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 :-)