We were up very late
this morning. The clocks went forward an hour when we got to Malaysia
and we obviously didn't get a whole lot of sleep the night before, so
this morning represented a much-needed catch-up. We went out to look
for somewhere to have breakfast, ending up in a rather fancy hotel
restaurant. We sat down, but when we said that we wanted to order
some breakfast, we were told that breakfast was finished – it was
after 12pm! Thankfully, the waitress spoke to the kitchen and they
agreed to keep breakfast going for us. It was all a bit expensive,
but we splashed out and let the girls get whatever they wanted and
they (Zoe in particular) were over the moon to get some nice Western
food for a change.
As we ate, the
heavens opened up, and the streets were soon awash with rain, but it
had finished by the time we paid the bill and headed out to do some
exploring. George Town has gone to a bit of an effort to gussy itself
up for tourists. The centre of the city is World Heritage-listed, and
it's full of little metalwork caricature signs that depict and
explain little nuggets of its history – including one marking the
spot where Jimmy Choo made his first shoes. It has also become known
for its street art, and we made a point of visiting a few of the
better-known examples. Mostly, however, the city just looks a bit
tired around the edges. Regular readers will know that I have a thing
for faded grandeur and although George Town doesn't have a lot of the latter, it has plenty of the former. Many of the shops (which
mostly seem to describe themselves as 'traders') have wonderfully retro large metal
signs over the entrance that were obviously put up decades ago. The
brutal tropical sun has stripped most of the colour out of them,
giving the whole place a lovely time warp feel. Our wanderings
eventually brought us to the area known as Little India, where there
were lots of clothing shops. Kate and the girls tried a few on. Many
of them were incredibly cheap, but of course the only ones that
looked nice on weren't.
The guy who runs our
hotel – 'the Boss', aka Tony - is a very friendly and helpful old
Chinese Malay and he has given us several suggestions of places to
eat. For lunch (at about 3pm), we visited one of these – an
Indian/tandoori restaurant called Kapitan, where we got some good
butter chicken, naan and tandoori chicken, and some rather watery
dhal.
When we got back to
the hotel, we arranged to stay a few more nights and then when back
to the room for a bit more rest and a bit of schoolwork for the girls - they finally got to the end of the workbooks Kate has been carrying around for the past few months, cue for much celebrating all round. In the late afternoon we went out to
Monalisa again and got some beers and chips again, with a big free
plate of pineapple again. For dinner, we walked down the road a
little to where the night noodle market had set up. There were
several carts set up by the side f the road, each selling a different
noodle-based dish, along with some very battered tables and chairs.
We tried a few different types, including the local specialty char
kway teow, a very nice rice-noodle stir-fry. Not long after we got
back to the room it started to rain, morphing into a nice, heavy
downpour complete with thunder and lightning.
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