Day 87- Have No Fear People: The Lost Art Of Scrotum Taping Is Alive And Well In Malaysia.

Never ones to unnecessarily wake up early, Colleen and I slept in yet again before heading down to the hotel restaurant for lunch.  Not surprisingly the restaurant clientele consisted of the two of us and 500 Chinese tourists.  How the two of us were not yet fluent in Mandarin I do not know.

Having visited most of the city's main tourist spots the day before, the one feather in our cap we were missing was a tour at the "Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion".  I know, sounds exciting.  Colleen and I showed up at said mansion for the lunchtime tour expecting there to be a handful of people.  Instead, we were greeted by a group of over 100 people.  It just goes to show the power that Lonely Planet travel guides have and how if they decide you are one of the "top ten mansions in the world" the masses will follow.  The tour itself was pretty unspectacular, as we had one tour guide for the entire group trying to yell over everyone with no microphone or voice amplification system.  Colleen and I both lost interest pretty quickly and before we knew it we were wandering off from the tour group and taking silly pictures in an attempt to entertain ourselves.  Eventually even this got too tedious and we decided to just walk out on the tour.  Problem solved.



All it takes is a Lonely Planet recommendation and BOOM! your boring attraction is a hit.



Let's just take selfies instead.



Clearly I was loving the tour. My eyes say it all.

Free from the mansion, we headed back to our hotel to attempt to map out the next day's travel plans (but not before we stopped off at...Subway of course).  Our plan was to head back to Koh Tao (the diving island) in Thailand as Colleen really wanted to get in some more diving before heading to Canada the following week.  Due to the Chinese New Year, all of the flights and more desirable travel arrangements were sold out or out of our price range so we headed down the street to the local travel agency.  While the shop had some very attractive prices in their windows, inside I was greeted by possibly the ugliest he-she (see: transsexual, ladyboy, etc) I had ever seen.  In the last couple of months I had seen my fair share of men who now "identified" themselves as women, and to be honest some of them weren't that bad looking.  I mean shit, you pump enough drinks in to someone and it's not surprising that you are constantly hearing stories of foreign men who pick up "women" at the bar and take them home only to discover that they are packing some taped up heat in their thongs.  Anyways, no amount of drinks was going to make this boy pretty, but at least he, or should I say she, found us a good deal for the next day.  For $55 each we would have to take a 4 hour ride in a minibus (large van), followed by an 8 hour overnight bus ride, and then finally a 2.5 hour ferry ride before arriving in Koh Tao.  Not exactly ideal, but hey it would get us there.



A final addition to our collection of pictures of Penang's spectacular street art.



In preparation for our big journey the next day, we spent our last and third consecutive night at the Red Garden Food Paradise.  It was pouring rain all night so we took refuge there and just enjoyed the good, cheap food and beer.  To top it off, we got the best service we had had in Malaysia at the only place that wasn't charging an automatic service charge.  Hell, the guy sweeping the floors even stopped to fill my beer glass for me!  Now that's service. 

I spent my last night in Malaysia watching "Armageddon" back in the hotel room, a sure sign of what the  next day was going to feel like with all of the less-than-first-class-travelling that awaited us.

~Brentski~

Day 86- I Love When A Grown Man Pedals Me Around On An Oversized Tricycle.

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! 



Everyone loves Psy!
 

Happy Chinese New Year!



Just like at Winner's.



Penang's less glamorous side.



 

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.



Not as exciting as this picture would have you believe.



Outside Fort Cornwallis.



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.

Colleen clearly loves it.

 



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.



Poor guy has to push US around!



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.  

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!



Sounds promising.





Course one of three.



~Brentski~

 

 

Day 85- Off To Penang, The Night Food Market Capital Of Malaysia (Solid Claim To Fame).

Having successfully survived our first few days in Malaysia, it was time for us to move upwards and onwards.  Our goal was to travel back to Thailand via bus, but before we made it back we were going to spend a few nights in the northern Malaysian city of Penang.  Before leaving Kuala Lumpur, Colleen and I hit up our local one-of-the-world's-largest-malls for some grub.  Keeping with our theme of super exotic eating we settled on a combination of Booster Juice, jumbo pretzels, and a mandatory visit to the local Subway.  Rather impressively it was the sixth time in the last nine days that Colleen had eaten Subway, and two of the days she didn't have any were because we were on a cruise ship!

With our bellies full we headed over to the bus terminal, which like many such things in Southeast Asia was a complete gong show.  There were people hassling you left, right, and centre trying to sell you bus tickets and it appeared that there were dozens of bus companies operating out of this one terminal.  Eventually we found what we thought was our bus and lugged our heavier-by-the-minute backpacks over to the platform.  After our departure time had come and gone, we were a little nervous and started asking around if anyone knew anything as there were buses constantly coming and going.  Not surprisingly, no one had a fuckin' clue and the wifey and I were left wondering whether or not we would make it to Penang. 



This bus ride is so enjoyable. Not tight at all.



 

Amidst much confusion and chaos our bus did eventually show up.  Keeping up with our run of good luck, Colleen and I got seated behind the world's two biggest assholes who decided to put their seats ALL THE WAY back and effectively pin Colleen and I to our seats for the entire six hour journey.  Of course six hours wasn't enough time with the two Sleeping Beauties in front of us so the transportation gods decided to throw in some Chinese New Year traffic to lengthen the drive and really test our meddle. 

By the time we pulled into Penang with our crushed lower extremities, all we could think about was getting off that damn bus!  Well that, and the fact that it seemed there were no actual "Malay" people in this part of the country.  Every person seemed to be of Chinese or Indian descent, which upon further inquiring I was told was quite normal for this region.  Hmmm, good to know I guess.  Colleen had again enforced her womanly charm will on me and forced us to book into a large Western-style hotel, the Cititel.  I know I shouldn't complain about staying in nicer accommodations than I had originally planned for, but damn was my now non-existent budget taking a beating.  No straw huts and backpacker dives for this broad!

Once we were settled in we headed out into the streets to check out Penang's regionally famous street food.  There are a number of night markets that are chock full of vendors hawking all sorts of food from various regions of the world.  Initially we decided to skip said markets and settled on some good old-fashioned hot dogs and hamburgers (sad, I know).  After filling our guts with the street grease, Colleen and I wised up and headed over to Red Garden Food Paradise, one of the more famous night markets in the city.  The place was full of Malaysian Chinese people as far as the eye could see, which again just seemed odd to me because I was completely ignorant to the large scale immigration that had occurred here.  Never ones not to eat even when we are full, the lady and I tackled a banana split and some jumbo beers to wash it down.  Colleen eventually decided that she was still hungry (even though she hadn't finished her original dinner) and went out and scored herself a second round of supper.  I must say I hear the same thing almost every night when Colleen (who inevitably never finishes her food) thus proclaims herself to be hungry not one hour after dinner.  The nerve I tell ya!  Love is a funny thing.

 



Colleen striking her model pose outside the Red Garden Food Paradise.



Just your typical, everyday Malaysian food market.



Jumbo beers will get you every time!



~Brentski~