Penang, The Road to Tioman, Mersing - Week 49 and 50 (April 29 - May 1)

Exhuasted travellers in the Blue Diamond Hotel.

Soon upgraded to Hotel Malaysia! Shwing!

Out and about exploring. Yes, that is a silhouette walk you're seeing right there.

The 'beach' we found at Mersing.

Yummy food at the fruit cart.

Betel Nuts. The red ones are ripe.

The school group we entertained by acting like goofy foreigners.

I offered incense to the gods at this temple. Was quite the experience!

Mosque and Hindu temple kitty-corner.

Inside a Chinese mansion.

Small Buddhist temple.

Temple at night...

The night market in Penang.

Just outside the blue mansion in Penang. The inside was amazing but unfortunately no photography allowed.

The accommodation of Seth and I in Mersing

Trapped in Mersing...spirits are low.

Mersing beach!

I briefly considered labeling this 'the moon' but then realized that it might come off as condescending.

Penang, The Road to Tioman, Mersing

Week 49 and 50

Well, the next morning saw us all waking up in the sweltering heat of a room equipped with an air conditioner built to shut itself off after a few hours.

Ugh.

Yeah, that morning at the Blue Diamond wasn’t rambunctious. We were all pretty beat from the trip up the night before as well as tired from trying to fall asleep while listening to the third and fourth play through of the Eagles’ Hotel California.

Anyways, after the requisite cold showers and zombie-like half wakeful state, we were out in the courtyard eating breakfast in the company of the hotel’s rooster and chicken. Our waitress, the same one as the night previous, was one of the most burnt out people I’ve ever seen. It seemed almost as though someone had duct taped a nice fat swatch of pink insulation around her head. But that just added to the je ne sais quoi of the place.

Second order of business after breakfast was to get the hell out of the Blue Diamond. We packed our bags and set out looking for a new hotel. The first one we visited looked super nice, but was also super booked. There were no rooms remaining that would accommodate the whole troop, so we had to push on to the next hotel, which ended up being our lodging of choice. It wasn’t much, but when viewed with The Blue Diamond in such recent recollection, it looked downright palatial. After relaxing for a few minutes in the wonderful A/C and appreciating the beautiful view out of our 8th floor room, we ventured back out.

The weather was a bit spotty and we were soon running for cover under some nearby awnings on what later turned out to be a street lined with clubs. We’d return there briefly that night.

We took a long walk around the city, starting a couple of blocks distant from the seashore. It bears mentioning at this juncture that Penang is one of the least friendly cities I’ve ever visited in regards to pedestrian traffic. We spent a lot of time waiting on the sides of roads watching cars and scooters whizzing by while waiting for the opportune moment to step out into the street without suffering a crushed foot or mangled leg.

Our path towards the shore was initially blocked by the Oriental Hotel, a wonderful example of old-style colonial architecture. The hotel also had a wonderful collection of plants out front. Any hotel landscaper would be ecstatic to have the ready access to orchids that blesses the courtyards of almost every major business in Malaysia. Heading east we moved parallel to the seashore looking for a way to get down to the ocean proper. We eventually found a route down a side street that passed a small design college. The ocean itself was quite beautiful, but we were in a rather uninspiring section of beach, namely because there was no beach. We did spend a little bit of time watching a pair of fishermen trying to harvest the sea of its delicious fish.

Heading back the way we came, we were soon walking through the main administrative section of Penang, which is chock full of white-washed British colonial buildings. It was very impressive. Soon though the humidity and sunlight drove us under the shade of a tree where we found a fruit truck. There’s nothing quite like a lunch of mango, watermelon and passion fruit.

A short while later we were off again and soon found a legitimate seaside walkway upon which to continue our promenade. Perhaps unsurprisingly, for those of you who are history students of the age of sail, we soon happened across the first British fort in Malaysia, Fort Cornwallis. I should note before I get too deeply into this that Penang was in fact the first major European settlement in Malaysia. It long preceded Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, although its glory days have long since faded. These days though, the city does appear to be experiencing some resurgence.

Well, Fort Cornwallis was pretty much what you’d expect. We were greeted at the entrance by a guard wearing the traditional lobster-back uniform of a royal marine. Soon afterwards we were meandering through the parade ground whilst looking at displays depicting period life in the heyday of Fort Cornwallis. We took a seat though for a little while and just relaxed. It’s tough moving around so much in weather that hot.

Seth took this opportunity to sample a local treat, the betel nut, which we’d noticed growing on a number of trees around the fort. The verdict? They taste terrible. The guard helped us prepare it and he thought it was quite funny how Seth reacted to it.

