A Big Adventure

(This happened on Friday 31st December 2010) in Penang, Malaysia

New Years Eve

Our last visit to Penang (read about it here) was brief and terribly unsatisfactory with a frustratingly bad hotel (read about that here) with terrible service. So disappointed were we that our planned few days stay was dropped almost immediately in favor of a trip on the first bus out of ‘dodge’.

Our stay in Penang this time is even shorter a pathetic 4 hours.

With very little  open in Malaysia until around 11:00am that left a barely usable hour. But we decided nevertheless  and take a look around, and, we are very pleased we did.

The ship pier is in a good part of town, just a short walk from a nice Indian influenced area. We also luckily stumbled upon an old merchants house that was turned into a museum. It was stunning, really well presented and definitely worth going ashore for.

Chinese Merchants House Penang

After that we had a wander around all the Indian and Chinese shop’s and businesses.

Sofia took great delight in buying the finishing touches for her New Years Eve costume.

Then a bit of time walking around the streets and it was time to head back tot he ship, on the was we passed a park that was preparing for a big news years eve party, with a big stage and a band doing a sound check. Also, some guy was flying around on a powered hanglider.

Back on the Ship we vowed to return to Penang, it had won us over and given us a real interest in going back for longer next time.

We went to bed to rest ready for a big new years eve evening.

Then it was time for dinner, wagyu beef was totally unexpected but was superb, the food on board ship on the whole has been much better than I expected.

Sofia was dressed in a full on Indian costume (dot not woo woo) and she looked stunning (if I do say so myself) even the few genuine Indian ladies on board were complimentary.

She had gone the full mile, with traditional jewelry on her forehead, around her neck, her eyes and ears and both wrists and finally her hands. Amazing.

Back in the bar we drank as the on-board bands poured out their own particular brand of not very good entertainment, unlike the food the entertainment WAS as bad as expected.

Both entertainers a duo and a solo guy were using poor quality backing music and had a VERY limited range of songs which we heard every night and twice nightly at least we had to suffer Elton John’s, Nikita definitely not his best work, but these two ‘entertainers’ both played the same bloody song, often within a few minutes of each other, HORRIBLE.

As we moved to midnight the music was amped up as we had some old favorite disco songs done badly and because the set lists are so sure they started repeating their sets.

Save some money and get a decent DJ,  who can play different types of music for different occasions, pre dinner, post dinner, dance, relax, chill, what ever!

And, to cap it all the band obviously were not even aware that midnight was approaching and only a countdown shouted from the bar enabled everybody to know when the new year started. Sofia and I stayed until the bar was almost empty and finally went to bed, drunk and tired.

It could of course have been done much better but you cannot have everything I guess.