The Usual

We're coming to the end of our time in Malaysia, with our tickets purchased and ready for our train trip back to Bangkok. There's still a lot to do here but as far as tourists go we are very lucky to be able to spend this much time in one place, getting into the city's flow and getting to know its people. For our last days we've tried to do as much as we could without spending, with only a splurge for the War Museum.

DDR

This whole time in SE Asia, I figured I'd see plenty of DDR and could embarrass myself for fun whenever the chance arose, but it's actually been really tough. All of the mall arcades have this newer Konamix game where you dance using your feet and your hands between these sensors both at waist height and over your head and it's complete madness. I didn't even have the courage to try it, it looked so impenetrable. I will say one thing though, it looks a lot less like a seizure and a lot more like dancing than DDR. When I finally found a regular Dance Dance it was in the crappiest crap mall(in Butterworth, the place where the train goes so you can get to Penang), and it was only half in English so I couldn't figure out how to raise the difficulty from Easy to make it at all entertaining. Very disappointing, and uncomfortable on top of it all since we had just hiked up to the lighthouse the day before.

The Usual

We've really gotten comfortable in this city. We've come to know the streets and the buses and locations, and now we even know the people. It's comforting that we now have a "usual" at the coffee shop, a local coffee for me and a white coffee for Jenny. The proprietor was saddened to hear that we were going to be leaving soon, and we were sad to report it. Right down the street the "curry puff guy," as we call him, also knows us and seems to never ever have the tuna puffs when we stop in. At least he always has those delicious semolina cookies, which I find are a great morning snack after coffee. Finally of course there is the Indian place at which we eat nearly every night. I'm going to miss all of these places. They've become familiar.

We passed this puppy pretty much daily. He was very friendly.

A sign for the Songkran festival at a Buddhist Temple, which is a time for elbowing women in the face and making them spill their water.

Speaking of the usual, we're really going to miss the food here. Apart from a really disappointing century egg(I think it was over-cured?) and durian ice cream(puke), every day has brought some new exciting food item for me to try. Most recently we walked to an old bakery for roti bengalli, a very chewy and light white bread, sold by the slice from giant loaves which we smeared with local coconut jam. Then there is this chinese noodle shop right around the corner from our guesthouse which we discovered way too late in our visit. As much fun as all the noodle dishes there are, my favorite thing is the choice of rice porridges for breakfast, particularly anchovies and peanuts porridge. Even eating the same old thing can be really fun, like how the other day Jenny was out of dry clothing and we couldn't go out to eat... so I brought the standard indian home and we ate off of newspaper on the floor, with our hands, out of bowls made from halved water bottles. It was a very MacGuyver moment.

Botanic Gardens

After some (lots of) waiting, we managed to catch the infrequent bus 102 to the Botanic Gardens. We made an attempt to find the waterfall at the gardens, which seemed fairly straightforward from the map at the entrance... two hours later, we had succeeded only in finding a very large set of stairs that definitely did not lead to the waterfall. Jenny pooped out after about an hour and we turned around so Jenny could limp back to the bus stop. It turned out that the staircase of doom actually led to the top of Penang Hill, which we had wanted to visit via funicular railway and instead went halfway up by foot trying to find a waterfall. To make ourselves feel better after that failed waterfall expedition, we got mangoes(which a monkey stole) and ice cream next to the bus stop. Durian ice cream. It was the worst thing I've ever tasted in my life. Could not finish it. The real shame is, it was sharing the cone with some decent purple yam ice cream but that had become tainted by the evil that was durian. I would later get to have the fruit fresh which, while not delicious, was at least inoffensive. But godamn that ice cream was vile.

The bus continued to be an issue since it never actually came to go home, but as another testament to the kindness of strangers in southeast Asia the parking lot attendant was just getting off of his shift and said he could drop us off on his way home. It turned out we were totally out of his way, but he was happy to do it and make conversation on the way. What a totally decent dude.

War Museum

Our last hurrah in Penang was probably the most expensive attraction we visited our entire trip. It was the Penang War Museum at Batu Maung, all the way on the southeast corner of the island. They really have a great thing going there. It's an old British colonial fort atop Batu Maung hill which had been deserted for decades. The story was that the locals considered it haunted and it was pretty much a no-man's-land except for a population of homeless drug addicts. A few years ago someone bought it and he and his wife cleared out all the jungle and set up a paintball field and voila, they had a museum. They really didn't have to do much to make it interesting, it was great just to explore all around the bunkers and tunnels. That alone would have been worth the price of admission. I got to crawl through escape hatches and find bats in all the corners, and there was all kinds of stuff to climb on and views of the water from the watch tower. How can static, boring displays compete with that? We came back filthy and tired, but it was just a great time seeing all that stuff just like it was nearly a century ago.

Jenny in the Soldiers Quarters

View up from the bottom of the ammo chute


A view down to the ammo depot which unfortunately was closed off... Jenny wouldn't let me explore :(

A diagram of the booby traps used around the fort, next to a sign telling you not to cross the rope because of the booby traps. Won't see that at home

Ammo holes

This is actually in the paintball area. A shame to exploit history for something as goofy as paintball but hot damn that would be fun

A painting by POWs kept here by the Japanese when they took over

That's what I hear

That little doorway on the left was about hip-high and contained bats. It went all around the building underground and was scary as shit between the bats and darkness

Next up, a stop in Thailand and then a trip home.