When: 28 May to 30 May 2010
Where: Penang, Malaysia
Hotel: Eastern and Oriental Hotel, Georgetown
It's the Vesak Day long weekend, and Poika insisted that we have to go somewhere. (He seems to have some sort of a strange disease that forbids him to stay in the country whenever there's a long weekend. I think it's called the Wanderlustitis.) We originally wanted to go to Hong Kong, but the when we added all the possible expenses, the trip turned out to be quite costly. Malacca was second choice but it didn't happen as the nice hotels were fully booked. So we ended up in Penang. We booked a terribly expensive flight on Jetstar (cost us SGD $500 each!), and a really nice suite at the
Eastern and Oriental Hotel
Day 01 (Friday)Arrived early in the morning, had breakfast in the hotel.
Went to Fort Cornwall, there wasn't much to see, except a few old canons and a really short fort.
We then chanced upon an interesting place called the
Pinang Peranakan Mansion. Pretty interesting tour.
Our guide, who claimed to be best in the house.
Having had enough of sweat pouring out from us, we had a dip in our nice little pool back in the hotel. Then dinner, and drinks at the street right across from us. And in our drunken state, paid 25ringgit each to get to a club to watch a hair cutting competition that's happening past midnight. How strange are these people?!
Day 02 (Saturday)We decided to take in the Vesak Day festivities and took a trip to Kek Lok Si Temple. It's a huge temple that sits on a hill, about half hour drive from GeorgeTown. We could see the tall pagoda and a very big statue of the Goddess of Mercy quite far away in the cab. We spent a couple of hours in the temple, snapping away, got too tired too hot, hopped in a cab back to town to get a massage, feed our hungry tummy and dip in the pool.
For dinner, Poika found a Peranakan restaurant in a street called Jalan Nagore. We were pleasantly surprised when we got there. It was a quiet street of Peranakan shophouses, with pretty fairy lights. We walked around for a bit, but there really wasn't anything much. Other than a pretty cool bike cafe. After our very short exploration, we went for Peranakan food at a place called Nonya and Baba. Yummy!
And of course, we ended the night with drinks at the bar.
Day 03 (Sunday)We have a couple of hours to spare before our flight in the morning. After our big fat breakfast, we went to the famous Blue Mansion just across our hotel. It's a quaint old mansion with quite a bit of history. It won a UNESCO Most Excellent Heritage Conservation Award in 2000. Was worth visiting and we had an extremely chatty guide to keep us entertained for over an hour. No photo taking allowed, but naughty me just had to do it.
It was overall a short and sweet holiday. We'd be really bored if we had spent any more time than we had there. Now, time to get excited about our next trip. We are going diving! Yay!
Some extras...
• Another
nice place to stay.
• And check out some of their recommendations
here.
My oh-so-lovely 2000-carat rubber diamond necklace
We also stopped at a few other HDB suburb stations like Khatib and Yishun. The suburbs all mainly look about the same, most have a mall and surrounded by lots of HDB flats. It was possibly rather interesting for Poika, but somewhat boring for me. He was expecting drunk and homeless people on the streets, but of course was greatly disappointed. The people are not very different from the ones you see in the city as 80% of Singaporeans live in the Suburbs in HDBs. The only difference is people are a lot more dress down when they are near home.
The interesting stop for me, was at Kranji. The station for the Singapore Turf Club. I've always wanted to visit, but never seem to get round to doing it. We paid a small entrance fee and saw a side of Singapore that was not very common. It was crowded with old sketchy men (as expected). The ground was littered with crushed newspapers and betting tickets. There were more sights of disappointments than exhilarating wins.
We then moved on to our next stop at Bukit Gombak. At the west of Singapore, is home to a little surprise of nature. There is a granite rock sitting within a lake and we call this place the Xiao (small) Guilin because it has scenery that looks like Guilin in China. But of course, Singapore's version of Guilin has apartment blocks in the background!
We (or rather I) played crappy ping pong with a beer in hand at a pop-up ping pong bar at Scape. Lots of hot chicks and fancy dress boys to check out while taking a break. 
Oh and of course Sami and I won in our Beer Pong match against Antti and Heidi. They were terrible at it! Muahahaha... 
Our attempt to be sporty turned out to be a lot of fun. We'd love to this again before it closes for good. Hopefully someone will open a longer term ping pong bar?
We just got back from a short weekend dive trip on board the Black Manta. Our first time on a live aboard. And my first time diving with Sami and Aleksi. It was a pretty good trip overall. The cabin was clean and spacious and the food was good.
We arrived at Tanah Merah Ferry Terminal at 6:30pm and sailed overnight to our morning dive site at the Anambas Islands on Indonesian waters. We had a total of six dives. Four on Day 1, and two on Day 2. The night dive at Pulau Aur was the best in the whole trip, followed by the last dive at Pinnacles 2.
So here are the girls taking turns at play-dough.
And Aleksi was the last man standing, together with Sancia and I at 4am.
Having had enough of sweat pouring out from us, we had a dip in our nice little pool back in the hotel. Then dinner, and drinks at the street right across from us. And in our drunken state, paid 25ringgit each to get to a club to watch a hair cutting competition that's happening past midnight. How strange are these people?!
And of course, we ended the night with drinks at the bar.
Poika's new wife, Charlotte. I have to say the both of them look real cute together.