From there we walked up on top of the redoubt and got a nice view of the harbour as seen by a gunner in the fort a couple hundred years ago. Our position also afforded us with a good view of the large school group that happened to be walking by at that moment. Surprisingly, they were quite entertained to see the foreigners standing up on the fort. They all waved enthusiastically at us, pointing and laughing. I snapped a few pictures and Seth hopped onto a cannon and rode it Dr. Strangelove style, much to the delight of the kiddies.

Soon thereafter though, those scattered showers kicked back in and saw us running to shelter beneath the awning of the refreshment stand on the parade ground. I’m always amazed by the cacophony of noise that a corrugated sheet metal roof can kick up in a big rain storm.

I had some ice cream while we waited. During a break in the rain, we began to walk out, only to have the rain pick up again and send us all dashing for cover again. Seth and I were getting bored of waiting at this point so we took the initiative and dashed through the rain into a few low bunkers built into the earthworks facing away from the ocean. They contained a large collection of memorabilia and historical facts about the foundation of the colony on Penang and the initial difficulties in living safely in the area. Apparently Malaria was a major concern, surprise, surprise.

Once the rain had calmed down sufficiently, we were back out walking again, passing by a nice old church and the town’s clock tower, which were both, of course, DRIPPING in colonialism.

We then got sort of stuck in the town’s business district. We were trying to find an area that was renowned for its large number of temples, but we were having a lot of difficulty navigating the streets in this area despite the general regularity of their configuration. We got a bit frustrated and were glad when Winny found a place to get a henna tattoo. That gave us a little while to stop and eat at an Indian restaurant. Food wasn't that great though. Winny certainly managed to purchase an interesting dish though after returning from the henna place. She got a rice dish served on a banana leaf. I thought it was one of the more impressive meals I saw while in Malaysia.

After lunch we managed to find the temples we'd been looking for all day. We quickly toured through a number, mostly Chinese. We turned down an invitation from a few Muslim worshippers to accompany them to prayer time, but in retrospect I think we should have gone in. Penang's religious community certainly is complex though. Hindu temples sit across the street from Mosques, and just down the road you’d be likely to find a church and a Buddhist shrine. It's quite obvious how many cultures have mixed together over the last few hundred years to build the country that stands there today.

We returned home to the hotel just before the sun went down and rested a little bit after the long day, watching some TV and relaxing…even jumping on the beds a bit in Winny and Seth`s case. Soon though, we got hungry, so we dressed up again and took off, looking for a restaurant and a place to take care of some other things.

First order of business was returning to the Blue Diamond. Although at this point in the journey, we were only four, we would soon be five. The fifth member of our troupe, Stephanie, was on her way and we’d been trying to keep in contact with her via email. We stopped by the Blue Diamond, discovered that she had in fact checked in a few hours ago, and was now out on the town with a couple other guests staying there. Seth handled this particular errand and he had a great interaction with the owner of the hotel. It went something like this:

Owner: So, what hotel are you staying at now?

Seth: Hotel Malaysia…

Owner: Oh. That’s a lot more expensive. I bet it’s cleaner too.

So it appears as though the owner took it personally that we left his hotel after the first night. Odd. After all, it was only business. After this somewhat unusual interaction Seth met up with Melissa, Winny and I who had commandeered a few computers in an internet café together.

That deserves its own bizarre little description. On the way over we had stopped by another internet café, knocked on the door, and then had a guy open the door and tell us the place was closed, open only to gamblers.

What the hell?

Basically, at this point, we were just trying to find a way out to a beach somewhere. It had been initially suggested that Pulau Langkwai, an island just north of Penang, would be ideal. Upon further research we were dissuaded from this opinion. Turns out the place is supposed to be quite heavily developed, which therefore makes it totally not ideal for our patronage. We wanted somewhere a bit quiet, but not too quiet. We then learned that it was possible to catch a boat from Penang up to Thailand in order to check out Ko Phi Phi, our vacation destination from last September. Tempting, since it was so perfect last time…

Finally the decision was made to essentially go the furthest we possibly could from Penang in order to visit Pulau Tioman on the diagonally opposite end of Malaysia.

What followed was a fairly epic road trip.

But first, dinner!

We ate at Ecco, a restaurant owned by a woman who might have emigrated from the US or Britain. It was traditional North American food night in Malaysia! And man, it was fantastic. By far the best pasta I’ve had in a long time (I’ve still avoided spaghetti since I left Canada of course). We also had some spectacular wine with the meal. I accidentally ordered two dishes, but we were pretty ravenous, so the extra certainly didn’t go to waste.

