Heart Of Darkness: Penang-Georgetown

From Langkawi we took the ferry to Georgetown, the capital island state on the west coast of Malaysia where we would stay for several days. The ferry broke down after a couple of hours & we hung around on the ocean waiting for another boat to switch over to. I had visions of our luggage getting lost during this, but amazingly we found it at the other end when we reached the shore.

We'd booked a hotel recommended in The Lonely Planet named The Broadway Budget Hotel. Nothing good can really be said about this hotel except that it was in a good location in Little India. We had to move after the first night owing to a damp mattress & construction work going on outside our window. We moved to a lovely little colonial style hotel called The Hutton Lodge & it turned out to be one of the best hotels we'd stayed in during the whole trip.

We tramped our way through the city during the first couple of days until we got the main sites under our belt.
Georgetown retains much of its colonial remnants from decades past. It’s strategic location on the coast and previous reputation as a free port drew many immigrant populations, several of which–namely Chinese and Indians — remain a key part of Penangite (and Malaysian) culture today. Once again therefore, we were pleased to find a large Indian population & hence a large amount of great Indian food!

These kids were doing some good work on a sunday

Waiting for the bags off our ferry which had broken down in the middle of the ocean. We had to hop onto another ferry & collect our bags from the first ferry on shore at Georgetown