Yesterday, I started the day by taking a long walk, and I went to the waterfront and saw two different sights:
(1) A Queen Victoria memorial, which is a large clocktower by the waterfront.
(2) Right next door to the clocktower, Fort Cornwallis which is the largest free standing fort in Malaysia-this is right next door. There was a $5.00 entry fee to the fort, and it wasn't that exciting. But I was able to take a nap on the bench.
Next-it was my mission to search for The Floating Mosque, which is basically a Mosque constructed a little ways out to sea, with a short footbridge that connects it. Supposedly, the original was destroyed in the tsnami years ago-but this was rebuilt and looked beautiful. I know because I saw it from the hop-on hop-off bus, yet the bus didn't present an opportunity to hop-on hop-off near the Mosque, which is what I wanted to do to take pictures, so I set out to go there from Fort Cornwallis at approximately 1:00 pm I believe.
(1) First, I set out to walk there. I remembered that it was on the shoreline, past all of the high rise towers on the shore. So I walked out to the road on the shore to search for it. I kep't walking and walking-after about an hour I still saw buildings, pretty much as far as the eye can see.
(2) Then I found a city bus which went up the shore road. It was bus 101. I was pretty sure the Mosque was after all the buildings, but before this other area with hotels. So I took the bus and saw if it passed the mosque. I kep't looking out the window, and didn't see the Mosque. So I got out at one of the hotels, and went to the beach to see if I could see the mosque-I didn't.
(3) I took bus 101 back to town, and attempted to walk on a shoreline road once again, this time after all the buildings, to search for the mosque. (the road was too long and I didn't feel like going on.
(4) I found bus 102-which went further down the shoreline road, and took it to a shoreline shopping center to look for the Mosque-once again, I couldn't find it.
(5) On a footpath up by the shopping center, I asked a guy who looked like he just finished running if he knew where the Mosque was. He didn't but searched with his phone-he said it was about 3 KM up the road. Had I just stayed on bus 101 the first time I would have found it.
(6) I tried to get back to the main road, at one point going through bushes-this time I had to find an ATM since I spent all my money on bus fares and street food-I found one in a Tesco department store-but I forgot where I was going at one point
(7) It was now past 9 at night-and I just decided to get more food at a vendor and stop looking for the Mosque-as it was dark out.
