Penang: Day 1

The original plan that Jillian (the Australian I met on the bus yesterday) and I had for today was simple: Rent a couple of scooters and check out the island. The traffic that greeted us this morning changed our minds pretty quickly. Yesterday, it turns out, was no indication of your typical day on Penang roads as it was a public holiday.

I started my morning early to catch the town at sunrise.



After a quick breakfast, we agreed to split a car rental to see the sights. This alone took half the morning because Hertz was fully booked. They pointed us in the vague direction of another rental place but we couldn’t find it. We ended up lining a car up through a hotel we passed along the way. Again, vague directions were given and it took forever to find it. The street wasn’t even in our map. It was close to noon by the time we finally took possession of our white (and air conditioned) Proton Wira. Jillian took the wheel because of her experience driving a standard right hand drive vehicle. I took the role of navigator.

Though I had bought a couple of maps, I wasn’t quite prepared for the confusing road systems here. See, your typical main road here consists of a one way street with segments going in the opposite direction inserted. This, I assume is to make things interesting for stupid tourists like myself. As and when one of these direction shifts was encountered, I had to quickly re-plot our route, which often made things worse.

The street names here are also sketchy. For example Jalan Kapitan Keliling is also referred to as “Lebuh Pitt.” Also, Lebuh Farquhar runs parallel to Lebuh Farquar. Malay words for street and lane are also interchanged with their English counterparts for added confusion.

Also, “Jalan Sehala” is not a popular street name, as I had initially thought. It means “one way street.” Don’t bother looking it up in a map.

I’m glad Jillian is a good (and patient) driver.

We finally made it up to Penang Hill for a ride up on an old tram car. We grabbed a bite to eat, caught some shots of the view and visited a Hindu temple at the top of some stairs. The cooler weather at the top of the hill made the trip quite pleasant.


Our next destination was Snake Temple, near the airport, but after an hour of circling a bunch of roads, we cut our losses, topped up our gas tank, bought a better map (it marks which direction the roads go) and headed to Batu Ferringhi for a nice sit on the beach. By the time we got there, we were too stressed from the day's driving/navigating to properly enjoy ourselves.

We met up with the group for a nice Italian dinner and shared our day’s stories. Keith and Bev (the Irish/British couple) couldn’t find Snake Temple either so I didn’t feel so inadequate.