Batu Ferringi

Batu Ferringi is just up the road from Georgetown, on Penang Island. Getting there was easy - or could have been - but instead of taking a taxi at a cost of RM35, we walked on to the bus station - a non-air-conditioned bus cost RM2. It took longer, but you gotta do the bus thing sooner or later, or you're not a real backpacker, right?
So, we got off a stop too early and so ended up walking some way along the road that runs parallel to the beach. It was hot and the bags were heavy, but by now we're used to walking after all the walking up and down Georgetown that Alex made us do*...! Along the way we came across a giant wooden ship sitting a little way back on the tarmac (it turns out it's a restaurant, and Alex remembered it from last time) and then another building more obviously a restaurant but just as over the top, red pointy fin things sticking out the roof, and if you looked carefully there appeared to be tanks of fish just inside the entrance. I'll get back to that.

*I've been teasing Alex about this...it's just because she wanted, quite rightly, to see all the places in Georgetown that were familiar. But still, don't worry, I'm sure I'll pay for that comment : )

We arrived at the guesthouse eventually and there was a slightly awkward scene when we discovered that the room didn't have AC, which we thought it would have. We decided to stay anyway (it turned out not to be a big problem, actually) and after resting in the room for a while through the heat of the day, we decided to take our resting outside onto the beach.

The beach is great, you can see the bay in the distance and the sand, while not extremely fine, is comfortable enough... it's quite "lively" and by that I mean boats and banana boats and jetskis and horses and quadbikes zoom up and down the water/beach (select as appropriate) and some of the bars play Gwen Stafani and that bloody Umberella song at volumes that can be annoying. But anyway, we set down our towels and bathed away the afternoon.

After going back for a shower (the showers, incidentally, weren't great - but I'm starting to enjoy cold showers) we ambled back along the main road and came to the restaurant I talked about earlier, called Eden. Going in, there's a huge array of eels, fish, lobsters, crabs etc in large tanks, and walking past that there's an array of tables and a modest stage. We ordered a modest meal of rice and things (although, we did end up having several drinks and a bizarre ice-cream thing that included, as well as strawberry icecream, sweetcorn and butterbeans - very weird) and as we ate it there was a performance of Malaysian, Chinese and Indian dancing, that was very amusing (partly because the woman announcing the dances had a very unique talent for English).

By the time we headed back, it had been dark for a while and the pavements had been transformed into stalls and makeshift shops selling all the usual tourist stuff, t-shirts and knock-off DVDs and games and things, as well as some paintings and carvings that had a bit more merit. We're old hands by now and smiling and saying no-thank-you. The secret is not to stop walking.

The next day, we did next to nothing, shamefully. We walked to the bank where we had a bit of a fight with a cash machine, and then spent the rest of the day reading at a bar on the beach, and drinking milkshakes and ice teas until it started raining, so we went back to the room for a while. We went to a really nice restaurant we'd walked past the day before - it wasn't on the beach and, as a consequence, the decor, food and service were all really good. The service was a little frightening, actually - you'd finish a plate and before you could blink it'd been whisked away.

We wandered back along the main road, through all the stalls again. I ended up buying a couple of games for my Gameboy Micro. I'm not sure if I mentioned this before - I bought it in Singapore, basically because it's impossible to walk through endless electronic malls without needing to buy a gadget of some description, and this was the cheapest thing I could find.

The third day, we did nearly nothing, again. I could get used to this. We emerged at midday, and spent the afternoon at the bar on the beach, and then, without getting up, ordered food at the same place and ate it as the sun went down. We had an earlyish night, because we were catching an early ferry to Langkawi the next morning for which we needed to be up very early.