Georgetown, Penang - the weirdest town in Asia

Malaysia, October 2011

After almost three weeks enjoying the increasingly hot, sunny and lazy days on beautiful beaches in south-west Thailand, we left the country for several days to renew our visas - which gave us the perfect excuse to visit Malaysia, on the peninsula to the south of us.

More specifically, the island of Penang, off the coast of NW Malaysia; a place known, amongst other things, for its relatively liberal attitude, and for the capital Georgetown's bizarre and wonderful mix of architecture (hence its UNESCO World Heritage Site status).

After negotiating long journeys crammed into the back of, well, cosy minivans, we finally arrived on Penang in the midst of an intense and biblical storm, complete with lightning hitting various structures around us and roads turning into rivers. But from there, our only dramas involved what cocktails to order and how long to stay in the pool....

 ....thanks to our dear friend Emerson, whose family happens to include Georgetown hoteliers, who happen to co-own several high-end establishments there, which happened to be incorporated into our plans. Emerson also happened to be passing through, and so the long and short of it was a week of lazy luxury as a wedding gift for us, and memorably opulent it turned out to be.

The first few days were spent at the Eastern & Oriental, a beautifully elegant, once-famed Raj-era hotel of a grandeur reserved for the likes of Noel Coward (who was, naturally, a regular guest); having fallen into disrepair, the hotel was recently restored and renovated down to the most minute of details - from the quality and source of marble used in the bathrooms to the pith helmets of the welcoming staff.

From our often somewhat modest accommodation choices over the preceding months, the E & O was a shock to the system in the sweetest possible sense; hours in the pool, hours over the endless choice of breakfast delicacies, and then hours over perfectly-prepared cocktails. We even recieved a happy honeymoon cake delivery from a duo of tuxedo'ed, all singing, all dancing waiters. A trial indeed.

 

From there, a little further west along the coast to the Lone Pine, another luxurious resort of a very differing theme; from Upstairs Downstairs to Connery-era Bond in a few kilometres. Our suite, the closest of all to both the beach and the pool, unfortunately lacked a revolving bookcase into a control room full of giant computers and a garageful of limited edition sports cars, but was otherwise peachy.

Again, pretty much impossible to leave; so much so that we even blew some of own brass on an extension for a couple of nights. We then spent another few nights in a cheap place in back in Georgetown, enjoying the surreal mess of archetecture, another couple of out-of-town jaunts and some fine food, before heading north of the border once again. A wonderfully relaxing and memorable fortnight.

 

 

 

Emerald Pool, south-west Thailand

We made a lightning, 24-hour hit-and-run excursion to KNC, a small remnant of virgin jungle rainforest about 50 miles south-east of Krabi, in order to chase a particularly special bird (see here for the full story) - but while we were there, we discovered the Emerald Pool.....

...... where we spent longer than we thought in the warm, clear mineral-rich water, with small shoals of fish swimming with us. wonderful.

The Andaman coast, Thailand - Oct 2011

After our wonderful fortnight in Taiwan, it was time to move on again; this time roughly south-west and into the maelstrom of Bangkok, where we were based for about five days or so. A couple of nights with our friends there followed by several in a guest house in the speeding heart of the city were enough, and as planned, we were ready to explore the rest of the country.

The hotel often proved hard to leave.....

And so we opted to head south all the way down the peninsula first, via a marathon (and surprisingly painless) overnight train and then minivan totalling about 16 hours in all. Well worth it when we reached what would become our base for the following two weeks plus - the Krabi River hotel, a cheap, comfortable and friendly place overlooking the estuarine river and the mangroves beyond in Krabi town, SW Thailand.

As for the town itself, a little scruffy around the edges, but not without its charms, which included - an unforgettable vegetarian cafe (a buddhist place, canteen-style for the locals, where delicious meals cost around 70p each), a night food market on the promenade (which we visited most nights), a very lovely mangrove walkway which we often strolled along at various stages of the incoming tide, the wide, beautiful river itself, and most importantly, plenty of long-tails.

Which was our main reason for basing ourselves there; Krabi is centrally and ideally located close to several stunning spots, easily (and sometimes only) accessible by boat - the traditional local model being the elegant, wooden long-tail. 

Our favourite food stall in the night market

Which, once we'd weathered the unusually full-on tail-end of the monsoon rains, provided us with safe passage to plenty of beautiful places locally. Close to home, we hired Mr Ann, an affable and very skilled boatman who took us on boat rides which included drifting through the silent mangroves at dawn, visiting his small traditional village on the otherwise inaccessible side of the river, and birding along both the river and the coast nearby.

The huge limestone outcrops, white sands & clear ocean of Railay beach - even better than it looks...

Further afield, we spent an increasing amount of time at some of the most picturesque and postcard-perfect beaches in Asia - all within a half-hour of our hotel, and where we wiled away long days swimming in clear turquoise oceans and kicking back under the palm trees.

picked that morning and macheted on the spot for us - Mr Ann's coconuts on the long-tail

On the river and through the mangroves

Some of the very pretty fishing boats at Krabi