Category Archives: Flashpacking

Teluk Bahang to Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Malaysia, Travel, , , ,

7/25 – Time to get back to the city. We watched Bus 101 rumble through town every 15 minutes the whole time we were in Teluk Bahang, but as we stood at the bus stop in the sweltering heat with packs on our backs, no Bus 101 was forthcoming.  After 45 minutes, we wondered what could possibly explain the lack of buses, when four Bus 101s came rolling down the street, one after the other!  An hour later, we were back in the city, to stay for a day in Georgetown, before making our way south to the capital.  Our trendy hotel: 

  
With an additional fruit that is not allowed:  

We asked what is wrong with mangosteen – is it another smelly fruit?  We were told that the red juice of mangosteen skin permanently stains whatever it comes in contact with, and that is why it is not permitted.  

Our hotel is in the Chinese part of the city.  

  

There is a Sam’s here! 

 
A Chinese temple:

  
  

    
   
Traveling by tricycle rickshaw: 

 We asked our hotel clerk, who is of Chinese descent, how to get to Little India.  “Walk down the street” he said.  “When you see Indian people, hear Indian music and smell Indian food, you are in Little India.”  Easy enough! 

 

Ganesha, son of the goddess Parvati.   Lord Shiva cut off the boy’s head, which angered Parvati, so he replaced it with an elephant’s head.   

Hanuman is the monkey god.

    
 
Our yummy lunch – spicy chicken, vegetables, rice and ginger tea – we love Indian food!  The Malay and Indians eat with their right hands only – no utensils – but we were offered spoons and forks.

 

 The Kapitan Kling Mosque, the oldest in Penang, dating from the seventeenth century:  
 

Reminders of when Malay was a British colony.   St. George The Martyr Church, the oldest Anglican Church in Southeast Asia:

 

The Light Street Convent:   

Fort Cornwallis:

The 60 foot tall Jubilee Clock Tower, built in 1897 to commemorate 60 years of Queen Victoria’s reign.  The tower tilts slightly, but withstood being bombed during WWII:   

A lovely town, with new delights around every corner!

Penang National Park, Malaysia 

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Hiking, Malaysia, Travel, , , ,

7/20 – So, here we are at the northern end of Penang Island to do a week’s trekking in Penang National Park.   

 

Mind you manners here please – no lewd kissing! 

 Admission to the park is free, and there are several trail routes to choose – to the University Research Center, Monkey Beach, the Lighthouse, Turtle Beach and the Canopy Walk.  Unfortunately, the Canopy Walk is closed for renovation.  Our first destination is the University Research Center.

 

This trek hugged the coastline, with different views of the water (Straits of Malacca), always on our right.

   
 

Parts of the trail were relatively flat and easy to navigate, while other parts involved some climbing and scrabbling over rocks, big roots and downed trees. 

    
 
The weather was HOT, and we sweated buckets even walking in the shade of the jungle. Very pretty tree trunks here.

    
Here are the same “temple-eating” trees (Ficus strangulosa) that we encountered at Angkor Wat in Thailand.  Looks like they also eat bridges!

 

There are several buildings and a pier at the Research Center.  It was a nice place to stop and eat our lunch before retracing our path back home.

    
 
7/21 – The next day we hiked farther along the seaside trail to see Monkey Beach.  As promised, there were monkeys here, long-tailed macaques of the agressive variety. 

    
  

We were sitting on a bench and talking to some Malaysian students and a couple from Switzerland, when a monkey jumped down and grabbed Jim’s backpack!  Luckily, his reflexes were quick, and he was able to snatch it back.  The monkey stayed on the ledge, looking a little disgruntled.

   

The beach was pretty, and we met another group of Malaysian students who had all just graduated from university.  They are all engineers!

   

7/23 – Today we hiked up the mountain toward Turtle Beach.  The terrain was steep, and it was dark under the canopy, but still very hot.  

     
There was a waterfall, and a dirt path used by water buffalo to haul logs out of the jungle.  

   
 
 
These roots look a little snake-like, don’t you think?  I examined them carefully before stepping on them!  

We hiked up to the Canopy Walk, which looked like it was intact, but was roped off so it could not be used. 

 
We’ll have to come back another year to walk the Canopy!

Teluk Bahang and Batu Feringghi, Malaysia

Flashpacking, Malaysia, Travel, ,

7/19 – Teluk Bahang turns out to be such a small town that it doesn’t have an ATM!  As our hotel only takes cash (Malaysian ringgits, approximately 4 to the dollar), our first order of business was to get back on the 101 bus and go back to the bigger town of Batu Feringghi for some money.   There is a Hard Rock Cafe there!

