Penang, Malaysia April 2005

It was a long weekend in Brunei. Thursday was the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, so you could make it a 4-day weekend by just taking one day off. Unfortunately, we had made the decision to travel somewhere only a week before, so all the normal plane tickets were booked. Finally, we decided to take"Air Asia" , a local low-budget airline. There is no assigned seats or in-flight movies and you have to buy your food in-flight.

We caught a boat out to Labuan Island with no idea of where we would end up. I only had the name of a travel agent in Labuan. from Labuan there are only two choices of Air Asia destinations, Kota Kinabalu or Kuala Lumpur. I chose Kuala Lumpur. We hadn't been there in about 5 years. We caught the flight that evening, still with no final destination. From Kuala Lumpur, you can fly just about anywhere. We had also thought about catching the train, (part of The Orient Express), up to Penang ... but we arrived only about 45 minutes before we would have to catch the train, and it was a 30 minute ride into the city by express train, so we decided to fly to Penang instead.

We finally landed in Penang about 11:30pm. Caught a taxi to a business hotel, The Equitorial, and stayed there overnight since it would have been too long of a trip to the resort area of"Batu Ferringhi".

Penang Hill

Trishaw in Georgetown

Parasailing