. Turns out that lurching round the mountain bends at high speed meant we were due for a quick tyre change, but after that we were back on the road for the much straighter journey on to Butterworth from where we caught the ferry over to Penang island itself and the colonial town of Georgetown.
The town was established by the East India Company during the 19th century, and in the colonial tradition of the times, the company arrived, planted a flag on a deserted island and then build an English town in the middle of Asia. Wandering the town there is a marked difference between the various different districts, from the colonial buildings in the oldest part of town through Little India and Chinatown and then the new, financial part of town where we are staying.
Penang is also home to Nyonya style food - the original fusion food that combines Chinese, Malaysian, Thai and Indonesian styles into recipes that are particular to certain parts of Malaysia - apparently very tricky to make, but very tasty. Since arriving here we have slowly been working our way through a list of must-eats that have included fried oysters (served with pancake and egg, quite tasty but a little greasy), assam laksa (fish soup with noodles that tasted a little bit funky and convinced Liz she'll regret it later tonight), otak-otak (fish cooked in coconut milk - yummy), top-hats (small starter things in a crispy batter and stuffed with bean sprouts and other stuff - also yum), fried baozi (in a small shop that used to sell them from a bike - pork dumplings wrapped in pastry and sprinkled with sesame seeds - mmmmh), egg-tart (quite Portuguese in style from the same shop - looked like egg custard, mostly just tasted of egg).
It's not all been about the food since we got here though - I left Liz behind to enjoy the swanky hotel this morning (thank you Tesco points) and went to explore the clan jetties on the harbour
. For an unknown reason (unknown to me, I'm sure other people understand), various families decided to live on jetties when the town was founded and the jetties are still home to 100s of families, living above the water in well serviced houses. Having wandered up and down one of them I went looking for a good spot to take some photos - and chanced upon the long, concrete jetty just along the waterfront with nobody on it and just one boat moored at the end. Three-quarters of the way down (quite a long way past the barrier) I could make out that the boat said 'Customs' on it, but it was only when the Customs Officer actually got on a motorbike and drove down to meet me that I realised I may not be allowed to amble willy-nilly. All credit to Malaysian government officials though - he was very polite and apologetic when he evicted me from my photographic spot - and let me take a few more pictures before escorting me back to land.
From here we are heading across the country on an overnight bus to the East coast and the Perhentian Islands - we're back on the lookout for Nemo with a few days by the beach.
From Tanah Berata we decided to pay an extra 75 pence and spring for the VIP coach to our next stop - since it was going to take 4 or 5 hours we thought air-con that works and comfy seats might be worth paying that little bit extra for. The bus was run by the same company that took us up to the Cameron Highlands and all looked good when we climbed on board and settled into our plush, reclining seats for the journey down the mountain roads to Ipoh and onwards to Penang. That was until the driver floored it from the bus station, took the first bend faster than your average 17 year old boy racer and then proceeded to only use the breaks when there was something bigger than us in front - which considering the size of the coach wasn't that often. The coach was flagged down by a small group about halfway down the mountain who quickly came to regret their choice of lift-hitching - particularly the guy across the aisle from us who was either suffering from a heavy night or is not one of the world's natural travelers - looked like he'd had noodles for breakfast, and he wasn't the only person clutching a small plastic bag when we arrived at our first scheduled stop in Ipoh