 
Lots of touristy stuff, right on the beach.  

   
The mixture of cultures is evident here, with Danish / Pakistani restaurants, and Arabic / Lebonese restaurants in addition to the Chinese, Malay and Indian varieties.

   
Most important, there was a 7Eleven with an ATM!  We had some yummy Malay lunch (don’t ask me what it was called, we just pointed at things that looked good), then, flush with ringgits, got on the bus to return to our town.

Teluk Bahan is a one-street town.  Motorbikes are the prevalent mode of transport.  I continue to cringe, as I have throughout Asia, at families all sharing one motorbike, especially those who ride without helmets.  I’ve even seen a mother driving one-handed with an infant cradled in the other arm and a toddler between her knees! 

    
It also unnerves me when the driver wears a helmet, but the passengers don’t! 

  

We found a great little restaurant for our breakfast of roti canai – very thin dough fried then folded over with a scrambled egg and cheese in the middle, served with curry sauce.  Coffee is very good here too – they ask if you would like milk, but assume that you want sugar – way sweeter than is good for me! 

   
We walked by a drainage ditch and got a shock – a huge lizard swimming slowly toward us through the shallow water!  These are water monitors, very common here.  Sort of alligator-like, with a long, flicking, serpent tongue. This one is about eight feet long, maybe more with that long tail.  Wikipedia says they are carnivorous – hope they can’t get out of the ditch!  We saw this one in the evening:

    
 

Here’s another one we saw in the morning:

    
 
Tomorrow, the park!  

Bangkok, Thailand to Penang, Malaysia

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Malaysia, Thailand, Travel, , , ,

7/18 – We took the sky train and the underground metro across town to get us to Bangkok’s main train station at Hua Lumphong in time to board our mid-afternoon train.

 

The reminder posted in the station’s restroom, which tickles me every time I see it!  We’ve encountered similar reminders throughout Asia.

 Jim had booked our tickets a week in advance to assure we would get an air conditioned car and lower berths on the 22 hour sleeper ride. 

   

We will miss Thailand!

On board, we met an American expat named Tom, who’s lived here for eight years.  He said he moved to Thailand because Miami was too cold!  

After a tasty dinner in the dining car and a peaceful night’s sleep on the rocking train, we arrived at the Malaysian border by mid-morning, and we all got off for our exit and entry stamps.  We don’t need a visa for Malaysia, and can stay for up to 90 days.

The train ride ended on the mainland in Butterworth, where we caught a ferry across the Straits of Malacca to the island of Penang. 

   

Georgetown is the big city here, full of shiny buildings and big shopping malls.  We are not staying in Georgetown, however, so as soon as we got off the ferry we boarded the 101 bus, which we rode for an hour and a half to the little town of Teluk Bahang, home of Penang National Park.  

  

We are staying at the Amal Inn for the next week, very convenient for exploring the jungles of Malaysia’s top nature park.   

 
Malaysia has Chinese, Indian and Malay cultures living in harmony, with three different styles of food and religion.  Today we heard the Muslim call to prayer for the first time since we left Turkey.  The town is small, but the park is huge!  The western alphabet is used here, and many of the signs are repeated in English, so we should be able to navigate easily here.  We’ve been told that Malay food is great!  Tomorrow we will explore. 

    
 

Bangkok, Thailand – Wat Pho and the Temple of the Dawn

Flashpacking, Thailand, Travel, , ,

7/17 – Today we took a ferry across the canal to visit the Reclining Buddha at Wat Pho, a tourist destination that just can’t be missed.  As with other wats, I found myself more attracted to the guardians outside the temples than to the Buddhas within. 

    
    
    
   

We waited on a long line for the opportunity to see the Reclining Buddha, a statue made of brick and plaster, covered in gold leaf, with foot soles inlaid with mother-of-pearl.  He sure is big! 

His feet:

  The back of his head:
His serene face:  
 
The long view:  

The wat also contained a school: 

   
And a sacred bodhi tree, started from the one Buddha sat under to attain enlightenment: 

 
Heads of state who have visited Wat Pho are showcased in a gallery.  Barack and Hillary were here! 

 

We rode the ferry back over the canal to the Temple of the Dawn. 

   
Here we saw some lovely gardens:

    
   
And some lovely temples. 

   
At lunch, we met Olivia, a pre-med student from North Carolina, and her Canadian friend, who are studying in Singapore for a semester.  So nice to spend time with someone who lives so close to home.  A beautiful day!

