Out & about

Yesterday it was time to get out of Georgetown and check out some of the local area. First of all I took the bus out to Batu Ferenghi,a beachside town about 16km from Georgetown. I was thinking about staying here so was curious to see if I'd made the right decision and yes, I had. The town was a strip of shops, cafes, massage spas and tailors and the beach was pretty small, very grainy and the water was very murky (possibly due to the large number of jet-skis for hire). To be fair I was there in the middle of the day so a lot of things were shut, and I was also there for a tropical downpour
There's a night market there every night so I'll revisit before making any hard judgements.

After that I continued along the road to Teluk Bahang, a fishing village and national park. This was more like the Malaysia I'd heard about

There's apparently some good hiking in the national park, so that's down for one day of my agenda before I leave.

Traffic

No pictures for this one because I'm on a bus stuck in traffic and writing this on my iPod. Some of the busses here have wi-fi, some don't, and even if this one did I couldn't post pics due to stupid Apple lack of connectivity.

The bus system in Penang looks pretty organised at first glance. But when you come to use it reality strikes. The bus on the main tourist route is timetabled as 'every 7 minutes' - all well & good. But all bar that one route are timetabled as 'every 30 mins' or 'every 45 mins' and there's no indication of when that starts. So you sit & wait, knowing that as soon as you nip off to get a bite to eat one will arrive. That's if it's not full (in which case you get a cheery toot and wave as it sails past) or switching drivers (which generally leads to a pantomime of confusion, the end result usually being that you wait on one stationary bus as another one passes. At least they have aircon.)

Once you're on the bus the real fun starts. The traffic is bad here. Excruciatingly, teeth-curlingly, hair-grindingly bad. There's about a third more cars on the road than it can handle. I have no idea where all these people came from or where they are hoping to go, but I hope they're not in a hurry. Because everything is crawling at walking pace, people will pull out from sidestreets and create new lanes where there should be none simply through force of will. Merging looks to be simply a game of chicken. If one lane speeds up everyone in the other lane frantically switches over, creating space in their lane which in turn speeds up and leads to everyone desperately jumping back. And all the time a steady stream of mopeds hurtle past on both sides, weaving between all lanes and often on the pavement too. Alley cat racers on fixies looking to prove their manhood should sell their 'whips' and venture out here on a 20 year old 125cc step-through to prove their worth. Bonus points if you can do it with 2 kids on the saddle or a large propane cylinder strapped to the back.

You start off flinching at the near misses. Then you start to get agitated at the stop-go traffic, but you breath deeply and understand that it's just the way here and you have to go with the flows. Eventually you want to stand up and shout 'enough! Let me out! I'll walk from here!' You don't know where you are or where you're going, but it still has to be quicker. You want to punch the driver in the face, jump off the bus and throw rocks at the traffic. You want to clothesline passing moped riders. But you know that if you do that self-same driver will be coming back the other way, and although you've got lost and have been waiting for 90 minutes in 34 degrees of heat and almost 100% humidity, he will barely slow his empty air-conditioned bus as he cheerfully toots & waves.

Two addendums -
This was written on an IPod in the between two of the 'every seven minute' busses. And those of you that have seen me type on even a normal keyboard will know how slow I am, never mind one of these wee tippie-tappie things cursed with apple UI & predictive text.

Also - I decided to get a one week bus pass, which covers all busses on the island for 7days for around $10. I had to show my passport to get this, and the clerk painstakingly wrote my details and the cards expiry date on the card in marker pen. Which 2 days later has rubbed off. Couldn't think of a better metaphor.

Royal Wedding

Those if you that know me will be surprised to hear that I'm sitting in a pub watching the Royal Wedding. This is partly because I'm curious to see how the pomp & circumstance of the british monarchy is seen overseas, but more because they have free wi-fi and a 2 for 1 deal on Strongbow in celebration of the occasion. Yeah I know - Strongbow. But this is the pub with supposedly the largest range of draft beers in Malaysia and that totals 7 (Tiger, Heinekin, Guiness, Kilkenny, Strongbow, Carlsberg & Carlsberg Export). So when in Rome.....

Watching the wedding has been interesting - good to see 'the old country' in so much detail. But what strikes me is how the newsreaders, the journalists and even the people on the street are happy to call themselves 'commoners'. One of the things I love about Australia is how class is generally not an issue and you're judged on the person you are, not the people who beget you. Watching my 'pommie' brethren deliberately abase themselves to a lineage blessed only by luck and aggression still makes me angry. Viva la republic!

Anyway, on the way in I passed an amusing traffic jam, where a bunch of flash cars were travelling (presumably) a wedding party. They had a police escort and there were lots of flashing lights, blowing of whistles, sounding of horns and suchlike. But they were still stuck.
and even parking presented difficulties
I think it's human nature to hope that someone gets it badly wrong. Either that or I'm a very bad person.

