3.21.08
Well, the Welcome Reception wasn’t as great as I had hoped, but everything else has been! The shadow puppet performance was a little weird, but that wasn’t what bothered me. It was held on a college campus so we would have the opportunity to meet other college students, but there were no students! After the puppet performance, they handed us a boxed snack/dinner thing and we sat on the outside steps by ourselves to eat them before boarding the bus to come back to the ship. They said it was because there were a lot of clubs and activities going on, but it was still a little disappointing.
The Botanical Gardens and Penang Hill were a lot more fun. It started out a little shaky when our bus and tour guide were about half an hour late, but it was only a group of 15 of us. There were no bad complainers on this trip, and that made it AMAZING! We all just sat around and talked calmly while waiting for the bus; it was completely devoid of obnoxious complaints! The botanical gardens were really pretty, despite how boiling hot it was. The vegetation and flowers are very tropical and colorful. There were monkeys everywhere too. After the gardens we went to Penang Hill, which is the equivalent to Capetown’s Table Mountain. You get a great view of Penang. We took these two slow cable cars up. Once at the top, we had the option of walking 4 km to the Canopy Walk, or we could take a five minute car ride. While I was all up for the walk, there were a few lazy bums who came along and insisted we drive. Of course, we weren’t allowed to split up, so we became the lazy Americans who had to drive. The Canopy Walk was AWESOME! It was pretty much a long line of metal ladders with wood nailed down on top, to make a plank-type thing. There was netting on either side that came up to my shoulders, and it was just hanging in midair. Parts of it were a little shaky, but it was still a lot of fun walking across it. (I’m sorry if none of my descriptions are that informative; it’s just so hard to really describe this stuff…you will just have to wait till you can see all of my pictures to really understand.) After the canopy walk, we headed back towards the pier. Robyn and I had already decided that we wanted to spend the whole day out and not have to mess with the tender back and forth to the ship, so we went with two other girls to the local mall. The first mall was a little too western and Americanized for our liking, though we did get a really good dinner there. It was Chinese, and I got spicy noodles with chicken. It came out in a huge mixing bowl; I was convinced that it couldn’t just be meant for me, but when looking around at the other tables I noticed a few others with equally massive bowls of soup and noodles in front of them. I barely made a dent in it. Next, we headed over to the other, more “authentic” Malay mall. Everything was so cheap; it was amazing. After walking around for a bit, we headed over to the Night Market. It’s open on the North part of the island from 7pm to midnight almost every night. It was really cool, but by this point in the night we were all so exhausted that we only window shopped. We are going to go back tomorrow night and do some real bargaining and purchasing, however. It’s kind of like the streets of NYC mixed with Chinatown and a few Malay markets. They have everything from Gucci purses, rolexs and bootlegged DVDs for about a buck, to Chinese lanterns, pashminas and jewelry.
Today, I didn’t have anything planned originally, but after meeting Jessie (who I already sort of knew from doing lip syncs together) and Meghan, I decided to try to join the Penang National Park SAS trip. The trip was another one of only 15 people, so I figured it wouldn’t be too hard to tag along, and it wasn’t. I definitely made up for not being able to walk much yesterday (though by the end of the day, after walking around the malls and night market, I ended up doing a lot of walking). We did about a two hour hike through the park and got to see some really pretty vegetation and scenery. It was also another great trip because there were no real complainers! There were also a lot of faculty/staff on the trip, which was actually pretty nice too. One of the assistant deans, Craig, was our trip leader and he brought his family along (wife and two kids, Eric (9) and Kelsey (16)), the ship dr. and his wife, Avi (the videographer), and Tatiana (a biology teacher who no one really likes but wasn’t bad for this trip because she was good at spotting things like a really small tree snake). After hiking and sweating (a lot…rainforests are quite hot and humid), we stopped at a beach for lunch. We then took a boat over to another beach called The Monkey Beach. There was an optional additional 45 minute hike up the mountain to see the lighthouse. A group of eight of us opted to do it, but after some serious bushwhacking our guide noticed that high tide was a little too high and we wouldn’t be able to get up to the lighthouse without going for a swim. We had to head back, but it was still a lot of fun…even if our National Park guide was a little nuts and loved pointing out every possible leaf, crushing them up for us and making us all smell them. We then took a boat back to the entrance of the park and headed back to the ship (after the main tour guide did let us make a sidetrack stop at a Chocolate Boutique that provided free samples…it was absolutely delicious). I would like to say that I was able to buy all of you delicious souvenirs, but I knew had I tried they never would have made it back home. It was just too good. Jessie, Meghan and I are heading back out at 8 to meet up with Robyn and her friend who drove down today [she’s Malaysian, so Robyn spent the day with her instead of coming to the park with us]. We ended up not getting sushi last night, so I think we’re going to try and make it to a Japanese restaurant tonight. If we feel up to it afterwards, we might try to check out the Penang night scene. Tomorrow we decided to pay to get a driver and hit up every other cool place in Penang. We’re going to the art museum, little India, the Butterfly farm, Spice Garden and the night market. We talked to our tour guide today to find out a reasonable price for getting a driver, so I’m pretty excited about it.
I’m really happy I decided to stay in Penang. Everyone and their mothers went up to Kuala Lampuar, and I’m very happy I didn’t. It’s been really nice being away from a lot of the other SAS kids. It’s also a nice break from the people I usually hang out with (which is good if I don’t want to get too sick of them by the end of this trip). My roommate and Tea went up to KL on the first day, and separately so did Kate, Meghan, and Amanda. I’m very content staying in Penang. It may not be as fast paced as KL, but there’s been so much to do here I’ve been quite happy. Being here has also been a great taste for what the rest of my trip should entail, and I CAN’T WAIT! East Asia—here I come!
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