  

Back in Bangkok, Thailand 

Flashpacking, Thailand, Travel, ,

7/15 – After a month at the beach, we are back in busy Bangkok.  While we are here, we need to purchase some things we couldn’t get on Koh Chang – Jim’s medicine, dental floss, rechargeable batteries for my camera and a new battery for my watch.  We found a pharmacy right down the street, then asked our hotel lady where batteries could be purchased.  Her answer, of course – the mall!  A taxi ride got us over to the modern part of town.  We walked among familiar shops, including a Dunkin Donuts and a KFC.   Did I take pictures?  No – you know what a mall looks like!

The lower level had a fresh food court, and there we saw a lady selling durians.  Now, you will remember that durian is either the king of fruits, or the smelliest fruit ever, depending on who you ask.  A notice on our hotel wall reminded me that I promised to try some. 

 

Now, we have been keeping our eyes open for a chance to score some durian, but unlike other fruits, which the street vendors are happy to cut up and sell, we’ve only seen durians for sale whole and unopened.  We don’t want to bring a whole one home and take a chance of stinking up our room.  All I want is a little bite!  So here at the mall, imagine my surprise to see durians opened and sold by the piece!  What’s more, the lady has a plate of durian pieces, and is offering samples.  This is the moment I’ve been waiting for!

 

I bent down and sniffed the durian skin – nothing.  I took a sample and sniffed it in my hand – nothing.  I placed it in my mouth and… yum!  It tastes very faintly like a pineapple, only creamy instead of fiberous.  Sorry to disappoint, but I don’t know what the “stink” is all about.  Maybe it gets smelly if you leave it out?  Let it get overripe?  If anybody knows, please share.  As far as I can tell, durian = nice fruit.

We walked all around the mall, surrounded by “stuff”, but after getting our batteries, couldn’t think of a single thing we wanted to buy, so hopped in a taxi and went back to the non-tourist side of town.

We walked down the street outside our hotel, looking for things to buy for supper.  So much variety! 

    
    
    
 

I’m partial to the Chinese steamed dumplings. 

 
We bought a bunch of stuff and had a smorgasbord feast, until I found a whole chicken foot in my ginger chicken and rice.  Gave Jim the foot – there are some things I just don’t need to try!
7/16 – The other thing we decided to do in Bangkok was to get Jim a new set of hearing aids.  We understand that we will save several thousand dollars here, rather than waiting til we get home.  I located an audiologist who was recommended and spoke English, and made an appointment.  The office is more than a taxi ride away, so we got directions for the Sky Train to take us there.

The Bangkok Sky Train is an elevated railway, fast and modern.  Like other metros we’ve seen in Asia, there are plexiglass walls that prevent the crush of people from pushing folks over the edge onto the tracks.  Like others we have ridden, the process was easy, from purchasing tickets, to changing trains, and getting off at the right stop.  Stops were announced in both Thai and English.  Easy peasy.  Happy to say that people queue up politely here, like in Japan, and don’t push and shove, like in China.

 
Jim got a thorough hearing test, and an extensive tutorial on how to use his new state-of-the-art hearing aids.  A productive morning!  

 

Koh Chang to Bangkok, Thailand

Backpacking, Flashpacking, Hiking, Thailand, Travel, ,

7/13 – As we wind down our last days on Koh Chang, here are some more pics of our adventures:

On one of our walks, we stumbled on a posh resort with a helipad and other things for the very rich.  We opted not to pay the entrance fee to tour the resort (see rich tourists in their natural habitat!), but did take some pics of the elephant statues just inside the gate.  

 
We stopped to have lunch at a roadside stand on the road to the resort- barbecued chicken wings, sticky rice and spicy shredded papaya salad.  The road doesn’t get any traffic except from the workers on their way to and from the resort. The proprietor had no English, but we let her know the food was delicious! 

 

This is called “hairy fruit”, or rambutan.  You slice open the hairy skin and discard it to find the sweet, grape-like fruit inside.  The fruit is just a thin layer over a very large pit, so bite down carefully!

   

7/14 – We woke early to get on the minibus to go back to Bangkok.  One ferry ride and nine hours later, we walked, exhausted, into our hotel.  Bangkok is one huge traffic jam, and the ride that was supposed to take four hours took more than double.  Our driver asked us to direct him to the hotel (!), then could not follow the directions on our GPS.  After the third try, we got out and walked.  Only a few days here, then we catch the train for the 24 hour ride to Malaysia.  Back on the road again!

Koh Chang, Thailand – When Monkeys Attack!

