations and our area will be the central hub. AM tells me that most of the restaurants in the area are fully booked. So not sure what we will find, but we will be out in the celebrations seeing what’s available.

We have already been out for a short walk to stretch our legs.

Everything is ready for tonight! Lots of entertainment planned.

The main temple was busy.

We have four nights here, so lots of time to have a good look around. A close friend of mine and her partner are spending the winter here, having exited a much colder part of Canada the week before we left. We have plans to connect while here, and we are looking forward to that!

That’s about it from Malaysia for today. Should be a good experience with some fun to be had! And yes. It is much warmer here!

Geoff ☀️🐲🐉🎆