Day 18-19 Penang

After 24 hours of traveling it was wonderful to be in Penang. The best thing however was our day was going to be one of the easiest day's we would probably experience in a big asian city as we were meeting up with Sean. Sean is one of Mikes  work colleagues from Melbourne and is originally from Penang. Our dates somehow matched and we were so lucky that Sean and Lyn   were able to show us around, and introduce us to some of the local delicacies. Penang has arguably the best food on offer in Malaysia and some of the smelliest we were soon to find out. We toured through historical Georgetown to a very busy old style cafe where we tried the famous Laksa that had been boiling away all day. The spicy/sour broth complete with noodles and seafood was delicious! We had a feast that included Cendol a Malaysian desert with shaved ice, coconut milk, beans, and sweat peas it was interesting and surprisingly ok. Later that day we checked out some of the beautiful hotels along the water front, and Sean explained how there is a lot of new development going on in Penang on reclaimed land. After driving around this pretty city Sean & Lyn decided to go on a  hunt for Durian, a famous local fruit. We had noticed that this fruit was banned in many public places and hotels in Malaysia and we were soon to find out why...because of its smell. Think of the smell of gas, chuck in a few garbage trucks and blue cheese and you have Durian. We drove up into the hills to a roadside fruit stall, a colorful display against the green back drop were we tried Rambutan, Mangosteen, Jett Fruit, Star Fruit and of course Durian. The smell put us off completely but we couldn't pass up the opportunity to try it. It was heavy in texture like a root vegetable, very very strong like garlic, quite sweet but almost like a meat...very different and something I wouldn't eat again. The rest of  our time in Penang we walked the  streets of Georgetown, admired the  old  architecture, tasted the cheap and amazingly delicious hawker food, and prepared for the next step of our journey  into Thailand.