Well whadya know! Little India, Chinatown & a Colonial district. Whadda the odds? Hee-hee. Georgetown is one of the most historic cities in Malaysia apparently and the whole of Penang is often refered to as Georgetown in much the same way as the bulk of Georgetown can be refered to as Chinatown. It's very Chinese.
We stayed in a nice little guesthouse that was owned by a sweet Chinese lady and had a cafe on the ground floor. The place was all old Chinese dark wood furniture and even older even darker wood floors but our room was still a little on the 'cell-like' side. The fan above our bed pretty much filled the room and spun at an alarming speed above us at night. I kept thinking it'd descend like in a cheap horror film and we'd have to dash for the door.
Anyway, we finally found ourselves a great little hawker's market and had great food - shame it was our last night in Malaysia really. It was no wonder they proved difficult to find, the stalls are a kind of bike-come-oven-stroke-kitchen affair and they just cycle up, light the wok and get woking. We also found an excellent samosa & bhaji dude who whipped us up some nibbles at lunchtime. I tried to find him again but trying to re-find a food stall in Malaysia is like... well, trying to re-find a food stall in Malaysia.
One of the big problems with travelling is that as soon as you get to a place you have to start considering how and when you'll be moving on and in no time at all we found ourselves booking our mini-van journey out of Georgetown to head off to our third country - Thailand. It was gonna be a five in the morning affair and the walk to the pick-up wasn't exactly pleasant. The charming little streets by day had become horrible by night. Lady-boys everywhere and kids on scooters eyeing you up and down and making several passes don't exactly make you feel safe as houses. It didn't help that we'd met a fellow traveller who'd had all her stuff snatched off her back that very day by 'kid-on-scooter'. When we got to the pick-up Lisa looked relieved and Dan let go of the pointy rock he'd been clutching for the last ten minutes.
The van journey was fine, if a little cramped, mostly 'cos of the company of Dan & Lisa and this really nice American guy called Xander and his new Swedish misses. The probelm with these van journeys is that they also serve as a kind of 'pick-up & drop-off' service for the drivers. I reckon they do twice as many miles as necessary just delivering stuff to their mates or families.
Anyhow, we breezed through Malaysian border control, (another stamp - yey!), and eventually got to the Thai border. The Thai border is a little more thorough than we'd been used to so far. They actually looked at your passport here. Though I was pretty sure I'd be deported immediately as the elderly Thai military guy patroling our booth looked so much like the villain in 'Team America' that I couldn't help but sine under my breath, "So ronery. I'm so ronery..."
So here we were. Thailand.
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