Singapore and Malaysia 2018, May 07 (GT)

Still haven't perfected holiday travel. A 9:45am flight doesn't sound early, but working backwards became 6:00am breakfast and 6:45am leaving for the airport. And that's why I hate airports, even if you find a good flight time you have to factor in the worst case scenario for: travel to the airport, check-in, customs and immigration, multiple layers of security, boarding. I think late morning flights might be the best as we will find out later...

The flight to Penang didn't take long, maybe an hour and a half. Got a taxi instead of a bus because of  the small price difference and was much more convenient, only took about thirty minutes which was ahead of schedule for once. The driving conditions were similar to Bangkok, cars and motorcycles just drift in and out of lanes, somehow it works.

Just dropped luggage at the hotel and went to find some lunch. There was a shopping mall just down the road but it was deserted. This new product all the bakeries were selling was a chocolate croissant covered in cocoa powder. A chocolate man might enjoy it, but you just end up with chocolate powder everywhere! Also found these Pepsi energy drinks at the 7-eleven that I'd never heard of, pretty good.

Too much chocolate.

Got to check-in at the hotel then went off to explore George Town aka Georgetown for the afternoon.  On foot it was also like Bangkok - no footpaths and you nearly get killed trying to cross the roads. Passed some jetties, I think Clan Jetties and Chew Jetty, walking along these things you are just hoping the whole structure doesn't collapse under your weight.

Looks safe.

Chew jetty.

Went searching for some of the street art around the old town area, found a few good ones, others looked they had almost worn away unfortunately.

Street Art #1

Street Art #2 they like their bicycles.

Ended up at the Esplanade grounds, had a big clock tower and some fort. Decided to get the free city bus back towards the hotel, but it took somewhere between 15-30 minutes to arrive and wasn't worth the wait.

The esplanade.

The bus ended back at the Komtar building, it was difficult to navigate inside but managed to reach level 6 which had an elevator up to an observation deck near the top, not the most exciting of views.

George Town.

Went back to the hotel a bit early, watched Match Of The Day then finally got to try out the hotel pool, always ran out of time in Singapore and never got around to it there. The Singapore one was much better too, one of those infinity pools on the roof.

Steps: 21,000 (3.5 hours)