Lumut to Georgetown Penang 16/11

0930 departure on the ferry back to Lumut - early for us!! A very pleasant sojourn on Pangkor Is. but time to move on - as Helen Clark says! No problem in retrieving the car which had been in a secure carpark (unlike the Whangarei Town Basin!!) and we were on the road. We should say at this stage that apart from a few heavy showers some evenings the weather has been generally fine contrary to expectations of floods etc. There had been floods in northern Malaysia a few weeks earlier but nothing occurred during our stay.

We drove north on the usual minor road through more oil palm plantations and had decided that in order to get further north a bit quicker we would need to get onto the toll road which runs from one end of Malaysia to the other - a distance of some 8-900 kms of at least 2 lane motorway - puts our goat tracks to shame.

We joined the toll road at Changkat Jering and the speed limit is 110 kph. But most traffic was doing much more than that! Shades of France and Italy! Feeling a bit peckish so we pulled into a motorway pitstop but couldn't find anything palatable except fried eggs!! Had a couple but almost immediately wished we hadn't as they were very oily and not hot! Further north we found our way onto the Penang Bridge which joins Penang Is. with the rest of Penang State. It's a most impressive structure covering at least 8 kms with a raised suspension bridge in the middle  over the ship channel. There was a special toll to pay for the bridge but one wouldn't quibble with that and it was cheap anyway. Everything was well signed and we proceeded with confidence and aplomb towards Georgetown. Georgetown like Melaka is a very old settlement with centuries of history. One imagines still some sort of sleepy colonial outpost but it's far from that. Motorways and skyscrapers are the norm. But Georgetown on Penang Is. (Pulau Penang) still has a great deal of charm with it's Little India and Chinatown. More authentic and redolent of everyday life than Singapore. We would have liked to have booked into a heritage type hotel, but while they are there, they are expensive. We had settled for a modern high rise hotel, the Cititel and certainly weren't disappointed. We had a room on the 10th. floor with a view to the north towards Langkawi (out of sight) and the venerable Eastern and Oriental Hotel in the foreground.

Jim's mother had visited Penang in years past more than once and always spoke fondly of the place and we quickly began to feel the same. There was a spectacular thunderstorm that evening which was quite a sight from our 10th. floor eyrie!! As usual it soon subsided and we found a very acceptable Chinese restaurant next door to the hotel - then again early to bed. Perhaps it's the age, but we certainly didn't feel like going out on the town after all the travelling!