Merry Christmas from Penang, Malaysia!

We’re on an island in the tropics to celebrate Kaeden’s first Christmas! We left Kuala Lumpur early in the morning of Christmas Eve, and arrived in Penang. First thing we did was eat. Then we ate some more, saw a few things around town, and ate some more. We also did a couple of touristy things, but there was definitely nothing that thrilled us. Even their best attraction, which is Penang Hill, was a real bust. People line up at the crack of dawn to get tickets to go up the funicular to the top of this hill. We got there at 10 am, and couldn’t get tickets till 2pm. So we got the 5pm tickets and went home for a nap first! Then we went back and rode up in a stuffy, claustrophobic tram, got to the top, saw a foggy view, and had to ride another 1/2 back down in the same awful tram. The other weird attraction was the Toy Museum. We got there at about 8pm, and it closed at 9pm, so we asked if we could get a deal cause the price of the tickets was not cheap. The guy at the desk said that it was impossible, cause his “employer was watching from the video cameras.” The weird part is that this guy was also the same guy in the photos in his brochure (which was another strange thing as it was all photos of him posing in weird ways beside these life-size figures of action heroes). Me things there was something suspicious…

Not really a fan of Penang. We’re in the city of Georgetown, which feels like Chinatown in Toronto from back in the day. Lots of run-down structures, which were probably really beautiful at one point in time as this was once a British Colony. Nowadays, it’s a mix of British colonial buildings and things that were built in the 60s and 70s. The residents of Malaysia are a jumble of ethnicities and religions – Malay (who are native to the country and speak mostly Malay and are mainly Muslim), Chinese (who speak a mixture of Hokkien and Cantonese and Mandarin), and East Indian. It’s a strange melting pot as they all say they get along well, but yet they’re all in their own very defined pockets of life, even in this little town.
On the bright side, our hotel has an agreement with another resort about 15 minutes by car, so we were able to spend a couple of days, including Christmas Day, lounging by the pool and getting foot massages! The other weird highlight was meeting a bunch of strange looking Santas, but Kaeden got photos with all of them :) (see Mini Superman blog for photos)
 
From left to right, top to bottom:
Riley with his Monkey leash and Kaeden with his new Care Bear toy; Randy’s favourite bus to Batu Ferringhi; The funicular up Penang Hill; Atop Penang Hill – so glad we came for this view; Turtles at some famous temple near Penang Hill; Cereal is the gift one of the Santas gave out to the kiddies; Christmas morning buffet breakfast; The kids fast asleep after a hard day of playing on Christmas Day; The E&O Hotel in Georgetown; At the Toy Museum- the floors were so awful that we were scared they were going to fall in; Urinals at the toy museum; Kaeden & monkey at the Botanical Gardens; Randy & his giant fern (sorry, I can’t remember the name of it!)