So - Georgetown, Penang. What a crazy place.
A mix of colonial & chinese architecture, a melting pot of cultures, a place that is intensely visceral in its sights, its sounds and its smells. And of course its tastes. It rained today, intensely, and certain parts flooded in shades of Brisbane.
But hopefully the weather will pick up over the next few days because I'm looking forward to wandering around a lot more.

Today I looked around Fort Cornwallis, designed to fend off attacks from sea in around 1800 and extended over time but never used in anger
The etching on the cannon says it was cast in 1798. I like the arrow on the cannon, maybe added in for particularly dumb bombardiers. 'Point it this way.'
I also visited the forts gaol, a picture that was hard to self-take because I had at least two offers to take it for me. Which is lovely and very typical of what it's like over here, but I enjoy the challenge of the self-shot. And that is very hard to explain in Malay or Japanese.

The only thing that puzzles me is why they put the guns in the fort in the first place. My hotel room has a much better field of fire
The national anthem has just played as part of the wedding, and I had a bizarre urge to stand. My Grandma, who sadly passed away 10 years ago, used to insist on watching the queens speech on Christmas day and it's nice to think about how excited she'd be about this event and how strange and yet natural that it is that I'm watching it here.

KL catch up

I've been practicing a form of 'extreme tourism' over the last few days - not jumping out of planes or white water rafting, but seeing everything I can squeeze in in the time that I'm there. This has meant I've not had much time to sit around updating blogs, so here's a snapshot view of Malaysia to make up for my neglect.......
KL tower from underneath


and the views from 250m up

Some of the best chicken wings I've ever eaten in the Golden Triangle
Grafa fixed gear bike shop & cafe - doesn't everyone check out bike shops when they're away? It's a pain to get to on public transport, but the owner is a good bloke.
View from the bottom of the 250odd steps up to the stunning Batu caves. Tourism & fitness combined, I ended up racing a Malaysian lad up. And we both regretted it at the top.
The caves were amazing though. Light streaming through the holes in the roof highlight temples built into the cave walls, and the monks use mirrors to scare the monkeys that live high on the walls.
It's like the gods have descended from the skies
although the locals aren't so impressed
and however the spirits move you you can't get too carried away on the train home.
Merdeka square, home of Malaysian independence
and also the home of the famous 'hash house harriers', who combine running & beer. Note to self - must look up the local branch in Brisbane.

After all that walking around I needed to relax, so tried a fish spa
At first you use the tank of small fish, and when you've got used to that you move up to the bigger fish
All a bit weird and a little bit tickly, but also very relaxing.

I left KL this morning and after a 6 hr train journey and a swift ferry ride I'm in Georgetown on the island of Penang now. Very different to KL - much less modern in some ways, and the local vendors have much less interest in tourists walking past. It's famed for its food but I'm going to need to step out of my comfort zone to make the most of it.....

Everyones got something to hide except....

Where's Mikey?
This is me at 9.00am yesterday, having flown a red-eye with about 3 hrs sleep and then wandering around for a few hours wearing a merino wool shirt in 30 degrees and 95% humidity
and again 36 hrs later, a bit less tired.

It's been a busy 2 days, including admiring the Malaysian approach to safe electrics in the rain

and the never-ending excitement of the monorail
Still, it's good to go to new places and make new friends - click on the image to see the whole picture....
More soon!

Time for a quick brew?

I was home alone for a few nights last week, so thought I would make the most of it and get some more beer on. I'm still playing with saison yeast so I tweaked my earlier recipes to give a little more wheat for mouthfeel, plus I used only amarillo hops to try to accentuate the citrus.

I mashed for an hour, boiled for an hour, cooled the wort, pitched the yeast and by 8.30pm I was cleaning up...pretty happy with that.

Snapper Rocks

Liz works for Camp Quality, an organisation that arranges events for kids with cancer, and last weekend she was running a 'surf camp' down at the famous Snapper Rocks in Coolangatta. It was an early start, with us out of the door at 6am and arriving on site at 7.30.

My plan was to get us down there as safely as possible and then find a comfortable tree to doze off underneath. Then go for a ride, maybe go for a swim or a bodyboard or maybe just stay under my tree reading a book. Unfortunately the weather had other ideas and it rained continually and consistently all morning, so I had to content myselt with wandering around in a leaky gore-tex trying to find coffee shops to lurk in.

We weren't the only ones suffering. There was a kids surf lifesavers competition on the beach just around the headland

This is a really big thing in Australia - all the local surf lifesaving clubs have a 'gromit' section for their under 16s and the competition between them is fierce. The competitions are mainly based around running, swimming & surf skis, skis being bouyant surfboard-type boards with a cutout section for kneeling on whilst paddling with the arms. You can see a line stretching out mid-picture here Despite the rain, the water looked very clear and inviting

I'm not the best of swimmers, but figured with that many lifesavers around I was probably pretty safe. However I'm ashamed to say that I didn't venture in all day - in fact after the event was over we looked at the drizzle and headed straight back to Brisbane. At least some of the locals were enjoying the rainMost importantly the surf event was a success - the surf school still ran its lesson, pro-surfer Jeremy Flores turned up to sign autographs and 30 kids had a great morning.