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.

Kuala Lumpur - 2 days

We spent a long time the first morning in KL trying to decide what to do. Other than going to Batu Caves, we didn't really know how to spend the rest of our time. We browsed through a tourist map and guide book, and asked some questions of the family who owned the hostel of how to get places. We came up with some ideas, but decided to still go to Batu Caves first. The commuter train went directly there, so we walked over to the station and rode it over.

I got some delicious fried Indian snack and a hat with a really neat pattern while we walked over to the stairs up to the cave. I tied the rest of the bag of snacks to my belt loop so I didn't have to carry it myself, and we took a handful of pictures around at the bottom before starting our ascent. There were 272 stairs up to the top. Once we had climbed up a small portion of them, we started seeing monkies along the sides of the stairs, and clambering over them some. When I got close, the monkies became incredibly interested in the bag of snacks I had tied to my belt. One on the side grabbed the bag and tried to pull it from me, and when I went towards the other side of the stairs another one started eyeing me and approached. I was scared so I turned around and hurried back down some.

I successfully escaped with my snacks, but I had tied the bag too tightly to my belt loop, and I couldn't undo it. I waited til the monkies had cleared away mostly, and hurried up to reach Alex and Nina. After we climbed more of them, however, another monkey tried to get at my bag. I had Alex help me tear the plastic bag off my belt loop, but while doing so a monkey grabbed the inner bag that contained the fried snack. He spilled it all over the steps, and he and a few other monkies grabbed big handfuls and ran off - I got a bit of video of this part. After that they left me alone; my purse wasn't brightly colored and didn't look like food, I just shouldn't have brought those snacks with me. XD

We reached the top and poked around a little; it was very pretty, but we were all super sweaty cause it was so hot out. On our way down, we walked to the side a bit where they had a separate cave called the Dark Cave. You had to buy a guided tour to get inside these ones. We wanted to do it, but I was starving because I hadn't had much of anything for breakfast. I wanted to go down to get lunch first, and Alex and Nina were nice enough to consent. We ate at a vegetarian Indian restaurant at the base of the steps; the Thali Plate I had wasn't amazing but I greatly enjoyed the parts of Alex's Masala Thosa I ate. Afterwards we realized we didn't have enough cash anymore to pay for the Dark Cave tour, so we went on a 30 minute adventure to the nearest atm. It was so hot outside and so gross that we got a taxi back from the atm to the front of the caves.

Back up the steps, and this time Alex was the one who was silly and brought food/drink. A monkey bolted off the wall and tore his orange soda bottle from his hand. The monkey couldn't even open it; we saw him sitting on the wall for quite a long time, just holding the bottle and trying to bite at the plastic. The cave tour was pretty cool; there were some interesting bugs and bats in there, though there was this family that kept talking really loudly and over the guide and it was very frustrating we couldn't hear him.

After the tour we trained back to the hostel. We decided to go to the Luna Bar that Freeman had mentioned; he was there, so we talked to him about how to get there. He also told us about this great brunch deal at Sky Bar on Sundays, which happened to be our second and final day in KL. We decided to do that on the next day. We wanted to take public transit to Luna Bar, but the station for the train we needed was closed for technical difficulties when we got there. So, taxi instead. It turned out that there was a pool party going on at the Luna Bar; the whole staff had rainbow afro wigs on, the pool was filled with awesome floaty toys, there was neat music and flashing lights going on. We had some drinks and two orders of this delicious Spanish Mushroom appetizer. My drink basically tasted like strawberry milk, it wasn't as epic as the Frozen Space Cookie that Nina got.

We changed into our suits, swam around and hung out in the pool for a while. The most fun toys were giant orca whales and giant crocodiles that you could clamber up on and float around on top of. Nina kinda wanted to hang around longer in case more people showed up to the party, but we ended up leaving cause we thought that it probably wouldn't get many more people than were already there. We walked over to what Alex was told was a huge shopping district, and browsed the streets. It was mostly food and massages that were being sold. I bought 400 grams of roasted chestnuts from a street vendor, and we ate a mediocre meal at a mediterranean place. Afterwards, taxi back, and we went to sleep fairly shortly after returning.

The next morning we caught a taxi to a Deer Park. We were there 15 minutes before it opened, so we hung around until it did. It was a fairly small park, but we got to see a huge herd of deer. They came up super near the fence because of this family who was there at the same time and tossing them pieces of bread. They also had quite a few mousedeer enclosures. Mousedeer are so freaking cute, I would love to own one. Afterwards, we sat by a nearby lake and evaluated plans. We had originally intended to go to the butterfly park, but then realized it might not be a good idea while covered in bug spray.

Instead, we walked over to the nearby National Museum. It was really interesting; we learned things about Malaysia's history. We only had time to explore the two galleries on the bottom floor (there were two more on the top) before we had to leave to make it to the Sky Bar in time for the sunday brunch deal. Basically, for about $50 US we got a fantastic buffet lunch, access to the hotel's swimming pool, a fifteen minute shoulder massage, and unlimited cocktails from 12-3. The parts of the meal that I could eat were garlic bread, gazpacho soup, amazing samosas, a vegetable omelette, and french fries. None of the drinks we got really wowed me, but they were good enough.

We swam around in the pool for a bit, but it ended up getting kind of cold as clouds gathered. There was a lot of thunder, but we didn't really see any lightning. Probably because we were in the hottub around 3, it ended up taking forever for us to get our desert and bill. We asked about desert 2-3 times over 45 minutes and then we finally got it around 4: an amazing coconut pudding with carmelized pineapple, a banana crepe each, and some pandan / lime ice cream. Then finally our bill. Wed got out of the hotel around 4:30, which sort of sucked because we had wanted to go to a flea market that closed at 5. Our intentions were to take public transportation back, so we started walking to the nearest station.

However, while walking, the sky basically opened up and water started pouring from the sky. We hid under bushes to evaluate the situation, then found a blue tent and sprinted over towards it. We gave it about five minutes or so to see if it would pass quickly, and then started to try and flag down a cab. It ended up taking about ten minutes or so to do it because almost all of the taxis were driving on the other part of this three way intersection we were near. Eventually we got one and went back to the hostel.

Once at the hostel, we dried off a bit and told Freeman about our adventures at the bars he recommended. We had some time to kill before going to catch our evening train, so we decided to wander around Petaling Street, a famous shopping area in Chinatown (where our hostel was located). We got a couple souvenirs / gifts and Nina bought a purse. We tried some jackfruit pieces and their texture was meh, it tastes kinda like a melon. We also managed to finally find someone selling cut pieces of durian wrapped in plastic. I bought more roasted chestnuts, but these ones were inferior as their outsides were all sticky and made my hands a mess while eating them. Alex and Nina both bought satay from street vendors and ate them while wandering.

We ended up being kind of in a rush to get to the train station; we had to pick up our tickets before 8pm even though the train to Butterworth/Penang didn't leave unil 10. It was close, but we made it in time. I found a restaurant that had a vegetarian section; we sat down there and I got some fried rice and veggie-meat satay. The rice was too spicy and not that great, but the veggie chicken satay was totally amazing. The pumpkin soup Nina ordered was fantastic as well, even though I don't like pumpkin.

Our train ended up being delayed over an hour, and I sat and read while waiting. Once we were on, I was only one chapter away from finishing my book, but after I did I felt incredibly motion sick from reading while moving. I sat for a few minutes hoping it would go away, then just threw up in the bathroom and felt massively better. Fell asleep rather easily on my bed in the sleeper car.