After finishing dinner and making 100% sure we were on the same page as far as plans go, we walked back to the hotel. On the way we took a detour and found a very prettily lit Chinese temple and took a few shots before wandering through a night market that was absolutely PACKED. We found a seat near a BBQ place and Seth and Winny dug in for an after dinner treat. We also tried something that was touted as being a local delicacy for desert. It was a bunch of fruits covered in this weird sticky molasses-y stuff. The consensus among us travellers was simply that it ruined the taste of the fruit.

Meh.

Then it was back to the hotel. We discovered oddly enough that our hotel was also right next to all the major clubs in Penang (or so it appeared). We decided to see what the scene looked like, most specifically the clubs.

And what did we discover? Nothing good. At least nothing we had any real interest in. Problem is, these little clubs didn’t really look like all that much in comparison to the ones we’d seen in Roppongi and Shibuya. Seth stayed out a bit, but the rest of us called it quits back at the hotel pretty quick.

The next morning saw us up and enjoying the breakfast buffet at a reasonable hour. Soon thereafter we had dropped our bags in the lobby and headed out to a beautiful azure blue traditional Chinese villa that we’d seen from the hotel window the day before. On the way there we got hit with a huge rain squall and had to dash into the archway covering the entrance to the building’s courtyard. We chatted with the guard for a few minutes before he informed us that there was no waiting for the tour. It started sharp at 11 AM. Seth and I led the charge into the building, running through the rain, and we were soon joined by the girls.

We caught up with the tour while the guide was talking about the family history of the previous owners of the villa. It was pretty interesting stuff. She demonstrated how much of the ornamentation on the walls was made using pieces of broken ceramic bowls and cups. To tell the truth though, I was completely distracted. You see, Chinese villas, the way they’re constructed in Malaysia anyways, have these wonderful, open central courtyards that let plenty of nice sunshine in. It was this that was distracting me as I stood beside the central courtyard, watching the water gush down from the eaves and from the open roof, making a small lake in the middle of the house. I found it to be incredibly peaceful.

A short while later we divested ourselves from the tour and headed back to the Blue Diamond one final time to see if Stephanie got our message. We found her and the midst of breakfast and, just like that, we had another member in our group. She had flown up from KL the day before and I felt kind of bad to turn her around and get right back on a flight to the same place.

Next stop: Penang Airport.

“Next flight to Kuala Lumpur.”

I actually got to say that! Badass, right?

The lady at the Air Asia counter helped us out and about 45 minutes, a muffin and coffee later, we were on board a flight for the equivalent of about $50. Nice.

At Kuala Lumpur things got interesting though. We got a taxi into the city, back to Pudaraya Bus Station, where we’d bussed out from a day ago. The scene was a little bit different when we arrived there. Before, it was a bit busy. This time it was absolutely packed. It was difficult even to move through the throngs of people that had appeared at the place. We later discovered that that weekend was Malaysian labour day, hence the insanely busy condition of the station.
This also meant that all the buses to Mersing, our destination city, were booked, or at least filled in such a way that it was impossible to get 5 people on one of them. At this point it didn’t look like it would be possible for us to get out to the island the next day.

Leaving the station defeated and demoralized, sure that we’d made a terrible mistake by coming all the way down to KL again, Seth went into action. He managed to find a taxi coordinator, who then found us a gypsy cab willing to drive us the 6 hours to Mersing.

And so the trip began.

It was fine at first. Oddly enough, the driver had one of the sun visors on his car replaced with a really tiny DVD player. So, we sat back and started watching Kung Fu movies. The roads were crowded like the aisles of a Walmart on Black Friday, but our driver seemed to be doing a fine job of driving.

That was until we almost rear ended a car at about 100 km an hour. Everyone in the car shouted and the driver just barely swerved to avoid it. This set everyone in the car on edge but Winny who, having lived in Taiwan, was intimately familiar with this style of driving.
Well it freaked the rest of us the fuck out and the atmosphere of nervousness created by us made Winny nervous too. Seth and I weren’t even wearing our seatbelts at the time of the near miss, due to their buried position under the seat.

At the first rest stop we took Seth and I dug out our seatbelts. At this point the sun was down and everything was nice and dark, which just made us more nervous in the car. It didn’t help that we soon left the main highway we had been on and started driving through rural roads entirely surrounded by groves and groves of palm trees. We spent the next 3 hours on the edge of our seats, playing games like six degrees of separation trying to keep ourselves and the driver awake. By the time 11 PM rolled around I was almost passing out from exhaustion myself. I’m usually very good at six degrees of separation but Seth was just beating me left and right. It was pretty rough.

