Due to the ill effects of either the street food, jumbo
beers, or some combination of the two from the night before, Colleen and I both
slept in and were not feeling particularly hot when we woke up. To make matters worse, I discovered in the
newspaper that morning that we had missed a free performance the previous the
day from everyone's favorite South Korean pop star, Psy. Yes, Psy, the Youtube legend himself was in town and we missed it. Damn it! Fearing street food for the time being, we
opted to play it safe and have, you guessed it, SUBWAY for breakfast!
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| Everyone loves Psy! |
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| Happy Chinese New Year! |
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| Just like at Winner's.
|
We decided we were going to run the full gauntlet of tourism
activities that day, so after inhaling our subs we ventured out into the
stifling Malaysian heat. Being the ever
diligent walker that I am, I forced Colleen to navigate the city on my foot
with me, although as the drink breaks became more and more frequent we
eventually caved and hopped on the free tourist bus that does a loop of the
city. We were attempting to head towards
the UNESCO world heritage site and historic downtown area of Penang, George Town. Being
the ever-pathetic navigator that I am, I somehow led us to get off at the wrong
stop on a bus that is supposed to make such things easy for tourists. This is turn led to the two of us having to
hike over a kilometer to our first official stop of the day, Fort Cornwallis. Colleen and I did the
requisite quick self-guided tour, grabbed a few pictures and then made the
executive decision that getting some ice cream was the far more satisfying
thing to do.
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| Not as exciting as this picture would have you believe. |
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| Outside Fort Cornwallis. |
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| My fair lady! |
Sadly our run of picking bad tourist sites didn't end there
as we next stumbled upon the "House of Yeap Chor EE", which with a $4 admission price, seemed like a fair
price to pay for some air conditioning at this point. Not surprisingly, the exhibits themselves
were quite boring and I never did manage to figure out who the hell the guy
was. I assume he was some kind of
prominent local business man, but why they turned his former residence into a
shrine I will never know. I can only
assume that this was of moderate interest to the Chinese tourists, but alas I
shall never know.
 | ||
Most exciting house ever.
|
Keeping with the theme of Chinese tourism, we next stumbled
upon one of many local temples, which as expected was quite busy with people
celebrating the Chinese New Year. Having
had enough of walking in the sweltering heat, Colleen and I decided that
another form of transportation was in order: the trishaw! The trishaw (pictured below) is basically an
oversized backwards tricycle that has a pedal-powered driver on the back and can
accommodate a couple of passengers in the front. We quickly negotiated a price of 40RM ($13
Canadian) with a driver who appeared to be on the plus side of seventy years
old. Between my vacation-sized ass and
Colleen, the two of us could barely fit in the seat and we were both feeling
bad for our driver who was having some trouble pedaling the two of us
around. In fact, the old man had to keep
getting off the bike to push it! I was
going to offer to switch places with him but then I remembered that I was a
lazy oinker and nixed that idea. Our limo
trishaw driver gave us a great hour-and-a-half tour of the city, although we
could only understand about fifteen percent of the words coming out of his
toothless mouth. One unique thing that
really stood out were these graffiti style paintings that were randomly placed
around the downtown core (see below). Each
painting would incorporate something from its surroundings, whether it be a motor
bike, window covering, or something else that was present in the area. The paintings were obviously quite popular
and well known as each one usually had a group of tourists nearby waiting to
snap some pictures.
 | ||
| Colleen and our friendly, toothless driver/slave.
|
By the ninety minute mark I was starting to feel bad for our
driver and thankfully he dropped us by the Chew Jetty. I can only assume his back was feeling
terrific that evening. The best part
about the Chew Jetty was our discovery of freezies for the first time in
Asia. Yes, glorious, glorious
freezies! As had become the norm in
Malaysia and Singapore, we got our daily afternoon rain storm and Colleen and I
quickly made our way to the bus stop.
After waiting over thirty minutes for the "Fifteen Minute Bus"
my cheap ass eventually caved to Colleen's wishes and we got a cab. One thing we noticed in our first couple of
days in Penang was that all of the cabs are metered, but none of them actually
use their meters. So be warned
travelers, if you find yourself in Penang make sure to bargain your price
before the cab starts moving.
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| Best discovery of the day; definitely freezies. |
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|
Since we had such a good time the night before at the Red Garden Food Paradise, we decided why
not do it again. While we passed on the
"Claypot Frog Porridge", we did manage to secure ourselves some excellent
teriyaki chicken and steak complimented by a bucket of double-sized Carlsberg beers; and not to mention a
table beside a group of dudes who had a combined tooth total of 6 between the
five of them and were just getting absolutely shittered! Being the gluttons that we are though, that
was not enough and we had to dial up a round of watermelon and mangoes for our
second course. Oh, and then waffles and
ice cream on our third go round to send us into a full on food and beer coma. Heavenly bliss!
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| Sounds promising. |
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| Course one of three. |
~Brentski~
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