A Turbulent Journey
We travelled from Singapore to George Town via night bus, thankfully the last of its kind for us. After a successful border crossing we re-boarded the bus and settled down for the long night ahead. The driver, who had been coughing his guts since we left Singapore city centre, seemed to have the same idea himself. I was half asleep when the woman at the front of the bus started shouting 'SIR SIR', 'ARE YOU OK SIR?'. The driver was falling asleep at the wheel! We began to drift across a luckily empty lane just as he came to and pulled the bus over. 'DO YOU WANT TO SLEEP?' Shouted the very panicked woman at the front of the bus. The driver, who was obviously extremely embarrassed took the route of denying the whole thing had happened, pretending that he'd pulled over to check the bus door was properly shut. We were part of a group of only 8 passengers, who at this point all began to speak up and agree that the driver should stop and sleep for an hour or so. Sitting back down behind the wheel, he shook is head determined still that nothing had happened to suggest he wasn't fit to drive. The next 4 hours were hellish. Thank goodness the roads were quiet because he was all over the place, drifting between the three lanes and endlessly coughing and spluttering. Eventually we made it to Kuala Lumpar where we thankfully had to change bus and driver. I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for the man as he held the door for people to climb off the bus, only to be greeted with comments like 'learn to drive next time' and 'DO NOT DRIVE WHEN YOU ARE SICK' from a host of angry and frightened passengers. Another night bus, another near death experience! We arrived at our Hostel around 9am exhausted and in desperate need of a shower, only to be told that there was absolutely no way we could check in until 2pm. Deep breaths and forced smiles we set up camp in the common room, then come 2pm finally laid our heads to rest.
George Town
The next 3 days in George Town most definitely made up for our trouble getting there. It's a gorgeous little town decorated with a colourful array of street art focused on local culture. The town itself isn't bursting with things to do, we mostly enjoyed feeding time in the little India and snacking on local cuisine from the street vendors. We hired a motorbike for one day to explore the rest of Penang, which lead us to Cat Beach and a beautiful sunny ride through the National Park. Cat Beach is actually a rescue centre for strays, based on a beach. We arrived into chaotic scenes as a girl asked us desperately whether we had come to volunteer or adopt 1 or 5 cats. Cages of sick cats were piled on top of one another in a room that we reluctantly had to remove our shoes to step inside of. We made as big a donation as we we could afford and sat outside playing with a few of the not so sick cats by the ocean for a while, but even they had dreadfully snotty noses so we didn't stick around for too long. Hats off to the lady that was running the show, there were well over 100 stray cats in her care, some of which we would have been more than glad to take home with us! Dod and me fell in love with a tiny kitten called Midori, check him out in the photographs below...
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