Time to try out breakast buffet v2. The chocolate milk dispenser was the highlight, heaps of choices but not many I was interested in, I don't really understand having hot dinner meals for breakfast. Lucky we got up early for breakfast as there was a queue on the door afterwards waiting for an empty table, probably one of those annoying tour groups all showed up at the same time...
Walk to Komtar bus terminal, for some reason three very similar bus routes all go towards
Air Itam aka Ayer Itam, so just take the first one that arrives! Like Melbourne trams they all showed up at the same time. I paid for mobile roaming with my Singapore SIM so I had 1GB to use in Malaysia, which was more than enough for Google Maps.
Got out at the correct stop and started walking to
Kek Lok Si Temple, only saw one other person doing the same thing, most people on the bus were locals which was better than tourists. No cost to enter the temple grounds, just a small fee to take the funicular up to the top level or to enter one of the pagodas - didn't understand the reason for the second one.
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| Walk to Kek Lok Si. |
Lots of worship places along the way, had those joss sticks and all of these ribbons you could buy and tie up for good luck, except they all had quite weird English translations. For example, the 'more information' ribbon would be good for vague people, but I'm not sure who needed to 'hurry up'.
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| My favourite sign. |
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| Who! Who doesn't want to rear the ribbon? |
A bit disappointing at the top to see the bronze Kuan Yin statue wasn't quite finished, so you couldn't walk up to it. The main pagoda had about eight levels of narrow spiral staircases, but was good when you finally reached the top.
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| Pagoda. |
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| George Town in the distance. |
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| Kuan Yin. |
Walked the streets to
Penang Hill aka Bukit Bendera lower station, about 1.5 kilometres. Got a return trip to the upper station, it's a long ride but if you're not in the very rear cabin looking straight down you can't really see much on the way up.
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| The vertical train. |
I expected some good trails or forest walking tracks at the top, but was just two main roads leading to some place called The Habitat and maybe a monkey enclosure. There was a downhill path that went 5 kilometres all the way to the Botanical Gardens, but there's no nearby connecting bus down there and I'd already paid for a return ticket for the funicular. Got a bus back to George Town, wasn't one of the bus numbers I was looking for, but it worked out.
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| George Town in the distance. |
Had a very late lunch, still haven't managed to pay for anything with credit card yet. I don't understand why Malaysia still hasn't adopted this technology yet. The one dollar notes are fun and all, but I ended up with a wallet that would barely close because of all the notes and coins I was accumulating. When you aren't familiar with the currency it's a bit hard to quickly calculate the correct coins - made more difficult because the 20 cents and 50 cents come in two different colours and sizes!
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| Pepsi energy drinks. |
Due to the amount of walking my legs are usually at breaking point by the end of each day, but a session at the gym and swimming pool actually seemed to help.
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| Street food outside the hotel. |
Steps: 20,000 (3.5 hours)
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