Travelman Malaysia: Frustration turns to elation in Georgetown (well, not quite elation, but it rhymes nicely and I had a good time)

I waited alone, I was the only one awake, I took my socks off, turned them inside out and put them back on hoping they would dry faster this way. I sat at a table by the door and left my shoes off. My shirt was still wet. It would dry in minutes though. I was more worried about my socks, because I'd be covering them with my shoes as soon as the mini-van pulled up to take me to the bus to Kuala Lumpur.

I often wash my clothes in the shower in the evening or the morning and put them on wet if I know I'll be outside right away. Everything dries quickly in the heat, then gets damp with sweat within a few moments. I was in Georgetown and I'd just spent the night at The House of Journey. It was a memorable night.

The previous day I'd taken the ferry from Langkawi. The ferry company played a Bollywood movie for us on a screen. It was, um, a little odd. There was a tough guy hero, who could fight ten guys at once, and he could dance. There would be an action sequence, and three minutes later an extravagant dance number with twenty back up dancers. It was as though the Indian Patrick Swayze made a cross between Dirty Dancing and Roadhouse directed by Quentin Tarantino.

Here's the hero, having just punched someone out...

An hour into the epic movie, the bell rang in the passenger cabin. It was the loud bell that usually rings to alert the passengers that we're arriving at the port, but we weren't at port, there was a tiny island about a km away from the port side, but that was it. The bell rang again, then a third time. The boat slowed down. The passengers began to exchange curious looks. The young Australian ladies in front of me began to get nervous. I joked that maybe we were going through a school zone. The ladies male friend behind me mentioned that they stopped on an island on the way to Langkawi, so maybe that's what we were doing. The boat was no longer moving forward, we were idling.

The women made half joking comments about drowning. After a couple minutes the boat began to move again, slowly, but it was turning around. We traveled about a knot and slowed again, and stopped. Still no word from anyone in charge. The Australian guy overheard a local in the back saying he'd heard it was a problem with the fuel pump, but they fixed it and we were going to continue onto Georgetown. Phew, there'd be no swimming to the deserted island on this day.

Upon my arrival on Penang Georgetown I found the place that Shel Silverstein said the children know, the place where the sidewalk ends. It was every block or so in Georgetown, Malaysia! It would be there, nice and wide, and end, no crosswalk to get you diagonally across the street to where it began again, and then ended again on the randomly angled busy streets.

So after dodging a lot of cars in traffic, and finding out the Red Court Inn Hostel was full, I arrived at The Journey House. The employees there were extremely helpful and gave me directions to where I could get some food, which I forgot, got lost and ended up finding some place to eat.

Here's where I ate and some nearby sights spotted on my walk...

In Georgetown they serve drinks in bags, including hot coffee. Enjoy that hot coffee through your straw...

These are called Trishaws, or "becas" The drivers all try to be the most decorated trishaw in town....

This is a female monk...

I returned to the hostel and found a lot of people at the tables in the common area. I sat down, got on my ipad and began to search for a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Chiang Mi. Three Asian guys were talking, none of them lived in Asia. The one closest to me was from London, he was an IT guy, and he was volunteering at this hostel for two weeks while on his travels. The other two were from Toronto Canada. One of them, Kalan, was born in Hong Kong but grew up in Canada. We traded travel stories. The Canadians had quit the jobs they hated and decided to travel Southeast Asia until their budget ran out.

It came around dinner time and a large group of everyone in the lounge decided to go to this outdoor market to eat. It was a place that Kalan had heard that the famous chef Anthony Bourdan had visited. It was an area with a bunch of outdoor tables and numerous vendors surrounding the tables. You picked a vendor, ordered, sat at your table, and they brought the food.

During our meals, performers began to sing kereorkee. That was fun.

After dinner we went to this place a couple of the backpackers had been to the previous night. Booze was expensive in Georgetown everywhere but this place. It was a liquor store with a bunch of tables and chairs in front of it. The booze was half the price of everywhere else. We sat in a circle, sweating, and talked about where we were from, where we've been, and where we thought we were headed. I headed back around 1130, having not drank too much, with some of the girls because I had to get up early to catch my ride to Kuala Lumpur. I went to my bunk happy to have had a night of bonding with fellow travelers in an alley on a group of stools.

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The walls of the stairway are marked with notes from travelers, here's mine...

!steemitworldmap 5.4180 lat 100.3368 long Fun in Georgetown Malaysia d3scr