Penang - 1 day

We woke up rather early when the train got into Butterworth. It was like, 7ish, and was supposed to be even earlier technically but then there was the delay in leaving. We trudged over to the ferry station, but we just missed one so had to stand around for a while. Eventually another ferry came, and I dozed in my seat on it and didn't even notice it had left. I was so confused when Nina and Alex were like "we're at Penang" because it totally didn't feel like it had moved at all. We got off the ferry and managed to find a tourist map of Penang. There weren't very many spots marked with names that indicated their activities, but we decided to go to this area where there was a toy museum and a floating mosque.

We decided to taxi there, and asked a few taxis. The first one said we weren't going to get anyone to use a meter in Penang, but we wanted to try anyway cause that was so much cheaper than agreeing on a price beforehand. Finally some guy got us a metered taxi - but it ended up being a cab that's meter was running like at twice the speed it should have been. :| Would have ended up being cheaper haggling with the guy who refused to use meter in the first place. Ah well, lesson learned. Don't use the big blue van taxis. He also didn't really know where he was going, and didn't speak English well, and took us to a hotel first but some random guy on the street was able to translate for us and we made it to the toy museum.

Only.. we ended up spending 100% of our cash on the taxi, so we had to find an atm. And apparently the closest one was a 15-20 minute walk away from the toy museum. We finally made it there and got out money. We decided to walk to the floating mosque first because we thought we were very close to it after the walk we made, and then we wouldn't have to backtrack later. It was a bit confusing to find, we got contradicting directions from our map and asking locals, but we made it there and wandered around it some.

We wanted to find breakfast, but nothing looked super appealing for a while. Eventually, back near the bank where we used the atm, we settled on this random restaurant. Nina wanted something more breakfast-y, and I wanted something more vegetarian, but I was carrying around a bag of mangosteen so I was glad to have a place to sit down and eat at least. The guy told me a couple of the dishes were vegetarian, but as soon as he served me one with pieces of chicken in it I no longer trusted him and didn't really eat any of my $2 meal. My mangosteen were delicious, though. Best fruit ever.

Afterwards, on our walk back to the museum, we found what we had really been looking for - a delicious amazing bakery. I ate a slice of chiffon cake and had a can of chrystanthemum tea, and bought another slice, an apple pastry, and an almond cookie to eat later on our long train ride. I was kinda tempted to buy a whole chiffon cake (only $5 USD!) to eat later but we were a little worried about running out of cash again so we held off on it. Nina tried my other piece of cake later and realized how amazing it was, and was sad she hadn't tried it while we were at the bakery cause she totally would split the whole cake with me. We wandered over to the nearby bus depot to use the restrooms, and spent a few minutes looking at a sadly adorable litter of very unhealthy looking kittens begging for food near a table where some people were eating.

Finally we made it back to the toy museum, paid our admission fee, and wandered around for like 45 minutes. It was well-sized for the amount of time we had to spend there. It was mostly action figures, some dolls, some life-sized giant things, some other types of toys. Alex was saddened by the lack of things like blocks and legos. We caught a bus back to the ferry station (much cheaper than the taxi, and not much slower, tbh) and then ferried back over. I got a garlic bun and more tea during the ride, and bought a bag of roasted chestnuts on the way to the train station.

Our train was delayed about 20 minutes, not a big problem, I started reading the second book I brought on the trip, The Eye of the World. We got on and I was surprised because the sleeper cars were in their seat form, not their bed form. I wanted a bed so I could more easily nap and relax for the journey XD. I spent a couple hours blogging, read a little bit, napped a little bit. We had to get off at the border and get our passports stamped / some papers processed for leaving Malaysia and entering Thailand.

Shortly after we got back on they came around with menus for food. That was really exciting because we weren't sure the train would sell any food, since it was super tiny and didn't appear to have a food car or anything. Also, I had eaten all the pastries I had saved and all my chestnuts within the first few hours of the train ride. Oops. Anyway, what was even MORE exciting was that they had a specific vegetarian meal on the menu! Yay! They handed out food in a kind of confusing manner, sometimes setting down bowls or plates and then taking them away a bit later, but I ended up with a plate of pineapple, a bowl of soup, two bowls of vegetables, and a plate of white rice. The soup was questionably vegetarian; it looked like vegetable broth, and didn't have any chunks of meat, but Nina's bowl of it had what was probably one chunk of weird looking chicken. I had eaten some of mine before noticing that chunk in hers, so I just finished eating the cabbage / root vegetables in mine anyway. The vegetable bowls were AMAZING. Probably my favorite meal I've had on the trip. There was baby corn, broccoli stems, cabbage, tomatoes, carrots, and ear mushrooms. No green onions for me to pick out, omg! It was a super garlicky and slightly gingery sauce, super flavorful without being spicy. Managed to eat both bowls, somehow. I want more, now. :P

A bit after dinner they turned our bench-seats into beds. I settled into my top bunk, and stayed up a little bit chatting and reading but went to bed around like 10 I think.