Penang, Malaysia

We're leaving Penang today on an overnight bus to get to the Perhentian Islands. Penang's Georgetown district is an amazing place with a lot of history. There's a huge Chinatown here, and the town itself has a lot of Indian residents. Before Malaysia gained its independence, Georgetown was under British rule, and the three cultures somehow complement each other, which is pretty interesting to see. There's a mixture of Chinese, Indian, and British architecture everywhere you look.

We're going to the botanical gardens today. It's quite a walk from Georgetown, but we decided we needed the exercise and wore our tennis shoes (so hot, but my feet are loving my orthotics again!) for the hike out there. We'll see how the walk goes.

We're on a strict budget now that Brian is gone, and Cindy and I went to the grocery store to stock up on snack food and breakfast food so we can eat on the cheap while we're on the islands. We probably spent an hour trying to determine whether it was worth it to buy water at half the price we've been paying for it (Cindy sent her purifier home with Brian after she got sick the day she drank tap water she purified) and looking for the cheapest bottle of wine available ($10). Then we spent a couple of hours wandering around town, lost, since we're not the best map readers (Jason - you know all about my map reading skills), carrying 3 bottles of water each, plus a bottle of wine and food. Not the best plan, but we didn't want to spend the money we'd just saved on a tuk-tuk. Most of you would've seen us struggling and died laughing or told us we were insane, but it was really pretty fun.

We found a "favorite restaurant" here, too. The funny thing is . . . it's Italian. We ate pizza and pesto pasta last night with our bottle of wine, and loved it. We had breakfast there yesterday and will probably go back for dinner tonight. We haven't even seen Malaysian food on a menu - just Thai, Indian, and Chinese, and we'll be eating enough Indian food when we get to India that we didn't think it was necessary to eat that. I still can't stomach Thai food yet - at least not anything with coconut or etamame in it - and Chinese food is all fried, so Italian it is until we get to the islands and see what they're serving there.

I hope everyone enjoyed what sounded like a glorious weekend in the Pacific Northwest!