Penang

Hopped over to Penang, Thursday, back on Sunday, in mid-July 2007. For the famous Penang food. All after drooling over the pages of a book on the subject.

We took a two-room suite at the Gurney Resort Hotel which was on the city end of that famous Drive, clean forgot that the Hawker Centre was at the other end! Aargh! it was a long walk to the HC the first evening. It wasn't worth the walk.

The beach was - there was no beach - as sand couldn't be distinguished from flotsam. The water that came close to the seawall was listless and muck-filled. Many said it's tsunami debris from the last year. Fortunately, there was no pong, as sea breeze was good.



Not bad lodgings for about $300 per night. The aircon worked very well; there were the usual daily stuff like towels and compli coffee and tea satchets. Don't touch the stuff in the fridge! They cost the earth! Water pressure for showers was strong, and the hot water remained hot. But room service was terrible.

On Friday night discovered they didn't provide hand towels; called them. They came after 4 more phone calls made every 20 minutes after the first hour's wait!



View of the sea was excellent, from an angle. But we weren't there for the sea view. View of the next door hotel was excellent too. It was like most of the hotels on this millionaires' row along famous Gurney Drive, built on the backyard of large old properties, many retaining the original bungalow on the front yard, like the one beside our hotel, and shown below.




Our hotel's recreational facilities were on the 7th (if I recall right) floor and they include the swimming pools, short archery range (in Malaysia, they have this weird tendency for what they think are "high-class" facilities, like this and horse-riding), table tennis table, and a very large sand pit. The nets over the whole area gives an idea of the quality of the guests; ourselves excluded of course.




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