namaste' my journey...

I took the ferry off of phi phi island (i was sad to leave there as i met such great people there) to head to penang malaysia.  After the ferry i had to get onto a minivan to take me to the island of penang.  While in the bus station i met up with a guy named Cian (pronouned key-in) from Ireland.  We traveled to penang together.  He is a really nice guy. The minivan drove us all the way to the island. We arrived late night once again to a guest house named banana.  The next morning i went walking thru this street market where i almost got sick at the nasty meat they had and the smell it caused.  They were chopping up whole chickens even their feet to serve..gross...and had all kinds of other stuff that i dont even wanna know what it was.  At banana when i got back from my market walk i ran into people i had met on phi phi which was really nice.  I also ended up meeting with a bunch of couchsurfers.  Munawar is a CS ambassador and really took care of us in penang.  He would pick us up in the am (if not working) and take us around.  Every night we would all go to dinner.  One night we went to this area called gunary drive and all the locals were out blowing bubbles and flying these teeny tiny kites...from young to old...it was the funniest thing to see.  There was another local CSer named Sri that would be with Munawar that was a vegetarian so it was nice for me to finally be with someone who was sure i was not going to get something with any meat in it for sure.  Sri took me to an all vegetarian restaurant which was my first since i started my travels...i was soooo happy!  In penang we walked around town, went to the five story mall.  We went to the reclining buddha which was beautiful.  We also went to a spice garden which was like being in a jungle.  One day Sri had us over his apartment which had a pool so we hung around and swam.  One night we went to a club...it was a lot of fun.  i did my first couchsurfing in Penang with a guy named wendy.  He met us at the club at like 1am we hung for a bit then he took doris and myself to his place. He wanted us to go play pool with him in his friends but we were way too tired and thankfully we did not because he left us at his house and did not get home til 6:30am.  My cs experience was not the best his place smelled (ya know dirty guy smell) and was dirty but we only really ending up being there for a few hours to sleep.  In the morning he took us around a bit then back to banana to stay for the rest of my time in penang.  Penang was interesting in the fact that i thought that it would all be muslim but there is a huge chinese and indian population here also.  They also have many religions here from muslims, hindu, buddhist, krishna, and even christian...which i found very surprising. I enjoyed my time here and seeing all the different types of people.  I am glad to be traveling on.  I am heading to cameron highlands to do some treking in the mountains. Should be fun.