I did notice though, while on one of those lonely back roads, that I was finally noticing why on so many middle-eastern flags the moon’s crescent opens directly up. That was the moon that had risen over those quiet palm groves that night. It was a moment of peace in an otherwise remarkably stressful experience.

We finally made it to Mersing shortly before midnight. I’m not gonna sugar coat it, Mersing is well…not shitty, but definitely not amazing. It’s what you’d expect of a rural Malaysian town, although there are a disproportionately large number of hotels there.

Speaking of which, we checked into one of the hotels on offer, really the first one that we could find. As it just so happened they had two rooms available, a fan room and an A/C room. It was clear how this was going to play out. The three girls got the AC room, Seth and I took the fan room.

Now, I got a bone to pick with this particular hotel. If you’re going to have both fan rooms and A/C rooms, for the love of god, don’t put the fan rooms on the top floor and the A/C rooms on the middle floor. That’s just plain stupid. Heat rises, the A/C rooms should be at the top, the fan rooms on the first or second floors. To make matters worse, the bathroom on our floor of the hotel was laughably bad. It was shared between all the rooms on the floor and had no shower, only a squat toilet and a big vat of cold water and a bucket. Not so good.

But whatever.

At this point, I completely dropped out for the night and passed out. I was totally exhausted from the drive over. The bed was wonderful too…only mattresses on the ground again. At least the room was cheap.

Woke up the next morning hot as hell, of course. After blearily clearing the sleep from my eyes, I wandered down and joined Seth in the girl’s room. Winny and I relaxed in the room while the others went out to get the lay of the land and book a boat out to Pulau Tioman. They soon returned, with what seemed at the time to be apocalyptically bad news.

All the ferry tickets for that day to the island were booked.

To make matters worse, Lonely Planet had indicated that there was a large number of companies that ran speed boats out to the island for a higher price. Unfortunately, these had all been put out of business after an accident earlier in the year had claimed the lives of several people.

Which meant we were stuck in Mersing.

All was not lost though as we quickly found out. After hunting around the city for another hotel since our rooms were booked for that night, we bought ferry tickets for the next morning. The hotel we found was also a great improvement over the one from the night before, although interestingly we were in the same configuration as the night before, one fan room, one A/C room. At least this time Seth and I were on the second floor. Spirits were still a little bit low, until upon asking the owner of the hotel if there were any nearby beaches, she informed us that yes, there were.

Bonus!

She even hooked us up with another gypsy cab to drive us up to the beach for a damn good price. The driver, this time, spoke excellent English, and was pretty funny to boot. He had a lot of political opinions, and talked a bit about how he believed that the human capital of China would be enough to rescue the world economy. He also said Stephen Harper was a bad man, which just made me smile like a Cheshire cat.

We made it to the beach with our cargo of beer and quickly claimed a space. Well, not quickly, it took a little while to hunt down an appropriate spot. The beach itself was also somewhat dirty, so we had a bit of a time cleaning it up before we could sit down comfortably. Also, we were soon evicted from the spot we initially chose by some seriously pro fishermen. No one wants a hook in the mouth. No There’s Something About Mary reruns please.

But the day proceeded like you might suspect. We fiddled around in the surf and sunned ourselves. Hilarious enough, Melissa applied sun lotion to my back and did a great job except for my left shoulder which for the next couple months had an imprint of her hand sunburned into it where she’d missed the skin. I had a fun time facing down waves and pushing my way through them, as I always do for some reason. It’s like checking practice in hockey or something. I swear it’s some kind of psychological condition.

We actually had decent sized waves generally, including some pretty spectacular ones. Most especially, we had an unexpectedly large wave, maybe close to two meters, which surprised the hell out of me, Winny and Stephanie. Winny lost her sunglasses when the wave rolled her under water. They were a gift from her Aunt and were legitimate product. Fortunately, Stephanie, in a feat of amazing detection, found them a couple of minutes later. I got rolled just as badly as the other two in that wave, but unfortunately I was a bit closer to the shore. My back ended up with a wonderful network or scratches from sea shells I was dragged over on the sandy bottom of the beach.

We spent a while at the end just relaxing on the beach and reading before heading out to meet our cabbie at 6 PM. This time Seth and I shared the front set together, and the driver seemed a bit less interested than the first time when he had two girls for company in the front.

Having arrived back at the hotel, we showered, changed and walked down to the pier where we had a great but expensive meal involving, for me at least, the first steak I’d had in almost a year.
It was absolutely delicious!

And that was pretty much it for Mersing. We all headed back to the hotel. Seth and Winny went out to wander the place a bit more, I stayed in the room and took a few photos and did some reading. We would leave the next morning.


Island-bound and realizing he put too much detail in this post…

Ian “Mello Yello” Cantello