Flashpacking, Hiking, Thailand, Travel, , ,

7/6 – So, here we are for a lazy month on a tropical island.  The days blend together, with walks in the mornings, swimming in the afternoons, and sea gazing in the evenings.  We read for hours every day, thanks to Overdrive and Kindle.  We are taking advantage of the great wifi to catch up on Netflix – we’re halfway through the third season of House of Cards.  We talk to tourists as they come and go – most are from Germany and Scandinavia.  We eat at little open-air restaurants – our resort has the best one, the Bamboo Hut.  Nothing happens here, and that is okay with us.  

 One morning, we hiked over to the Bang Bao fishing village to get some supplies. We bought some groceries, including a bunch of the little, sweet bananas we like so much. As we walked back toward our beach with our plastic grocery bags, we spied some monkeys by the side of the road. Please excuse the fuzzy shot, but how often do you see a monkey on a motorbike?  This monkey will become significant in a minute…

   

I joked to Jim that the monkeys were waiting for him to offer them a banana. All of a sudden, Jim yelled and swung the plastic grocery bag, which now had a big monkey attached, holding on to the bananas with all four feet and screeching! OMG! He was trying to steal our bananas!  I wish I could say I provided some assistance in fighting off the attacker, but truth to tell, I dropped my bag and ran backwards, leaving poor Jim to deal with the monkey.  He was not cute, and looked a lot bigger up close.  Jim kicked at it once as he dropped the bag, then kicked it again before the monkey let go of the bag, and scurried back to the other side of the road to join his mates. I was still yelling OMG! while checking to see if Jim had been scratched or bitten – who knows what diseases monkeys carry?  Jim was okay.  The big monkey hunched on the other side of the road with his buddies, hissing at us. He was mad!  I was afraid he would run at us again, so I raised my arms up over my head (making myself appear larger – I think I read this in an article about what to do if attacked by a bear) and hissed right back at him.  He and his monkey gang stayed on the other side of the road, and we power-walked home, pumped with adrenaline, Jim looking forward, and me looking back.

Sorry to say, there is no photographic evidence of this incident.   After the blurry pic, I totally forgot to preserve any part of this story for posterity, so here is an Internet pic of hissing monkeys: 

 

Here is the sign at our village that someone must not have heeded: 

 

See?  Didn’t I tell you this post would be exciting?

Koh Chang, Thailand – Bang Bao Fishing Village

Flashpacking, Thailand, Travel,

7/2 – Every few days, we put on our shoes and walk the three kilometers to the nearest little town, Bang Bao, just for something to do.

 

Here there is a single street with several ATMs, a 7Eleven, and a pier crammed with tourist shops and restaurants.   

    

There are signs here in Russian, a testament to the Russian tourists who used to visit here. Since the decline of the ruble, the Russians aren’t traveling here anymore, and local businesses lament this loss. 

 
There’s a Rastafarian influence here, with several shops and restaurants.  

    
There’s a Turkish restaurant here – go figure! 

 

There is a wat here, but nobody was home except this guy: 

 
The pier is lined with big boats to take tourists fishing, snorkeling or scuba diving. 

    
 

The pier ends in a lighthouse, beautiful against the clouds.

   
From the end of the pier, we can look across the gulf, back to our bungalow.   Can you see it?


The water is turquoise and so clear! 

 

 I promise, there will be some action in my next post – stay tuned!

 

Koh Chang, Thailand

Flashpacking, Thailand, Travel,

6/26 – We’re settled in at our waterfront bungalow on the southern island of Koh Chang.  We swim in the Gulf of Thailand (our beach is called Tranquility Bay), we read, we gaze out at the boats and the changing tides.  The crew rakes the beach every morning to keep it pristine, and tends to the tropical flowers throughout the day. 

    
    
  

 Our home-sweet-home.  The geckos scurry up and down the walls at night, chirping and keeping us bug- free.

 

The trees provide plenty of shade, right up to the water’s edge:   

There are three dogs that live here and keep the guests company. 

      

In the morning, the tide recedes, and exposes the barnacle encrusted dark rocks below.   Jim cut his foot on his first swim, before we realized the rocks were there.  Now we swim very carefully in the clear channel that is rock-free.

   

We are technically in the “wet” season, but we haven’t seen much rain.  Sometimes the clouds turn gray and we get a cloudburst, then the sun returns.  The temperature is in the 80s every day – the blistering heat is no more. 

 Our consciousness has slowed down, and we are relishing this opportunity to just be. 

  
I’ll check back when we have some news!