LUMUT to PENANG

For the next stay we have pre-booked in Lumut on the north-west Malaysian coast and two hours south of Penang. It is quite spread out with several towns, old and new merging into one area. There is a huge port for fishing, boat building, oil rig construction and palm-oil export. There are a couple of huge modern shopping malls, each bigger than the whole of Nelson CBD. The rest is typical Malay township and shops. They are all starting to look the same. We have booked an apartment on a golf club resort. Swiss Court Apartments. This was done through Airbnb.com, a website that has private people renting rooms, holiday homes or apartments for cheap prices. The site is easy to follow, and comments posted from other guests, gives you a feeling for the place. This apartment has no bad comments at all so we decided to go for it. On a golf course? With a swimming pool? With wifi available? Luxury hotel on site that had facilities available to us? Can’t be bad.

We have been in contact with our host from Lumut, Kt, who has been so helpful with advice on places to go and see and has now offered to come and get us from the Hotel in Ipoh! The bus is only 19RM. Generally it is just an hour and a half. (10RM Malaysian Ringet =$4.00NZ) but he wanted to show us some places along the way. We had a lazy start to the day and went down for breakfast at 9.00am then packed and waited for Kt. He arrived smiling at 1.00pm and took us to a backstreet restaurant for lunch. It was an amazing cheap lunch and he explained all of the dishes. I think it was 20RM for the three of us. Then he took us to buy some provisions…beer and buns…… at Tescos Mall. Yep just like Tescos in UK. It was massive, clean and pretty much empty. Maybe it was the size and all the customers were spread out, but it was not that busy. Beer 6.5RM for 425ml. We then drove to the apartment about 30mins away. Not sure the isolation was detailed in the blurb, but for the next 4 days we were pretty much going to be stuck here. Hmmmm,,,, 4 days of golf? The apartment consisted of a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/lounge, with a small deck, 2x air-conditioners and a fan. Basic kitchen, but we didn’t plan on cooking, so checked out the restaurant. No food served from reception anymore… have to walk 1km to the luxury hotel for a meal or go to the Golf Club 1km the other way.  At least we have a fridge and a TV. We are acclimatizing quite well but the heat and humidity saps it out of you. Haven’t had to have a nana-nap in the afternoons yet.

Took a walk to the flash hotel and saw the swimming pool full of Muslims in their clothes, and on down to the beach which was full of plastic. Really dirty for a 5 star hotel which won awards just last year. The next beach was the fun beach with 4 wheel bikes, canoes, volley ball, big BBQ restaurant selling cocktails, fish and chips, and……. It was all closed. Only opens on Friday and Saturday. Just our luck it was only Monday! Found a restaurant that was open and ordered. We were the only ones in there except for 1000 flies that landed on your fork as you put it to your mouth, so of course you would swipe it away, only to have the food flung off the fork as well. The waitress got three fly repellent candles and circled our plates, but that had minimal effect. Most unsettling experience. Cathies chicken was uncooked in the middle and she couldn’t eat it so when she complained they credited the bill.

Next day we took a shuttle to Lumut to see about tickets to Penang, but also wanted to see the old town. The free shuttle took us but as the driver had little English, the young manager, who sort of befriended us and always wanted to chat, took it upon himself to brief the driver. Supposed to say look at Lumut bus station and ferry terminal and then back to old town to be picked up at Tescos at 6.30. Right.  Drove through old town, dropped off at bus station, then had to wait 4 hours to be picked up from a godforsaken place with a ferry terminal, bus station and a market that was only just opening, and a few streets of shops which were mostly closed. What did we do? Found a pub with wifi and sat and drank cold beers and caught up with family. Turned into a pleasant day after all.

Day three Kt called and took us out for the day. What a great bloke. We visited a chook farm which had 140,000 chooks laying thousands of eggs a day and the conveyor belts just transported the eggs to another building where the machines automatically packed them on trays. Huge place and interesting to see. Not allowed to see the caged hens though, hygiene reasons….. or? No smell though and the hens were in air-conditioned cages with plenty of feed. Give me free range any day. The eggs were quite brown and they considered our pure white eggs to be rejects. Next we were dropped off at Aeon shopping mall and were picked up 90minutes later. On the way back we visited a fishing village and got some great photos of a traditional fish market. Next he took us to a restaurant for lunch, another traditional experience which was just fantastic. Especially the price. Local prices for local people!

Next stop was a visit to a turtle sanctuary on the coast. The turtles come ashore and lay their eggs and they are taken and hatched and released back into the sea. Hundreds of them in tanks. There were really small ones and some adults too that were kept as they were sick or needed for research. We were let into a secure area not usually open to the public and allowed to handle the baby ones. The adults had really nice patterns on their shells. Another nice experience we would not have had without Kt. It was getting late so went further north to Kt’s village and ate at his local café. His wife joined us and we had a few beers and a really nice evening. All in all the stay in Lumut was very pleasant, made more so by the efforts of our host Kt.

Caught the bus the next day to the terminal in town and bussed to Penang via Butterworth.

To be continued…….

 

Selemat Jalan

Gary & Cathie