Cameron Highlands and Penang 12/29/12 - 1/3/13

We had heard quite a few things about Cameron Highlands, so we figured it would be a good place to head next.  In a quick summary, Cameron Highlands is about a few things:  tea plantations, strawberry farms, and walking through the jungle.  Once in town, we booked a tour to take us around to see hundreds of acres of tea plants, including the Boh tea plantation, their tea factory, and some strawberry farms.  We opted out of walking in the jungle for hours with leeches, and instead did a 30 minute walk through the mossy forest.

We were glad the tour only cost us $14 each, because we were not that impressed.  There were loads of people everywhere, probably due to the fact that we were there during holiday season.  Riding home from the tea plantation on a 1 lane road in the hills took over an hour because it wasn't wide enough for 2 cars at a time.  And there was a steady stream of cars coming from both ways, so the ride involved a lot of sitting and waiting.  The same route took us about 20 minutes the first time.  

After doing our tour of Cameron Highlands, we realized there wasn't much else to see and we wanted to be somewhere different for New Years.  The next logical stop in Malaysia was Penang, an island in the northwest of Malaysia, and we decided it wouldn't be a bad place to spend NYE.  It is known to be one of the extreme cultural, melting pots of the world with lots of Chinese, Indian, and English influence.  We were told this is the reason that Penang has some of the best food in southeast asia.  We really enjoyed the food in Penang and we enjoyed how cheap it was!

We had a great New Year and celebrated with some new made friends from the hostel.  We even got to see a short fireworks show at one of the main parks in town.  Our hostel had a bar on the first floor which made it a convenient, hassle free place to stay up late and celebrate NYE.

We were mainly in Penang for the delicious food, and man, the food we had!  In particular, we found an Indian place called Kapitan, and since we're not making it to India on our trip, we had more than our fair share.  Matt was definitely more of an Indian food fan than Kristin.  Food stalls are all over the streets in Penang, which means cheap and tasty food isn't hard to find.  There were also a few "food courts" where there's lots of food stalls all in one convenient place.  We ate here a couple times as well :-).  

One of the other things we enjoyed about Penang was our hostel ;-).  The rooms were "pod" style which meant each bed had a curtain to keep it quiet when roommates came in late or got up early, and each bed/ pod had it's own lamp, mirror, and outlet (it's the little things ya know).  We were big fans of the "pod" style dorm room.  Another plus was getting to watch all of the show, Suits, season 1 while we recovered from our food comas in between meals.

Once our bellies were full of food, we decided it was time to make our way to Thailand.  This involved a quick ferry from Penang to Butterworth, a 12 hour train ride from Butterworth, across the border, then on to a small town called Chumphon where we arrived at 3:30 am.  The train seats converted to beds at night.

We waited at the train station for a couple hours until a bus picked us up and took us to the pier for the 2 hour ferry ride out to the island of Koh Tao.  Almost 24 hours after leaving Penang, we arrived at our destination.  Travel days are the best :-).