Taking the tour or going for a ride

veggies at the morning market
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I am leaving on the night train to Kuala Lumpur so I decided last night to sign up with Jim the owner of the hotel to do his tour of the island.  I knew from just talking with him that he would be a trip.  Very opinionated and talk, talk, talk. Elisabeth decided to skip this trip so I and a French guy named Andre who could barely understand English that I spoke let alone Jim's pigeon form and he was hard of hearing and he seemed to be either depressed or just completely fried.  So Jim would say something and Andre would mumble and look quizzically at me and I would try to interpret.  Like something out of a comedy routine.  We took a spin around the town which is an old port town of the British East India Company.  Was very prosperous and has that tarnished rotting quality we all love in our former beauty queens.  Speaking of queens.  The road my hostel is on is called Love lane.  It is the former red light district.  It is currently the center of the Ladyboy pick-up zone.  All divided by ethnicity.  Indians on one corner, Chinese another, Malay a third.  The whole city is like that.  It is very separate in the way life is lived by your origins.

street styling in Penang
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Jim had convinced me that I didn't need to pay for seeing the fruit farm or the spice garden as he could show all that to me for free ( did I mention I paid him the exhorbitant price of 65 ringitt for the privaledge of hearing how fucked up the government of Malaysia is and how lazy the Malay are).  He is Chinese and so my tour was the Chinese version of what is important on the Island of Penang.

Jim drove us for 8 hours around the island.  I saw many tropical fruit trees and spices growing along the roadways.  We also stopped to visit JIm's friends who own a batik store, a pewter store, a restaurant and a fruit stand.  Neither Andre or I bought at any of these places except I picked up some Cinnamon, nutmeg and white pepper.

Trippy storyboard of Guatama Buddha's path to enlightenment
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One of the most memorable moments of the day was at the snake temple.  The temple snakes were taken out that day and put in a tree because of the holiday.  But next to the temple is a snake ranch in which there is a large number of snakes from all around the world.  I have my pic taken with a massive boa's face in my hand.  Usually there is a show but the snake handler was not there.  So another fellow decided to do a little show with the cobras anyway.  We definitely got our money's worth.  He took out the Indian cobra and it was pretty impressive making hissing sounds and striking.  But then he went for the king cobra which can stand up about 6 feet tall and strike with lightening speed.  And it did attaching its fangs right into the shoe of this guy.  There was an amazing amount of venom on his shoe and the fang punctured through the shoe and just, just missed cutting into his toe.  He had venom on his toe!  His sister who runs the place was upset to say the least.   I had the camera right there and didn't even get a shot.

Lunch time with the monks
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The city of Penang seems to be one of those lost worlds of strange people.  Lots of crazy poor street dwellers.  Lots of blind and crippled people who you know would not be that way if they lived in the west and had healthcare of any sort.  You could just sit at the hostel tables out front and watch.  And in fact it seemed most of my fellow room renters were doing just that.  When I left in the morning at 10am they were sitting there and when I returned at 6pm they were still there.  I surmised they were only in town for the ladyboys.

Malay mullet
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Elisabeth and I continue to travel together.  We took the ferry to the train and night trained to Kuala Lumpur arriving about 8 am.