Georgetown

The machine at the ferry terminal wouldn’t accept the man‘s credit card so I help out. He offers the 2 MR (about 50 cents), which I refuse. Some French in front of me are boarding the ferry with me, masses have arrived to cross the short pathway. Despite the short length, some people are still napping. A woman motions to me when I put my backpack too close to the doors. Others are filming the arrival. I am not tempted to, all I see are high rises  and water. The exit takes forever and when I find myself at the bus stop I am wondering to take one except that I don’t know where to get a ticket and while I am wandering around a taxi driver offers to take me to my hotel for 20 MR and I give in. He is rather talkative. Seeing the number of taxis I have taken so far, it is a negligible quantity of talkative taxi drivers, in fact he‘s only the second one who talks to me and he keeps pointing out various sights. I am deeply impressed, at the same time  taken aback by the plethora of cars. I was hoping that things would be different from Kuala Lumpur, they are worse, though. Sidewalks are not constantly present nor traffic lights and it is rather challenging to cross the road.

The noise never stops. Well into the night people are driving somewhere. Comes morning they must be heading for work. However, it is the first city where I actually see pushbikes albeit it is beyond me why people are taking that risk.

I followed AI’s advice and did some HIT yesterday which gave me a tremendous headache this morning or a virus I caught somewhere. Which is why I go for a massage first and then to the Blue Mansion.

What I love best about Malaysia is the importance placed on food. As early as 6 o‘clock in the morning you can already smell the wafts of breakfast. And that is something different from home: lunch is the first meal of the day. Eating is generally a social occasion: there are food halls all over the place in which people gather. You can get a decent meal for 4 MR (less than a euro) whereas a decent coffee is around 10 MR. Seeing that the milk gets imported from Australia it makes sense, the fish, which is in many dishes, is just round the corner. Everywhere you go you smell food. It is rather pleasant to my nose, even durian has a pleasant touch.

While eating Indian food I made up my mind about the skyway, i.e., a train supposedly going up the steepest route in Asia and being part of UNESCO heritage: just go for it. I wanted to take a peek, the train could not be seen, so I got a ticket.

It was steep indeed, but I looked down anyway. Some kids were sitting in the very front to enjoy the view. When looking at the skyway I was in two minds about stepping on it, didn’t overthink it though. 

Later I did think about taking the stairs back, when I read something about having to go on my knees I quickly gave up on the idea. I bumped into some girls who had made the way uphill on foot, they still looked fresh though. Going up is another story.