Penang is very close to Thailand, which is our next stop. So the population has many Thai citizens.
When the tsunami hit this area, about 40 people died here. Not quite as bad as in Thailand. We are in the city of Georgetown, named for Britain's King George III. In 2007 it was ranked as the 10th most livable city in Asia. On July 7, 2008, Georgetown was formally inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It is officially recognized as having a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in the East and Southeast Asia. Georgetown was built on swampy land theta had to be cleared of vegetation, leveled and filled.
After our FaceTime, Bob and I headed up to the pool. Seems it is open earlier that posted. We did one hour. Now more people seem to realize it is a great time to swim so it is getting a little crowded. Not so bad if you watch where you are going and make space for the next guy. We did one hour and got the naked show once more.
Breakfast in Compass Rose. I had eggs Benedict and Bob had Swedish pancakes. They are sort of like crepes. Being Sunday, caviar was available but Bob decided not to indulge today. We arrive at the port at 11 am so they had needlepoint this morning. Just a few of us show up now in the morning.
Our tour is "Penang's Spice Trail". Sounds better than it was. We rode on the bus for 2 plus hours to get to the spice Garden. It was only to take 30 minutes but today is a Thai holiday so the city was packed and traffic was at a crawl.
Building welcoming you to Penang.
This is the dock where we parked. A very pretty building.
One of the ferries that take you from one island to another. This one is quite colorful.
One of the high rises in the city.
And no place would be complete without a Starbucks.
Once we arrived at the Garden, we were rushed through with little explanation of what we were seeing. We did see one monkey. And some plants from the Amazon. But little else.
The welcome sign.
This is an orangutan. The local people named it "the person in the forest". He is really quick so Bob could only get this one picture of him.
These lily pads are imported from the amazon. So this is the second time we have seen them. They really are quite large.
They used these mortar and pestles to grind up the spices.
This is the Thailand New Year. And the tradition is to throw water on you as a blessing. They have warned us about this. We did not experience any water throwing, just the extra traffic.
There was a cooking demonstration which was one lady with a wok telling us how to make a curry chicken. We did get to sample the curry which was okay. Not too spicy.
They serve the curry chicken on this type of bread. She had shown how to make it at the last demonstration.
The making of the chicken curry is pretty traditional.
Across the street from the Spice Garden is this very nice beach. No one is in the water as it is filled with jelly fish. That is too bad.
Then we rode back to the ship via the ocean road and made it back in 30 minutes. What a difference. On this road are many upscale hotels and apartment buildings. And now matter how fancy the building, they still hang their wash out of the windows.
Now we are cleaning up for dinner and then cocktails.
Dinner in Compass Rose. When the head waiter was taking us to our table for two, Gami said not a good table for them, give them the table for four and remove the two settings. I think we get this added service because we are friends with Enzo.
Dinner was a chicken dish but I only ate half. Trying to cut back on my intake of food. And no dessert. Back to the suite where I started to watch "Saving Mr. Banks" once more. This time I was able to pause it and will finish up tomorrow.
We turned in our tour tickets as we did not want to spend 8.5 hours on the tour. So we will stay on the ship.
We gained one hour tonight. So that means we will be up early tomorrow.
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