Penang, Malaysia – 31 March to 3 April, 2007
Once again we were on Thai Air Asia where we find very reasonable flights to many destinations throughout Southeast Asia. Our flight was early and only lasted about one hour, so we arrived in Georgetown on Penang Island mid morning. We had booked a hotel from Bangkok the day before, and decided to stay in Georgetown instead of at one of the beach resorts. This decision may have unduly influenced our opinion of Penang.
When we arrived we caught a taxi from the airport to our hotel which is about a twenty minute ride. When we arrived at the hotel, we checked in and the bellman led us to our room. As we reached our floor we noticed the hallways needed a major refurbishment with paint and new carpeting. When the bellman opened the door to our room and we walked in, we were greeted with an overpowering stench of smoke, mold, and who knows what else. The carpet was threadbare with the stains on the carpet thicker than the material left on the backing. The bellman must have seen the look of horror on our face as we asked if there were any non-smoking rooms. His reply was yes, but they were on an upper floor and the price was higher. With that he escorted us back to the lobby and consulted with the front desk The result was we were moved to a non-smoking room (at no extra cost over the already inflated rate we paid) which had also be refurbished and was actually almost pleasant and had a great view of the town.
Once settled, it was walkabout time. Some tourist information we picked up at the airport detailed a free shuttle bus which made a loop around town. You could get on and of at a number of stops, and it was scheduled to come by every 12 minutes, taking about 45 minutes to complete the loop. We decided to hop on the bus and do a loop to see town and found one of the stops. It was a Saturday and the bus only ran until 2:00 PM, but it was just about noon so we figured we had time for a quick loop of town.
As we waited at the stop we were approached a couple of times by touts trying to get us to take a taxi or a car. When we explained we were waiting or the bus, they “kindly” informed us that the bus did not run on a Saturday. When we pointed out the schedule on the poster at the stop showed it running Saturday until 2:00 PM, they then changed the story to it was a public holiday and the busses didn’t run on public holidays. One even had the audacity to point out a “holy man” we should ask to confirm it if we though he was lying, which we knew he was. It seems they must have been trained by the touts around the Grand Palace in Bangkok who will lie that the Palace is closed and say they will take you somewhere else, for a nice fee of course.
In the end we gave up on the bus idea simply to avoid the touts, and walked into the adjacent mall to cool off. After perusing the shops and having a bite to eat at the food court, we headed back towards the hotel to review the tourist information to plan our next couple of days there.
The next morning we headed down to the hotel restaurant for the breakfast that was included in our room rate. We shouldn’t have bothered. While we hadn’t set our watch ahead to the local time, we were there well before breakfast was scheduled to end. What we found was a complete mess. Every table was covered with dirty plates from earlier diners, food was slopped out of all the buffet dishes onto the tables, all serving spoons were laying inside the buffet dishes covered with whatever was in them, most of the offerings were empty, and the few dishes that still held food were cold. We probably should have expected that given our first impression of the hotel, so we skipped breakfast the next two days of our stay. If you ever have the opportunity to stay at one of the Grand Continental Hotels, don’t!
The free shuttle busses don’t run on Sunday, which we knew and didn’t need a tout to tell us, so we decided to walk through town towards the harbor front. We came to a hotel there, the E&O, and we stopped in to see where the other half lives. We then proceeded along the front to Fort Cornwallis, and then worked our way back trough Chinatown and Little India towards the hotel. We stopped at an Indian restaurant for lunch, and had a surprisingly good meal of Murtabak. On the way back to the hotel we passed by the mall again, so we stopped in to cool off and get some munchies from the supermarket there.
On Monday we caught the free shuttle bus to do the loop. We had already covered much of the area on our previous days walk, but stopped off at a couple of places for a further look around. A couple of the tourist spots were a ways out of town so we decided we didn’t want to hassle with the touts and taxi drivers and passed on them. We decided we had seen enough of Penang, so we booked a bus to the Cameron Highlands area for the next day, and returned to the hotel to move on from an unfavorable first impression of Malaysia.
Next stop Cameron Highlands.
