Thursday, February 5, 2009

Georgetown in pictures...

As Tina mentioned we stayed at the Bayview Hotel, pretty much right in the center of Georgetown, which worked out nice for us. Our view from the hotel looked out over the Eastern & Oriental hotel and then off to the water, a pretty nice view albeit slightly hazy.
The hotel was nice, I think that we would recommend it. The rooms were fairly inexpensive and included breakfast from 06:00-10:00, which worked well for us. There is one thing that may bother some people -
Yep, you aren't allowed to stink up their hotel enjoying durian. That really is too bad.

So, our first full day in Georgetown and we decide to risk walking around this crazy no stoplight, no crosswalk, no sidewalk city. We haven't been this adverse to crossing the street since Hanoi, but at least there you felt like they didn't really want to hit you. You don't get that comfortable feeling here.

Town Hall
City HallFort Cornwallis Lighthouse and Flagpole
Looking out into the North Channel from Fort Cornwallis

After the fort we basically wandered around trying to get lost in the town and admiring the old architecture, stopping only to grab a snack and a drink before the heat got to us and we decided to finally get ourselves some lunch.
After lunch we headed up to Gurney Mall for some shopping. We were looking for an iPod, and not just any iPod, no we wanted one of the recently discontinued 160GB iPods. We looked for these in the States with no luck, but here in Georgetown we were able to find one for slightly less then it would have cost in the States and through our masterful bartering we got a free Acrylic cover thrown in. How sweet is that?

Afterward my bartering skills suffered a bit of a setback as I walked away from two taxi stands trying to get a reasonable fare back to the hotel. It was alright though, as we did get to see some of the larger old houses that were built up on this part of the island.
See? Nice, almost worth it. Not many of these places are left as they are being torn down and replaced with gigantic apartment complexes.

Once we were back at the hotel we decided to head across the street to the Eastern & Oriental hotel and have a drink out on their outdoor patio.

Did I mention that while at the mall we also spent more then we should have on a nice wide angle lens adapter for our camera?
Also very nice, we have photos to prove it. Maybe tomorrow we will show you some.
Beautiful night sky at the E&O Hotel

And after all this fun what do you do? Dinner at the local dining stalls...
The food was delicious and we sat on the drinking side so we were also able to enjoy some nice cold local beers.
The guy at the stand there is who we ordered from, he tried to rip us off. He would have gotten away with it too, but the food was excellent and we went up and ordered more - that's when he must have felt guilty because he came over and gave us another 20 Ringgit (5USD) in change which more then paid for the second helping of food that we ordered.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

at least this guy has some conscience left, so funny :)