Malaysia!

Well, after our adventures in Southern Thailand, we made it to Malaysia. Malaysia is a federal constitutional Monarchy, believe it or not. It has substantial Chinese and Indian Minorities mixed with the Malay culture. The population is about 26 Million, 57% of the people are Malay while the rest make up the Chinese/Indian subset. Malay is the official language, but when we were there, almost everyone spoke some form of broken or fluent English. Manufacturing constitues the largest single component of Malaysians economy. Tourism, palm oil, petroleum, natural rubber and timber are other major contributers to the economy.

Now that you've been briefed on some facts of Malaysia... Our first stop was the island of Penang. On the map you'll see the small arrow pointing to the island, right above Georgetown. Don't be fooled by its small appearance, the island houses millions of people and is quite beautiful. I loved it here because its so tropical and serene in nature. The skyline envelopes tall skyscrapers mixed with lush tropical forest beside small houses on stilts and other interesting architecture. Because Malaysia was once colonized by the British, there is also some European architecture that can be seen throughout the cities.

In Penang, we stayed in Chinatown, a large area close to "Little India". We found a great little guest house called the SD Guest House. It was basic but nice and clean and looked pretty new. It was only 35 ringgit (which is about $12 CND). The staff was really nice and helpful. We went on a day trip that was organized because we had tried to do our own thing the day before but it was difficult to organize and took a while for us to get around. So we paid this guy about $60 ringgit each and he took us to 5 or 6 different areas of Penang. Our first stop was at Penang Hill now referred to as "Bukit Bendera", one of the historic sites apparently built by some British Colonials originally in the early 19th century.
These are some of the pictures from the Train and views from the top. It was pretty nice up there except it was still early in the morning so there was quite a bit of fog which limited our view. There were some cool temples at the top as you can see in the picture above. After this, we headed off to a famous Chinese temple. I forget what it's called unfortunately but it appeared to be quite famous. It was quite beautiful, it overlooked the city and was on a hillside surrounded once again by lush tropical rainforest. Quite the impressive site to see.

That's one thing I definitely enjoy about the Malaysia culture, there is so much of it. There are many different temples and mosques to visit.

Well I think I need to break this post up into a few. This one is quite long. So I'll leave this one at this for now, upcoming I'll talk about the monkeys, the butterfly farm, and the lovely amazing pictures of the Petrona Towers!!! Can't wait!