Rhiannon was steadily coming down with a cold by the time we arrived in Penang, late in the evening, into the Butterworth train station. Our plan was to take the ferry to Georgetown (the island of Penang) but there was a persuasive taxi driver and with Rhiannon not feeling well we didn’t fight too hard.
In the morning I left Rhiannon to sleep in and wandered out for some coffee and cough syrup. I found a lovely little corner cafe and had coffee and dosa. I wandered around a bit, although it was early morning and many vendors were not set up. It was interesting to see the streets this way, then to see them in normal operation later in the day. I brought back coffee and food for Rhiannon – in little baggies. Odd. See the first few pictures. Also notable, this was our first exposure to ‘penang white coffee’. Totally addicted.
Later in the morning we signed on with a private driver to tour the island. He took us to see the Botanical park, two big temples, one Thai and one Burmese. Then to the butterfly park and lastly to Penang Hill where you can ride a little train up to the top. Pictures below are in the order that we visited these places. We also visited a coffee place where they let us sample lots of the local ‘white coffee’ flavors. We loved many of them, but being in backpacker mode could not carry many of them. We bought one bag and we had that coffee in our room any time there was hot water in the room. We each brought a couple of pouches home. Add-on later: I went on Amazon and found a way to buy this stuff from home!
The temples were the first of many Budhist temples that we would visit on this trip and it is where I began to get my first inkling of the many variations of Budhism and the complexity of the faith. This has launched me into a research project.
The Thai temple in Georgetown has somewhat cartoonish figures of Budha in various repose. The main one being the huge lying down Budha. This one symbolizes the death of Budha, in a way (still researching). This temple is also a crematorium with many urns and pictures of the deceased, etc. I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that the reason the lying down Buddha is the prominent one is because this is a memorial temple … crematorium. But I can’t say that with any authority.
