Once in Penang we were able to meet up with a friend of mine from college who lives there with his family, and he was able to set us up to stay in a guest room in their office. It was located in a nice quiet neighborhood close to cheap, but tasty, restaurants. In fact, Penang is known for good cheap food. We found it to be true! We went to church the next morning and spent the afternoon at the Penang Botanical gardens and wandering around town a bit. We left early the next morning for Kuala Lumpur. Our camera battery was getting low after Thailand, so we didn't get as many pictures of the rest of our trip as we'd like, but we did get a few good shots.
At the entrance to the gardens there were a couple carts selling snack food. I got some watermelon and Uche got peanuts. The lady who sold it to him asked if it was for feeding to the monkeys. I told her that he doesn't share his peanuts! Uche is serious about peanuts. :)
In the end, Uche did share a few with the monkeys.
The gardens were really beautiful and we enjoyed the quietness and the lush greenness. Because we live in the middle of a huge city we appreciate any chance to spend time in nature. We hadn't seen that many trees in one place for a while.
Inside the city we saw this street market and went looking for something to eat. It was super busy, as you can see, and we finally decided to head to the market closer to where we were staying. For most of our meals on our trip we just found a local market like this to eat in. Usually they're cheap and the food is good. At one point we did have dinner at KFC- I couldn't bear anymore rice and noodles.
It seemed like all along the coast of Penang (at least the areas we saw) there were high rises like these. They must have fantastic views.
Early Monday morning we flew to Kuala Lumpur. The must see place there is the Petronas Towers. Not sure what the banner says above Uche, but that's one of the entrances to the towers.
See we did travel together. We always joke that most of our pictures look like we went by ourselves since we spend our time taking each other's pictures. Fortunately, we can usually find some friendly person to take one of us together.
There is a park on one side of the towers and they have a shallow lake with a bunch of water fountains. Right after we took this picture it started pouring and we had to run for cover. We shared a gazebo with a bunch of people until it was safe to go out.We didn't really do much in KL. We were exhausted and low on money. We had had a stressful morning and after days of being on the move we both kind of pooped out. We had been excited to fly to KL from Penang because it was a cheap short flight and then we'd get to spend the whole day in KL before taking a sleeper train to Singapore. In Penang, my friend had made arrangements for a taxi to pick us up at 5:00 am to take us to the airport. At 4 that morning I was woken up by the doorbell; I woke Uche up so he could go see what was going on. The taxi driver said he was ready to take us to the airport. Uche told him it was only 4, but the taxi driver corrected him saying it was 5! Well, the clock we were using as our alarm had been set on Thailand time which is an hour behind, so we were an hour behind. AUGH! We rushed to get ready and prayed we'd make it to the airport on time. We did make it, obviously, but I think I used all my adrenaline getting ready, so I was not in the mood to wander around a new city. We spent a lot of time just sitting at different places watching people. At one point we sat in an entrance of a large mall with these fantastic Christmas decorations (sorry no pictures of it) watching people take their pictures next to the decorations. It was a little weird to see M*slims taking pictures with Christmas decorations with songs about baby Jesus in the background. It's a crazy world we live in! Anyhow, at the end of the day we were happy to get on the train and head down to Singapore.
Singapore is something else. When we were walking around I felt like I was in Manhattan- it was so clean and beautiful! I haven't seen that many new luxury cars in a long time!
We spent a lot of time walking on Orchard Rd. which was super decorated for Christmas. The street is lined with malls. We even did a little shopping ourselves buying me a pair of shoes.
At the end of our day as we were riding the bus back to our hotel I spotted a Borders! A Borders!! I LOVE bookstores and I miss Borders/Barnes & Noble stores so much while I'm overseas. I almost yelled, "STOP THE BUS", but I really needed a shower and I had to go to the hotel to do that.... but if it hadn't been 36+ hours since I had showered (while walking miles in the tropic heat) I totally would've given up the money set aside for eating for the rest of the trip to go relax in Borders with a cup of coffee for a few hours!
This is the visitor center in Singapore, on Orchard Rd. They have FREE foot and leg massage machines. It's right next to the FREE chilled water cooler with cone shaped cups. If I didn't already love Singapore- I would've at that moment! After our refreshing time in the visitor center we were ready to hit the road and check out some more sights.
This is a well known hotel, Raffles Hotel. I still need to google it to see why. :) We didn't go inside because of the afore mentioned lack of showers!
This was a cool side street in Singapore. The street looks old and quaint which is contrasted with the modern skyscrapers in the background.We were sad we only had one day in Singapore. It seems the theme of this trip was too many cool things to see, so little time!
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