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.
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