Traveling around Malaysia is really easy. The busses are great (cheap and comfortable). We arrived in Penang, an island which is recognized by Unesco as a World Heritage site. This little island also known as the silicon island has everything from high tech industries/manufactures, like AMD, Intel, NXP and so on but also is home to George Town. A little village which has not really changed much in the last 200 years or so. This city has a wonderful mixture of cultures, religions and the city has evidence of this everywhere. Every corner has a new surprise.
The only way to see the city is to walk or rent a scooter and just ride around and take the city in just like any other local. Being on scooter in Malaysia is very different from the Netherlands, there are no bicycle paths, there are no rules… you just go with the flow.
The scooter was the highlight for me as we could go around the island to see butterfly farms, beaches, turtle beaches, temples, rocks, jungle tracks, little India, china town, malls… the list is endless.
Our hostel next to a coffee boutique was very useful as we had chocolate coffee every morning. We got to know the locals during our 4 day stay.
Perhaps the most interesting night was with Koto a young Japanese guy on holiday wanting to discover the world. We went out for a dinner and ended the evening talking about Manga and sport. It was great to see and compare cultures in this amazing place where history is really alive. The best way to describe this is by picturing our night: a Portuguese Engineer, with an Amazing Italian Linguist, talking to a future Japanese pilot, survivor from the radiation from Fukushima about how Manga touched us all as young children, with a guy from Bronx (New York) sharing stories from around the world in a Jamaican bar on a remote island of Malaysia – Penang is definitely a magical place worthy of being a World Heritage Site (here is a list of all of them in the world)
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