Day 45-49: George Town, Penang

Pallavi had told me a lot about George Town, having visited it before. She said, "the food is really good, and it has its own charm about it." It really does, but in a very different way from its Melacca counterpart. We stayed in the Chinatown area, which, for once, actually feels like Chinatown. Every lane is narrow, surrounded by "heritage pre-war shop-houses" and heritage hotels. There are shrines & temples tucked around corners and in lane ways. They even have their own colonial district and a proper Little India. We stayed in our first heritage hotel and decided, although it was nice, to see if we could find something a bit more in our backpacker budget.

We ended up finding a heritage hotel that met our criteria just a block down the road, run by 3 siblings, that just opened a few days ago. It's so fantastic to be a part of a new opening. You can feel their excitement as they stay up all hours of the night, hammering, moving, cleaning to prepare for their opening party on the Sunday when we are here. They also go out of their way to make us coffee, make sure we are comfortable, and even carry trays of our food upstairs for us. One day we came back from dinner, wanting to try some Nonya sweets (like in Malacca, a population of Chinese who emigrated to Malaysia in the 14th century). We asked one of the siblings, Jack, where we could go to get some sweets. We were saddened by the fact the place to purchase the Nonya sweets was too far to walk in the rain. Jack offered to go and get some sweets for us, which we politely declined. Low and behold, when we saw Jack again, he came baring a whole plate of Nonya sweets he had picked up for us! We just have to wait until we can write them up on Trip Advisor. 

In between meals, we have spent our days just exploring the city. In 2012, some Lithuanian artist decided to start some cultural street art program here. The street art mixes dimensions, coming 2D animation with 3D real artifacts. For example, he'll have a swing set against a wall, and then paint two children on it. Then there is metal artwork around different places, each with a cartoon and a historical description about the area. Between the mixed art & the metal art, there are roughly 40 pieces of art to try to spot around the city. It's such a brilliant way to get people walking around the streets and interacting with the city. Everybody poses with the art. I'll work on getting pics up someday so people can see it. 

Unfortunately, Pallavi's been a bit under the weather, so we haven't really explored the whole city. However, that's alright. This city is the kind that you can just take it easy in and explore as you want. Plus, we've been pushing pretty hard over the past week or so, so it's fine to just stay in and catch up on all of the free iTunes shows we can find and download (Last Alaskans is pretty good, btw). 

We also got an unexpected treat on Sunday when our guest house had its official launch party. The theme of the night was 'nonya.' Our hosts made a whole buffet of traditional nonya foods (I obviously tried to sample as many of them as I could). They also had nonya performers! Some local celebrity named Annie Lin, who is this 80 something year old 'pure blood nonya,' who has been in movies and on tv, etc was the guest of honor. Then, a whole troop of women dressed in nonya finest came in to dance! We learned from one of them that this is a group of older women who get together to practice, perform, and share nonya traditional dance. The younger folk aren't as interested, as each outfit can cost up to $1000. The outfits are all handmade from head to toe. Each shoe is embroidered with beads. Each sarong is patterned with beautiful designs. Each top has elegant brocade-work. Then, to top it off, diamond brochures and earrings, and a yellow flower behind the left ear. We also learned there is quite the nonya-off competition between Penang nonya and Malacca nonya. Also, nonyans do not appreciate false impersonators. As one whispered to us, "there are a lot of Chinese who wear these dresses, but they are NOT nonya.'

It was a blast. But now it's time to head off to Thailand.

Day 43-44: Last Day in Borneo

We purchased our airline tickets for last night because it was the only day in a span of the next 15 days when the tickets from Kuching to peninsular Malaysia were a reasonable cost (prices are high as everybody is returning home from Gawai Dayak). We both wish we had just a bit more time. We had hoped we'd able to go to Bako National Park so that we could have a more close up experience with the probiscis monkeys; however, when push came to shove, we decided it was just too tight in terms of time to get the bus to the park at the right tide, find 5 people to share a boat with, go for a hike, and then reverse the whole process.

It was a bit sad to say that we should have stayed on a bit longer in Sakau and gone to the Sepillok reserve, which has orangutans, sun bears, and probiscis monkeys near Sandakan instead doing the journey we did. We are just going to have to make a journey to see the probiscis monkeys sometime in the future.

Instead, we killed the afternoon by going to the Sarawak Ethnology Museum. It was set up just as badly as a turn of the century natural history museum normally is. It did have a great exhibit on longhouses though, which showcased local tribes' history of headhunting! Did you know that you have to keep a fire going under the right of heads that you have hanging in order to make sure their spirits don't go for a walk about the house? I don't know why we didn't see more skulls in the Sarawak Cultural Village! I feel slightly cheated now!

It was only after we got back to pick up our luggage that we realized something. A Czech couple who we had run into 1) in the cab in KK when we lost my ukulele, 2) on the bus leaving Brunei, 3) at the accommodation in Kuching hadn't bothered to come back to say hi to us when we had seen them in Kuching. Not that we cared. We had found them a bit cold the first time we had met them; however, the 2nd time, we'd have thought they'd strike up a conversation purely to respect the coincidence (which they hadn't). The 3rd time though without saying hello - come on! Fate must have brought you together for some purpose! Who doesn't say hello to somebody they've basically stalked throughout Borneo? Seems unnaturally cold to me.

We then headed off for a flight to Kuala Lumpur. We unfortunately arrived at 12:45 a.m. Everything, including all buses to any city, including KL, stops running from 1 a.m. until 5 a.m. By the time we got our luggage, we had only about 3.5 hours to skill before we could get on the first of two buses to get to our next destination, the city of Penang. Now, we know that once you leave departures, airports can get a bit uncomfortable to wait in. There aren't as nice of benches. It's harder to find electrical outlets to change things. Plus, once you leave, you can't come back. We chose not to leave until 4:00 a.m.

It was quiet. We had a plug point. We didn't have to keep a hand on our stuff. When we left to get a coffee and get our bus ticket, we saw an entire arrivals waiting area filled with sleeping waiting passengers. Row after row of benches had a person lying on them. Every space that wasn't in the main walking area was filled with people. The airport had become a shelter for these people stuck in the no man's transportation land! Good thing we'd stayed inside!

A few buses later, we made it safe to Penang, found a hotel and crashed.

Not sure how long we'll stay yet, but we are pretty sure we are going to wrap up Malaysia when we finish with Penang.