george town (unesco heritage), penang island, malaysia

well, after we had spent 100 €uros per night in butterworth, we have got a 10 to 12 euros stay on the penang island in the stardust hotel in the historic city centre in chinatown, unesco's world cultural heritage site in malaysia ~ quite a differnce, wouldn't you say? and yes, we have felt the spirit of former times in our cheap, but so clean + nice + authentic + friendly + just GREAT backpackers' hostel :-)

folks, there is so much more to do on penang island: visiting the penang hill in the middle of the island (by a rack railway to the top), so many old temples  mosques / churches, the taman negara penang national park (NP) in the north-western part of the island especially if you havent't been in mainland's taman negara NP or haven't walk on canopy walkway as we did in kuala lumpur so we have been only on the beach in front of the NP but unfortunately didn't see any black faced monkey there ...

btw, the link library to all our destinations in malaysia is here: on the road

... coming soon or never: penang & georgetown insights + pictures :-)

butterworth, malaysia ~ the convenient city :o)

well, we didn't get a room in georgetown for tonight because of big muslim holiday/celebration due to the end of the ramadan fasting season .... so we have stayed in butterworth, the gate to the penang island (bridge + ferry) and yes, we haven't complained :-)

first of all, after so many days + nights spent in backpackers' stays on tioman island + kuantan + cameron highlands, we have enjoyed the luxury which a 100 €uros per night hotel 'sunway seberang jaya' provides here in SE asia .... and the city was a real positive surprise ... maybe because we didn't expect anything as there was not a single sightseeing point which our travellers' guide highlighted and we have been surprised by the convenience of this parts of butterworth we have seen:

• port with ferry to georgetown + bus station + train station + bridge to penang are close to each other
• in front of our hotel there was a (modern) temple street with following temples door to door: hindu, chinese buddhist, katholic church, thai temple, small hindu temple again, huge hindu temple under construction ... no mosque seen there but probably there was one in front of the first hindu temple :-)
• mall in mall, so you could walk there and get (almost) everything at one place ... well, this mal in mall concept was misunderstood by my girls, they still walked 3 or 4 levels up and down ... and of course, mcdonalds, burger king, KFC, etc were also located in the food corner of 'our' sunway mall ...
• little india and little china (chinatown) were parallel streets (= two different sides of one row of blocks)
• ...

additional PICTURES and comments :-)

malaysia, on the road

the river meets the ocean (mersing, ferries to the tioman island)

yep, we are going to travel for 5 weeks from place to place by plane, bus, car (taxi), boat, train  ... i'm going to update some insights / experiences later on but one thing could i tell you right now: now i believe that i know why is germany doing quite well comparing to many other countries ... well, such simple things like withdrawal of money from ATM or ferry/bus transport by schedule simply work fine ... not so on the tioman island: the one and only island's ATM had just small 10 ringgit bills (aproximately 2.5 €uros) and you can't withdraw more than 30 bills ... a ferry? our ferry arrived on time, then someone decided there is not enough space for all passengers, so the ferry has waited for approximately 100 minutes for some miracle like the arrival of next ferry which doesn't happen, the engine was all the time on and none of the employed sailors could tell me why but no one of them cared (after a while there was an oil film on the water and i easily recognized where the term 'sardines in oil' comes from), then we have finally moved on and couldn't pick up all passengers from the remaining ports on tioman before crossing the 50+ km to mersing on malaysian mainland ... OMG ... what about mersing? well, the burger station at the ferry terminal was already closed one hour before the shop where it was located closes and mersing's bus terminal was a real shock: the tickets selling lady told us that the first available bus on the only road to the north would be available in 4 days ... and outside was a guy who told me that in 15 minutes comes a bus to the north and he will look if there will be some empty seats ... well, not only all 3 of us could move further but also 7 or 10 additional tourists/natives => WTF?

few major stops / views (picasa PICTURES):

• palm oil plantations or jungle are the most common pictures ... in cities blocks of chinese shops and in the villages still many stilt houses ... well, malaysia is not that crowded like western + central europe (or sri lanka) and there is still a lot of place for nature
• kuala lumpur (KL) ~ capitol
• malacca ~ unesco cultural heritage
• mersing ~ the ferry from/to tioman island + monkey beach
• kuantan ~ a capitol of a province on the eastern part of  the peninsula + 1 huge mosque + 1 river + a bus station with buses in the directions taman negara NP, cameron highlands, penang island (georgetown), perhentian islands, KL, singapore
• ipoh ~ a tin mining city in the east, the former riches still to see / recognize viewing the so nice old buildings out there .... town hall, clock tower, train station 'taj mahal', old streets, ....
• cameron highlands ~ jungle + tea plantations in alpine looking countryside ... + massive nature destruction :-(
• penang island ~ butterworth
• penang island & george town (unesco's heritage)
• KL again
• we have been to thailand (10 days) and dubai (1 day) as well

typical malay stilt houses

many nice mosques out there like this one in kuantan

tin mining destroys the environment badly, doesnt it?

the tin mining was the reason for the former riches of ipoh city ~ 

here its taj mahal like train station (up) and town hall (below)

a picture tells more than 1,000 words => let's move to on the road pictures + my inline comments 😃