Some Whole Other Where... First Impressions
Travelling from KLIA to Pulau Pinang
Please forgive any typos or oddities of spelling and punctuation as I'm writing this on my smartphone in the back of a mini van rattling along the state highway.
The breakfast on our last day (one of the most Westernised of the entire stay)
and two not great pictures of the lobby at the fantastic Sama Sama Hotel
Where to begin...
Well, at the beginning I suppose.
Leaving the airport and travelling up past KL was our first taste of Malaysia proper, at least in terms of views. It looks, well... different I guess. Not so different it's striking, but different. Palm trees in abundance and signs in Malay and English, but given that they drive on the left here it was not a completely dislocating experience.
The first hour of the drive was mainly urban and suburban highway. This meant that, aside from the palm trees and the propensity for people to get really close to the vehicle in front, nothing really changed. Lots of palm trees and others that I don't recognise, but are different from ones in the UK. Other than that not much different.
That is until we stopped for a toilet break. Getting out of the air conditioned van into 31 degree heat and nearly 100% humidity was a bit of a wake up call. And this was when it was overcast...
The next leg of the journey was through hilly terrain and it was here that it became crystal clear that we were some whole other where...
You know those landscapes you see on documentaries where there are limestone outcrops covered in verdant tropical forests? The kind of place that people like me think - Whoa! I can't imagine going somewhere like that...
Hill covered in tropical forests
Well we just drove through it. We are literally driving through tropical mountain forests. Now for those of you more widely travelled that is probably a kind of 'yeah, so?' thing, but for parochial little old me it is a bit of a moment.
An attempt to capture the impressive limestone formations of these outcrops -I'm not convinced I did it justice...
The drive passed relatively quickly and within about four hours we had passed into the state of Penang. The countryside changed from mountainous to plains where rice paddies were abundant. Not long after that we passed by Batu Kawan and approached the new Penang bridge on the South side of the island.
We also encountered this - the huge Ikea that is part of a huge new development on the mainland. Another strange mixture of the unfamiliar and the familiar together - rice paddies merging into out of town shopping malls.
Then it was across the bridge. The bridge is amazing. An impressive feat of engineering. 24km long and very photogenic.
I didn't manage to capture any of it on camera... Okay I tell a lie there is this:
Not sure this really counts though. Don't think it takes in the full magnitude of the experience, but then again it's not easy snapping shots from a moving vehicle, but even so this is a dreadful picture. Sorry! I guess if you really want to know what it looks like there is always Google.
And then after a short and baffling drive, where we tried to take in what was happening, we arrived in what is to be our new home for the next two years at least.
The views from our balcony (yep, we have a balcony now!) of a tropical hillside and, well, another tropical hillside.
So now we're here and beginning to get unpacked and organised.
I should at this point apologise for the mixture of past and present tense in this post, this is a function of the fact that this is/was written partly live and partly after the events being described. I am not going to edit this as I a) can't be bothered and b) it's kind of part of the point. Stuff is/was happening at a baffling rate.
The next few days will almost certainly be interesting - there will be challenges, discoveries and whole bunch of new adventures ahead.
Until the next time; take great care.
Best wishes to all
John, Nicola and Thomas
Wow what a journey so far and you’re only at the beginning of your adventure xx
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