Malaysia – Penang

…Penang!

We took the ferry which took about 3 hours and cost 70MYR each. We then could walk from the pier to Georgetown where all the hostels are. For the first two nights we stayed at art hostel 1921, the third night at love lane in 54 and for the last one an air bnb near the airport. The hostels were both pretty shitty but the cheapest we could find! The reason we changed was because the second one was slightly cheaper but we wish we hadn’t! It was so bad. If you’re ever in Penang don’t go to love lane inn 54 whatever you do, it was so dirty and the owner was an arse.

Georgetown is a really nice relaxed place, there isn’t tonnes to do here but have a good walk around and enjoy all the street art and great local food! If you like Indian you’re in luck.

There are a few day trips you can do from town, one day we went to Penang hill and the botanical gardens. You can either get the furnicular up to the top of the hill or walk. We decided to walk, take water with you and be prepared for a decent hike. It took us about 1 1/2 hours up and an hour down and was pretty much vertical the whole way. There are places to rest along the way, in the Malaysian heat you really need these. It’s worth it to get to the top though and it felt good to have achieved the climb!

After getting down we had a lovely cool down walk around the botanical gardens which are free to get in to. We also saw a few white eyed monkeys outside the gardens which was really cool as we hadn’t seen these anywhere else in Asia!

The other day trip you can do from Georgetown is Taman Negara, unfortunately we didn’t have time for this but heard good things about it from lots of different travellers.

Next stop the Perhentians…

 

Indonesia – Gili Trawangan (Gili T)

Our hostel was close to the harbour (about 10min walk) and we stayed there for 3 nights. The hostel was basic…but it was cheap so we didn’t expect much! We are not really sure how we feel about Gili T, some bits were nice, some bits not so much. The west side of the island is much better, but a bit more pricey as it’s where most of the more expensive resorts seemed to be. If you definitely want to go to Gili T, we would say two/three nights is plenty. We did do a really good day boat trip which was 80,000 IDR pp and went to a couple of snorkeling spots and then to Gili air. Seeing Gili air we think we should have stayed there, seemed much better!

On our last day we met our friend Katie from Oz and cycled around the island and went to take the obligatory Gili T swing pics, bike ride around the island and swing pics are a must! Such a fun day :).

As the weather had calmed down we took the fast boat back to Bali, to a small place called Amed. This boat cost 200,000 IDR pp. We went straight from Amed to Permuteran as we were starting to run out of days, this was our most expensive journey at 550,000 for both of us. That night we stayed in a cute little homestay, the owners were lovely.

In the morning we headed to the main road and got a local mini bus to Gilimanuk, this cost us 45,000 IDR which was a massive rip off, make sure you try and barter more! We just jumped in the first one and after we had paid then saw the locals paying 2,000 IDR each!

At Gilimanuk we got the public ferry across to Banyuangi/ Ketapang which took about an hour and cost 9,000 each. Luckily this was a fixed price so as tourists we didn’t get ripped off again.