Schlagwort: Asia

As you may know from my last blogpost, Langkawi was great. However, it would not stop raining and I decided to continue my journey and take the Ferry to Penang.
Penang is an island in the south of Langkawi and its capital, Georgetown is connected to the mainland through a bridge.

On my third day, I went to the local taxi stand at Langkawi. I met three girls from Japan and we shared a taxi. I would really advice you to take an Uber in South East Asia, since it is way cheaper!
Anyway, the Japanese girls and I took a taxi that brought us to the ferry. I sat in the last row of the little bus and had to find out that there were several holes in the roof and the rain poured down the seats. Many streets were flooded and it was hard to get through the humongous puddles. After we finally arrived at the harbor I checked in immediately and went to my seat in the ferry. The ferry was old and had two decks, there was not enough place for all the luggage, so we placed it in front of us. The monsoon was not over when the ferry started, the waves were very high and many people got sea sick. A guy who was obviously part of the staff went around and gave plastic bags to the people who got sick. I just tried to sleep but I felt like a was on a carousel.
After almost four hours of horror I finally arrived at Penang and took a taxi to my hostel.

I stayed at the Ryokan Muntri Beauty Hostel in Georgetown, which was apparently really nice, although the walls were paper thin and the WiFi was not that good. The next morning I got to know my roommate, he is from Scotland and we did our laundry a couple of minutes from our hostel. I was really happy that I met him, since I felt a little bit lost in the hostel. While we were waiting for our laundry to be dry, we went to the “Purrfect Cat Café“ which is a place where you can have a coffee or smoothie and chill out with cute kittens and cats. You have to pay 13RM if you want to go upstairs where the cats are.

We decided to go for it and we had to read a rule book, wash our hands and take off our shoes first. The rule book contained rules like don’t disturb sleeping cats, don’t feed them and treat them with respect etc. Although the plan was a little bit too small, the cats were treated well, as far as I could see. They probably got some of the cats from the streets, since there are many sick cats on the streets in Malaysia who lost their tail or cats who are starving.
At first, I thought it was a joke but I was really surprised when there were actual cats in the café.

When we had our laundry done, we went down the street and I discovered the first temple, a Chinese temple apparently. You have to take your shoes off before visiting a temple by the way.

We also just wandered around the streets and had a look at all the different houses and buildings.

If you are interested in architecture and art, you will love Georgetown! We discovered so many beautiful buildings when we were exploring Georgetown by foot, I really wish I had taken some photos with my reflex camera.

In the following picture, you can see the St. Georges Church, Georgetown is named after King George III.

The next temple we saw was a Hindu temple. Unfortunately we were not able to go inside, since the people were queuing up inside the building and we assumed that it would take us a while to get in.

Next stop was a huge mosque, they even had a canon in the garden.

I can also highly recommend going to “Chew Jetty“ which is like China Town. There is a small wooden path with lots of little shops and food places at the sides. At the end of the path you will find yourself on a terrace, looking at the beautiful sea.
Unfortunately it was a little cloudy, even though, the view was amazing.

After we had explored Georgetown a little bit, we were looking for a restaurant to have dinner.
On our way, we stumbled across a little fire show, maybe a lost backpacker who is saving money for his flight to go back home.

Make sure to walk down the streets of Georgetown by night, when all the lanterns are turned on and people are selling bracelets, necklaces and other stuff on the streets.

Georgetown is also very famous for its street art. You will find many beautiful wall paintings at the walls of random buildings in the city. This one was my favorite:

If you have the chance to visit Georgetown, definitely go for a walk an explore the city!

Have a good week,
Sophie