We spent a relaxing last week in Indonesia with our friend Ahnaf and his family in Jakarta. It was great to have some time without cycling but we were also looking forward to a new country. Our flight to Kuala Lumpur went without any problems and, after watching the Football World Cup Final in a restaurant close to our hostel at the airport, we got back on the road. The differences to Indonesia were striking: Traffic was more organized, people actually followed traffic regulations and it was way less chaotic. 

Our first days of cycling were not very exciting as we had to follow the bigger roads to leave KL behind us. The West coast of the Malaysian Peninsula is the busiest and most populated area of the country, which means that the roads are very good but the scenery is not all that special. We cycled through a lot of palm oil plantations, a few rice fields and many urban areas. The West coast is pretty flat and we managed to cycle between 90-140km every day. We decided not to take a lot of time to explore Malaysia because Vroni's parents will come to Malaysia in August and we will fly back to KL from Bangkok to meet them.

The only place we ended up visiting was the island of Penang. I have been there three years ago and I really wanted to show Vroni some of the great places there. We decided to book three nights in a cheap hotel in downtown Georgetown and to do day-trips from there. The first day we spent climbing Penang Hill, starting from Penang Botanical Garden. Most people would take the tram to go up the hill, a few choose walking up the stairs next to the train tracks and then there is us. The path we chose was a full-on jungle trek. It was obvious that it was not used much and we ended up walking for about 3h in the tropical heat and humidity on a narrow dirt track. The time on the summit and the view were great and cheap as we are, we even ended up walking down to save the 30 ringgit for the tram down. In the evening we had some of the great street-food that Penang is known for. Next afternoon we met up with a Couchsurfer that could not host us but who wanted to show us around. He took us to get a typical and delicious Chinese noodle dish called Hokkien Mie. Afterwards we explored Georgetown and its street art and ended up at a local Japanese festival. It was interesting to see all the Japanese culture they had at display and at night they had a beautiful fireworks display (we even got some drone footage of that!).

Just before leaving Penang we managed to meet up with a local artist that I got to know the last time I was there. We visited him in his little gallery at Chew Jetty and had a really nice chat with him before catching the ferry back to the mainland. Have a look at his amazing images: https://www.facebook.com/amilajeewantha

All the best wishes,

Keep cycling,

Vroni, Droni & Joni