Prancing around Penang

Our day started like most days on this holiday, I visited the gym and I even managed to convince Jamie to join me as it was air conditioned.

After the quick workout, it was time for breakfast, where roti and curry was eaten in large portions. It is hard to stop yourself from eating too much because the food is so super delicious. Its going to be salads for me when I get back to New Zealand.

Anywho, we left the hotel for a day exploring the old town and were greeted with bellowing dark smoke coming from the nearby district 'Little India'. Jamie was alarmed that this fire might have been coming from the greatest curry house we had found to date but as we found out later on and much to Jamie's delight, the curry place remained intact. We left the scene as firetrucks roared past us to deal with the crisis.

We decided to head to Fort Cornwallis, a fort built to defend the British interests in Penang. We paid our 20 ringgit (under £4 pounds) entry fee and embarked on a very short tour around the premises. My synposis - if you ever make your way to Penang, don't waste your time coming here. It has a few cannons, a wall, some shitty building replicas the size of a dolls house, and a chapel playing annoying inspirational and uplifting music, where you could pretend to fire toy rifles and play with plastic swords. It was basic and relatively expensive by Malaysian standards to enter.

After that disappointment, we walked around admiring various religious buildings. The great thing about Penang and probably Malaysia on a whole, is that it is so culturally diverse and there are temples and buildings which represent the vast range of the religions. On a particular street alone we walked past Buddhist and Hindu temples, a mosque and an Anglican church, all beautiful in their own ways.

At the hottest part of the day, we decided to hit the mall to take advantage of the beautiful air conditioning. On the way, we passed the ''Kapitan Keling" mosque and decided to go for a look inside. This wasn't my first time in a mosque, as I had the priviledge of going to the Blue Mosque in Istanbul a few years back with my friend Victoria, but this was the first time I had been into one with Jamie. As Jamie had grown up in the Middle East, he was much more aware of mosque protocol and explained to me the ways it worked and what I would have to do as a woman if I was Muslim and attended the mosque. I struggle to understand how woman in this section of society do not have the same privledges as their male counterparts. It makes me feel all sorts of anger and yet as Jamie points out, it isn't going to change anytime soon.

After we had spent a bit of time at the mall, we headed back into town for a light late lunch before heading back to the hotel for a swim and a G&T. After this amount of time travelling, we are both starting to feel more and more fatigued, and as a consequence the hours of sightseeing have been reduced from 10 or so hours to about 5 or 6. Definetely not complaining by any means, but I am starting to want my own bed, cook my own food and be able to wash my own clothes more with every day that passes.Read more