Penang / George Town 🇲🇾

Finally the time had come, I had to give away my nail scissors, I wouldn't have thought that would happen in Malaysia, after all I have already flown around the world with them.

That is, I leave Kuala Lumpur and fly to Penang / George Town. I have already spent four days here and another one follows, and then I will stay in Koh Lanta for the remaining two weeks.

After a 50-minute flight - which was cheaper than the bus - I book a Grab (something like Uber) and drive to George Town. I definitely learned that I should not claim to be in Mallorca in my Instagram story again. 😂

The destination is House of Journey, my booking was successful, but the hostel is overbooked, so I get a private room with a Brit (and that's the program). Two single beds should be mentioned here!

Looks good here, so I decide to book two more nights the next day.

A group from all over the world quickly comes together and we spend the days together.

So we have a few beers in front of a store in the evening, which is not really worth mentioning, except that all the four-legged rodents run through the kitchen, which is somehow also the toilet. 😩🙈

So eventually it's enough and we go back to the hostel, when suddenly a totally drunk human being walks by and we giggle a little. About 10 meters behind him, a local asks the young lady about her well-being, because apparently she was afraid of the man. Finally: she was bleeding from her head, didn't know exactly why, and was running in completely the wrong direction. So our good deed of the day was to bring her back. It was not a big deal and it will probably just be a nice hangover! Great!

Day two is at least about the plan to go to the temple or the beach, but in the end we only end up in the hostel. Because on the bus on the way there, we realized that the temple would close 45 minutes later.

Same place as yesterday, crime scene in front of the hostel. Another local and this time not a human, but a rabbit. For some reason, we seem to be very responsible. The man hands us a rabbit, because he has dogs and cats at home and they don't get along, gives us his number, and disappears again.

So now we have a hostel rabbit named Roger.

Something seems definitely not quite right with this species here. We go to the monkey beach, but before that we have to walk through the jungle for half an hour to get to the pier and then take the ferry to the beach. There is a beach in the middle of the jungle, which is unfortunately quite littered, which is probably due to the monkeys. Otherwise, the human beings here at the beach are definitely not quite normal and so crazy that it is more eerie than annoying. In any case, it is a beautiful beach.

The evening is spent in our usual group, Ecuador, Mexico, Italy, and Switzerland are represented here! All great people!

Together we go back to the temple the next day, which is surprisingly something completely new. Basically Chinese, but also with Indian and classic Buddhist influences. Cool thing and best regards to the Pink Ladies in the gondola!

In general, we just hang out a lot and start our days more towards the afternoon, because it is really difficult to move in the heat at noon.

So we also start quite late towards the snake temple, thanks for the tip Giaco!

Already almost unspectacular is the greeting of a man with a boa about 2 meters long in his hand. The round 50 vipers that are everywhere in the temple and in the trees look rather unreal. But what happens next surprises all of us.

Already somewhat depressed, we wanted to go back, when we discovered the sign to the Snake Farm.

A really great, but also crazy older lady welcomes us, reaches into an aquarium, takes out a small snake, and starts talking. We negotiate among ourselves and decide to go in. The first few meters we are all extremely skeptical and cautious, but it gets better. By the way, the lady still has the snake with her and reminds me of people who carry a Chihuahua around with them.

There are everything from vipers to cobras, boa constrictors to water snakes. We are already impressed, when she opens a cage and tells us to come in. Extremely hesitantly, we follow her very determined request and suddenly everyone has touched a snake. Of course, that's not enough, now a golden python with a length of at least 3.5 meters appears, and when Chiara wants to walk around in a circle and the lady points out that she better not walk there, we can hardly believe our eyes, a seven-meter-long python appears! Seven meters, wild catch because he just had a goat for dinner and unpredictable because he wasn't raised from a young age. Somehow these animals are beautiful but also just as eerie. And because that's not enough, she asks her apprentice to make the king cobra a little bit nervous in front of the next cage, the third most venomous snake in the world, 3.5 meters long, which I will also take over in flip-flops for the gentleman. By the way, you have 15 minutes to react to a bite, otherwise the poison slowly destroys you from the inside and you can decide whether to go to the hospital or to heaven. That's what the lady said.

She said all these snakes would be killed because people hunt them and eat them or because they no longer want them to prey on their livestock. Whether that is true or not, I cannot say, but it is definitely very interesting and quite spooky.

Back at the hostel, we go back to the Chinese restaurant that makes really fantastic food. Otherwise, I also ate a lot of Indian food and all in all, there was definitely a lot of delicious food, but also not. 😄

With Chris from Ecuador, I'm now going to Phuket, he's continuing to India and for me it's off to Koh Lanta, where I will meet the E family, part of the L family, and the hero in person Rinki, I'm looking forward to seeing you all! I will probably stay in Bangkok for one night and visit Andrea and Primo before heading home.

Friends, it was an honor for me, thank you very much for the time we spent together and I hope to see you again on this world! ❤️