Went up to Penang for a short one day trip after a boring Part C exams.
Started early, at 5.45am from Seremban. We parted with our hometown at around 6am, heading north. Have to make it to Salak Selatan first to pick out huah's swimsuit left in her soon-to-be former apartment. After some traffic heldup along the famed Salak Expressway (mind you it's around 7.30am that moment) we took a shortcut through the Sprint Highway to the Northen Highway Toll of KL. Odd enough, there were many cars heading into KL from that toll, and they were all jammed up crawling along at a tortoise's pace...
After some driving around, we reached Ipoh, and had our breakfast there at the Kinta Jusco. However, the Pizza Breakfast turned out near to be a nightmare. My prawn olio is near dry, not the one I'm expecting since I ate a nice juicy oily one in Connaught. Huah's meal was even worse! Her cheesy carbonara tasted like plain flour with a soft hint of milk. It WAS awful. She had to empty her soup into her pasta. It tasted lousy still... Being the only car in the carpark starting the number plate with the letter N, we felt like "a thorN Among the roses". We dare not venture further into Ipoh, scared of getting lost and wasting time in the end. It was around 11am, as I drove on the highway quite slowly, maybe it's due to my post-exams dementia...
We reached the north island finally after getting through hills, tunnels, rivers, and more roads. Luckily for my housemates instructions, I find my way around quite easily in Seberang Jaya, making it to the bridge. Funnily enough, Penang, for its status as a big city, has plenty of patient, slow drivers. If only we can make KL drivers not to blow their horns and floor the accelerator in almost any occasion... We checked in at the Grand Continental before realizing that we booked the wrong hotel. We had thought that we stayed there before. It turned out that we might had confused the Continental with the Grand Continental. Nevertheless, the hotel seemed fine on first impression. We stayed at the 21st floor, and was awarded with some pretty view of the straits and the bridge.
Finally we rested and then took a rather expensive cab ride (RM15) to the Gurney Drive... Read some book on world war 2 while my GF peeked at her magazines-fashion and interior design-again. We had dinner there and suddenly I found O-Jian nice! I couldn't stop eating O-Jian, just pausing to throw out the rubbery oysters (they tasted terrible, the egg and the flour is nice!) We decided to walk back to our accomodation since we had plenty of time and the taxis seemed happy to charge pitiful non-Hokkien-speaking tourists... Hahah must ask both housemate to teach me more on Penang's language... The walk took 2 HOURS! I was wondering why? Komtar was so near! It could had been just an hour or even less. I think it's due to the fact that we snapped photos and loiter around closed temples... There was a nice advantage though, walking helped a lot on the following day's drive-around.
On the second day, we drove around to the temples, but, having visited just 2 of them (the Siamese and the Burmese temples), we grew tired of places of worship. So we decided to move along to Batu Ferringhi. It's quite a long way away from the town, and we have to pass through nice winding beach roads under the trees... Finally, after passing many hotels, we found our 'perfect' photo area, 55.2 (don't know whether it's miles or KM) behind a row of houses. I made an illegal U-turn, climbed the slope and braked hard into the left parking area. The left rear tyre skidded with a terrible screech and attracted the attention of the sea dwellers. I had absolutely no idea why the tyre skidded. Maybe it's due to the slippery yellow speed strips on the ground... It is quiet there and peaceful, away from rowdy tourists and noisy speedboats. There were a lot of holes dun into the sand, and I was wondering whether there're snakes around a sandy beach. It was then that I realized that there were lots of crabs (dirty, grey and medium sized) on the rocks in the water... The sight of them gave me chills. They were just so cold and unfriendly, gazing up to you with their lifeless eyes... I was terrified of them, chills. The beach overlooked the nearby resorts. They were some speedboats around, not excluding yang-gui-s. Haha! Ask me for the translation. If only I've got the cash, maybe I'll buy the row of houses. They're so tempting, such a nice location for relaxing, my tiring life, aihz!
And then we went to the botanical gardens. It was easy to find, luckily! Monkeys, is all that I can say. I saw so many monkeys in my Taman Yoon Chan and 2nd college years and yet, I took pictures of them. What was I thinking... The gardens featured some nice plants, and, and? Some cage housing various exotic plants, but the door's locked on every one. I could not bear the heat, and I kept on wondering about the Middle East tourists behind me wearing the tudung. I'm going to repeat for the last time what I bothered Neoh and James with in UT, 'Are you nuts?' Not to mention the numbers of ninja-s in the Gurney Plaza.
The day is getting late and we're worn out, and so we headed for the jetty, and got lost. We turned around and around before reaching Komtar, and got lost again---there were no signboards showing the magic word 'Jetty'. The poor tourists drove around and by chance reached the island's western sea line. After some inquiry, we finally got our answer. The road we travelled showed no signs of the jetty BECAUSE we had already past the jetty when we made the turn into the road... Luck! This was the first time huah go onboard the ferry. Yet she didn't know that the ferry can hold cars. I kept on wondering again, what did she study in primary school. At least I notice cars in the ferry paintings on the textbooks. Huah, you need to open your eyes althought they're already big enough! @.@
We stopped in Kampar for some souveniers, food! We bought the bread+herbal chicken (thanks to Neoh's recommendation. We stopped in Jalan Ampang, asked for his direction, and made one big round back, just to find the shop at the end of Jalan Ampang, not further then 100m from where we just parked our car) and headed home.
The greatest relief is at the gas station. I filled the tank with gas and the lady behind the counter surprised me, 'gei to cin a?' I never realised Cantonese is so sweet before visiting Penang. Hahhaa!!