Penang Arrival

[Saturday July 21st, Posted Sunday July 22nd, 8:15am local time]
Add one more stamp to the passport! Yesterday I arrived in Penang! Tom Ray and KS were waiting at the airport to pick me up. It took a while for the baggage to arrive but not only did my bags show up, they were some of the first off the plane, what luck! Getting through customs was a breeze, just one quick luggage screener and thats all really.

We jumped into KS's car, small by US standards but really quite big here. There are tons of scooter bikes roaming the roads. To say that they don't stay in their own lane is an understatement. These guys skirt through traffic, weave lanes, and travel between cars waiting at lights. They are commonly less than a foot away from moving traffic as they veer for into position! Its amazing more accidents don't happen. We went straight to my apartment building,
Century Bay. I'll post more about the apartment later. You'll see various pictures here of different temples we happened to pass throughout the day.

After unloading my luggage we decided to do some exploring. We went to a local mall to get some food and some necessities. The mall was very much like an American mall, very large though. 4 floors I think. They have a central rotunda where it is apparently common for companies to go there, get on stage and demo/announce their stuff. Kind of like at a fair. They have many restaurants there, some American ones like Pizza Hut, TGIF, and Mc Donalds (which delivers here!). They also have an indoor, mall version of a Hawker Center (more on that later). We ate at a coffee shop of all places and I had a chicken rice noodle soup. It was actually quite good! After a while we picked up some stuff like shampoo, soap, milk, etc.

We began a tour of the island, one of our big stops was at a botanical garden. When we got there we stopped for some coconut drink. I had never drank straight from a coconut before! It was quite refreshing! They had coconuts chilled and they just made 4 whacks on top and voila, a drink in its own cup!
After our drinks we walked through the gardens. The landscape is much different than back home. They have rolling hills with tons of different plans and trees. The species are very different. While walking the biggest thing you'd notice is the monkeys!

They are absolutely crazy. I've never seen monkeys in the wild before this. They're like big smart squirrels running around the gardens. You can get really close to them but watch out, many get very aggressive and you can get bite. There were alot of people taunting the poor guys, such a shame. The Mother's were caring their babies, you got so seen a lot of young ones scampering about. Many seemed to like this 'cannon ball tree'.

We made a quick stop at the toilets in the the gardens. Turns out it was 20 cents to use the facilities. I didn't need to use it but I did see one of the fabled long drops, thankfully I haven't had to figure out how to use it yet!

At the end of the night we went to a true Hawker Center. Basically its a bunch of little booths, each selling a specific food. First you have to find a table and a drink person will stop by and ask you what you'd like. They'll bring it out to you. Then you venture to a booth and order some food. You go sit down in the crowd and they come find you and then you pay right there at the table. At first one can feel uncomfortable eating at a place like this, it doesn't seem clean in comparison to out establishments back home. In the end you realize that it quite fine and akin to a 'greasy spoon' restaurant.

What an exhausting day! I feel asleep right away when I eventually went to bed at about 11pm. I had a chance to get the internet and Skype working so I could call home. This morning I got woken up about 6am by the Mosque's call to prayer. Apparently thats a daily occurance about 5 times a day. So far I haven;t found my way back to bed. Tom and I are planning on venturing out day and seeing some more, ought to be fun!
Take Care,
-Terry