la v and jak travel the world

July 15, 2006: Penang, a whirlwind tour

A picture speaks a thousands words, so they say, so I'm not going to write very much since we've got so many photos! What a packed day! The day started off at a water village...

Then, we were off to a fruit stand, where, finally, we had the opportunity to try durian, the fruit that seemed to grow everywhere in Malaysia. It was actually pretty yummy! The smell didn't bother me that much- sort of like a mixture of strong garlic and onions, but the texture is creamy and smooth, sort of like a tangy custard. This one I thought looked like my head. The shape at least. Our next stop brought us to the Penang Butterfly Farm- an incredible, tented area where hundreds and hundreds of butterflies roamed free! Here are just a few of our many many butterfly pictures...

And there were also some incredible tropical flowers as well.

As well as other assorted creepy crawlies that we were allowed to interact with...
Next, we visited a spice village, a small, native village where spices like curry, tamarind, lemongrass, nutmeg, chilies... grew wild! But what captivated me the most wasn't the intoxicating fragrance of the spices, but the beautiful little faces that we saw. We find ourselves at a Chinese snake temple, which apparently was once filled with venomous snakes. Where are they now? Development has encroached upon the area around the temple so most of the snakes have taken off, but some still hang around...We were able to get dropped off in Georgetown, an old British settlement. After a relaxing lunch of fish n' chips and a burger in the cool air conditioned shelter of an English pub, we ventured out again into the heat and headed to Little India. Closed off between two streets, I felt like we stepped onto a sidewalk in Bombay. Beautiful, colorful shops sold trinkets, saris, and crafts. I bought a sari for 25 ringgits! Don't know about the quality, but it's very pretty. Now I just need somewhere to wear it!

Of course, we had to sample some of the local cuisine... this man here is "pulling" our chai for us- he pours it from one cup to another at a great height to mix the spices and to make the milk frothy.

We also tried a Roti Jala, a kind of lacy pancake.

We roamed Little India a little while longer, then made our way over to Chinatown where we came upon some type of a cultural heritage event at this temple. We stayed and watched a shadow puppet show being put on by some local children, then made our way over to a large mall where we'd read that there were some good hawker stands.We never quite made it to the hawker food stands, because we got sidetracked when we saw a sign advertising Japanese ramen! There is just nothing in the world more comforting than a bowl of hot, steamy ramen! By now, it was just about 10pm, and we had 30 ringgits left to get us back to the hotel. Even though there were many taxis outside waiting for customers, it proved rather difficult to find one that would take us back for that amount of money since it was a Saturday night and high traffic time on the main thoroughfare. We finally found a Chinese guy who was taking two other girls back to their university dorm and he agreed to have us split his cab. Turned out this guy had some serious issues which I won't get into, but he's the first person that I've EVER heard say, "Confuscious is stupid." Interesting. But he got us back to our hotel safely and he even seemed glad to have a listening ear.