Sorry, Sarah here again. Although not sorry as you’ll soon see what the view is that I’m looking at writing this. Alan may have a comment or two to make in red.
We were up fairly early this morning. Neither of us sleep very well when we know we have a morning flight to catch. Plus it's hard to sleep with Sarah snoring so loudly right next to me.
We bid farewell to our small, cramped hotel with the hard bed and headed off to the airport. We very much enjoyed our time in Singapore; the lovely people, the great weather, the cheap taxi fares.
Check-in for our AirAsia flight was hassle free and we waited anxiously for our boarding time. The tickets were dead cheap and the airline has one of the worst reputations for delayed and cancelled flights. The previous flight at our gate was still there 40 minutes after its scheduled departure time.
It eventually moved away and our plane arrived. Boarding time was called, right on time, and before we knew it, we were pushing back from the gate 10 minutes early. An hour later, 25 minutes ahead of schedule, we arrived in Penang.
A few minutes later we had cleared immigration, 5 minutes later we had our luggage, cleared customs and were buying our prepaid taxi voucher. Then, everything changed. It was more than a little culture shock after leaving the clean English sign posted Singapore. Don’t get me wrong, I know what country we are in but after being in the pristine Singapore, it was so different. It soon became apparent to us that we may have picked the wrong place to stay. We are staying out at Batu Ferringhi, to the north of Penang and what I thought was about 10-14kms out of Georgetown, is probably a bit more and with quite the winding road to get here. We passed a few interesting sets of traffic lights on the way here. There is a counter telling you how many seconds are left on either the red or green light. When our taxi pulled up to a red light one time, those 68 seconds seemed to take forever.
Everything we had read talks about what rip-off taxis are in Penang and it hadn’t occurred to us that we have put ourselves in an area where everything we want to see is so far away.
Then we arrived and decided that yes, we are more than happy where we are. We are at the Hard Rock Hotel, in a seaview room, overlooking the pool. This afternoon I watched people parasailing and jetskiing outside my window and all is right with the world. When we arrived we discovered that the lock on our balcony door was not locking, so we told a staff member and she said she would let maintenance know about it. We went for a walk around the pool area and returned to our room no more than 10 minutes later to find that it had been fixed. That's great service.
We are here three nights. After doing some investigation online, I found that others were able to get a car and driver to take them around. Tonight we checked with the concierge and yes, we can get one for RM30 an hour (A$10). Sounds good to us and a pretty cheap tour for two people for about 5 hours. If that doesn’t work, who cares. Look at our accommodation and view. The room is three times the size of what we had in Singapore, a very comfy king size bed with lots of pillows and some very nice to sit in chairs:
We’ve already had a swim in the very quiet pool area. I could get used to this. The pool was even warm enough for me to swim in so we had a good old time this afternoon. I went down the water slide a couple of times although I did somehow manage to get stuck halfway the first time. The kids waiting behind me weren't too impressed.
Tonight we took a walk down the shops area looking for dinner but it started to thunder so we came back to the hotel and had dinner of pizza and pasta. The open-air restaurant is situated next to the pool area and just metres from the beach so we had a fantastic view while we ate. A little expensive by Malaysian standards but cheap by Australian standards. Just as well we came back when we did as it’s now been storming over our paradise for about 1.5 hours.
We were up fairly early this morning. Neither of us sleep very well when we know we have a morning flight to catch. Plus it's hard to sleep with Sarah snoring so loudly right next to me.
We bid farewell to our small, cramped hotel with the hard bed and headed off to the airport. We very much enjoyed our time in Singapore; the lovely people, the great weather, the cheap taxi fares.
Check-in for our AirAsia flight was hassle free and we waited anxiously for our boarding time. The tickets were dead cheap and the airline has one of the worst reputations for delayed and cancelled flights. The previous flight at our gate was still there 40 minutes after its scheduled departure time.
It eventually moved away and our plane arrived. Boarding time was called, right on time, and before we knew it, we were pushing back from the gate 10 minutes early. An hour later, 25 minutes ahead of schedule, we arrived in Penang.
A few minutes later we had cleared immigration, 5 minutes later we had our luggage, cleared customs and were buying our prepaid taxi voucher. Then, everything changed. It was more than a little culture shock after leaving the clean English sign posted Singapore. Don’t get me wrong, I know what country we are in but after being in the pristine Singapore, it was so different. It soon became apparent to us that we may have picked the wrong place to stay. We are staying out at Batu Ferringhi, to the north of Penang and what I thought was about 10-14kms out of Georgetown, is probably a bit more and with quite the winding road to get here. We passed a few interesting sets of traffic lights on the way here. There is a counter telling you how many seconds are left on either the red or green light. When our taxi pulled up to a red light one time, those 68 seconds seemed to take forever.
Everything we had read talks about what rip-off taxis are in Penang and it hadn’t occurred to us that we have put ourselves in an area where everything we want to see is so far away.
Then we arrived and decided that yes, we are more than happy where we are. We are at the Hard Rock Hotel, in a seaview room, overlooking the pool. This afternoon I watched people parasailing and jetskiing outside my window and all is right with the world. When we arrived we discovered that the lock on our balcony door was not locking, so we told a staff member and she said she would let maintenance know about it. We went for a walk around the pool area and returned to our room no more than 10 minutes later to find that it had been fixed. That's great service.
We are here three nights. After doing some investigation online, I found that others were able to get a car and driver to take them around. Tonight we checked with the concierge and yes, we can get one for RM30 an hour (A$10). Sounds good to us and a pretty cheap tour for two people for about 5 hours. If that doesn’t work, who cares. Look at our accommodation and view. The room is three times the size of what we had in Singapore, a very comfy king size bed with lots of pillows and some very nice to sit in chairs:
We’ve already had a swim in the very quiet pool area. I could get used to this. The pool was even warm enough for me to swim in so we had a good old time this afternoon. I went down the water slide a couple of times although I did somehow manage to get stuck halfway the first time. The kids waiting behind me weren't too impressed.
Tonight we took a walk down the shops area looking for dinner but it started to thunder so we came back to the hotel and had dinner of pizza and pasta. The open-air restaurant is situated next to the pool area and just metres from the beach so we had a fantastic view while we ate. A little expensive by Malaysian standards but cheap by Australian standards. Just as well we came back when we did as it’s now been storming over our paradise for about 1.5 hours.
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