Fine dinning at the kids table

To those foodies out there I'll let you in on a little secret, Penang is one of the worlds top dining destinations and for good reason. Hawker food, aka street food is cheap, delicious and everywhere. The dishes are a mix of Chinese, Malay and Indian recipes which have stood the test of time. Every night as the sun sets you would see shops close and hawkers setting up their carts along the major corridors. Child size tables and chairs lined the sidewalks with spices and napkins. Within half an hour every table would be packed and people would be waiting to place their orders.

A five minute walk down the street had our heads spinning, so many wonderful looking dishes it was almost impossible to choose one. That's when you go with your gut and try something for an appetizer, then move on to dinner and finish with a dessert all for around $5 dollars a person. Some of the popular dishes were assam laksa, hokkien mee, and wonton mee.

Shark Week!

After spending a few days sweating like crazy in the tropical rainforest, we figured it was time to head back to a beach. This time we ventured to the northeastern peak of Malaysia for the Perhentian Islands. The two major islands are Perhentian Besar (Big Perhentian) and Perhentian Kecil (Small Perhentian). We choose Kecil for the younger crowd and beach parties. With only a short jungle path linking the East and West beaches, there were no lack of places to soak up the sun as it crossed over the island everyday.

The only problem with enjoying beers on the beach in Malaysia is that they are not cheap. Being a muslim country, it's sometimes hard to even find beers at restaurants and quickie marts. Fourtantly, for all the islands visitors we had the famous Orangutan, aka Monkey Juice, on hand for cheap. A tasty bottle of vanilla rum for the same price as two beers. Just be careful, while this goes down easily with Coke, it packs a punch and before you know it your stumbling back to your place. (Not that I would know from experience.)

We loved this island so much that we ended up staying for a whole week, despite the fact that our place had the five most disgusting outside toilets and showers I have ever used in my life. While most days we just relaxed on the beach, we also went on a snorkle adventure where we saw a turtle, and a black tip reef shark. Although the highlight had to be when a school of fish was following me taking tiny bites all over my body to eat my peeling skin. Fish bites hurt! Our last night we were treated to a lovely lighting storm which lit up the entire night sky.

A place to sleep

One of the interesting things about traveling is finding a place to stay. Sometimes you book in advance, other days you just arrive in a city and walk around until something feels right or you're too tired to keep looking. The one constant, is you have no clue what your going to find. Sometimes you find a place that's both cheap and clean, most the time your just happy if it's cheap. (If it's sketchy looking, a quick glance at the mattress under the sheet and along the base boards for bed bugs is essential.) We've stayed in a lot of places, over 30 now, during our three months on the road but this one was just begging for a post.

We booked Tahan Guest House in advance with no picture or wikitravel advice. It sort of looked like a preschool, and was bursting with color and paintings. The owner was a lovely lady that couldn't hold back her smiles or giggles. Her young daugther sang and danced in front of us like we were not even there. Every room was painted with a different animal or flower theme. We ended up in the lady bug room, which I'm pretty sure had to be good luck. 

National Park National Park

Once you arrive at the edge of Taman Negara National Park you hop on a bamboo boat to get to the small village where a few small chalets are waiting for you. The boat ride was on a muddy river and it took about three hours to get to the main park entrance. We started excitedly taking pictures and putting our hands in the muddy water, then soon after we took a nice nap on our way to the village.

Taman Negara translated to English is 'National Park', so we enjoyed calling it National Park National Park. National Park National Park is considered the oldest tropical rainforest in the world. While there, we went for a short trekking tour and canopy walk. We were wanting to see some rare animals that are only in Taman Negara, such as, Malayan Tiger, Crab-eating Macaque, and Sumatran Rhinoceros. Unfortunetly, the animals didn't come out to play, but the views from the top were amazing and worth the stop on our way to the Perenthian Islands.

eeek, monkeys!

The Batu Caves just outside of KL is a series of limestone caves and Hindu temples. The cave is said to be 400 million years old. The 272 steps it takes to get up to the shrine are well worth it. Hindu shrines are vibrant and beautiful, you can easly look at one for 20 minutes and keep seeing new elements. 

The only scary part is the hundreds of crazy monkeys along the way. They want your food, if it is by stealing, or you giving it to them willingly. Then after they are done with their treats, they will throw the packaging at you! Which we saw one girl get hit in the head with a ice cream container after the monkey had it's fill.