Street art and monkey trouble in Penang
We were in Georgetown the capital of Penang for 4 nights staying at a hotel on Chulia Street. Georgetown’s architecture is a mixture of colonial buildings, ornate chinese clan houses, temples, mosques and shops and bars painted rainbow colours. The oldest part of the city is listed as a UNESCO world heritage site and one of the most interesting attractions is the wonderful street art (pictured is The Indian Boatman by Russian Artist Julia Volchkava).
We visited Kek Lok Si Temple complex which is one of the biggest in SE Asia, although there is no entry fee, it is very commercialised with loads of shops selling the normal souvenir tat which spoils the atmosphere.
Also free is the CAT bus service meant for tourists (although locals use it) that you can hop on off around the city. We did the circular trip to get our bearings. We also used the local buses to travel to other sites. The fares are very cheap less than 50p to go anywhere the buses clean and not crowded. We did have a problem when we visited the Botanical gardens bit of a long story but we wasted around 2 hours waiting for a bus. Also at the Botanical gardens there were some aggressive monkeys we had quite a scare when one large male lept onto a fence and bared his teeth at Mr C. There was a stand off for a moment but we managed to pass unscathed!
We are off to Langkawi next for a week on the beach.
We visited Kek Lok Si Temple complex which is one of the biggest in SE Asia, although there is no entry fee, it is very commercialised with loads of shops selling the normal souvenir tat which spoils the atmosphere.
Also free is the CAT bus service meant for tourists (although locals use it) that you can hop on off around the city. We did the circular trip to get our bearings. We also used the local buses to travel to other sites. The fares are very cheap less than 50p to go anywhere the buses clean and not crowded. We did have a problem when we visited the Botanical gardens bit of a long story but we wasted around 2 hours waiting for a bus. Also at the Botanical gardens there were some aggressive monkeys we had quite a scare when one large male lept onto a fence and bared his teeth at Mr C. There was a stand off for a moment but we managed to pass unscathed!
We are off to Langkawi next for a week on the beach.
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