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Jungle, Jungle and Concrete Jungle. (1995)
Malaysia, Sumatra & Singapore
Si_lad2004-03-26 21:50:36
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Malaysia
March 1995. UK£1 = M$4.5
Penang
Georgetown had a very Chinese feel to it and it’s a pleasant place. It’s the main town on the island of Penang – which is just off the coast of Peninsular Malaysia.
We checked into the first budget hotel we could find – the "Tiong Wah" in Love Lane. It cost us M$16 per night (about UK£3.50) and it was pretty grim – could do with a bit of a refurbish – but it’s OK for a night or two. A couple of things going for it – it’s cheap, very quiet and it has a pub downstairs which even sells Guinness. It does, however, seem to a have a lot of resident rats. We spent an afternoon wandering around the streets of around Georgetown, and with it being a Sunday, it was very quiet. With visited Fort Cornwallis – the old British "stronghold" and a Chinese Temple.
Georgetown is blessed with some of the best street food I ever experienced and we ate well for a couple of days – a mixture of Indian food and Chinese food straight off stalls on the streets.
I bought another load of travellers cheques from the Hong Kong Bank without any problems. Hong Kong bank is a good place for foreign currency deals.
Kulim
A few days later we took a ferry back over to Butterworth and then a taxi to Anik Kulim (M$30) and made it to the village where Dibs relatives live – and her Mum was staying.
As soon as we entered the village someone welcomed us and took us to the right people (it wasn’t the kind of place they get tourists, and it seemed like most of the village were expecting us). The village is a purpose-made settlement for workers on the rubber plantation and it seemed that everyone knew each other. Men and women went out working in the day and returned at night, so when we arrived it was pretty quiet – just older people and children.
Dibs was
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See photographs from:
Singapore Gallery
,
Malaysia Gallery
,
Indonesia Gallery
