Originally, we were going to fly to the nearest US territory, Guam, for the 4th of July, but flying out to the middle of the Pacific appears to be complicated and expensive; we'd have to fly through Manilla with an inconvenient layover. Long story short, we ended up in nearby Penang, Malaysia.
Our expectations may have been inappropriate, but we were generally disappointed with Penang. Lots of traffic, run-down neighborhoods, and relatively crappy beaches. We stayed at a convenient but shabby hotel on Batu Ferringhi. On the first day, we drove around the old city, visited the Peranakan Mansion (more because of it was showcased in the Amazing Race than anything else), a glitzy new mall, and the sprawling Kek Lok Si Temple. We earned a lot of merit there by buying roof shingles for the newly constructed old people home. We saw the over-crowded turtle pond, bought some souvenirs, and drove up to the Guan Yi statue. For dinner we had a nice seafood feast.
The next day we visited the butterfly park, which was nice. It has garden filled with lots of flowers for the butterflies to hang out, good for lots of good photo opportunities. There is also a small theater showing random critter shorts, and a pretty good display of insects, snakes and lizards. We spent a good one and half hours there exercising the camera's muscles, rocked back and forth on the "love butterfly" swing chair, watched a short cartoon about a "green" spider, and had a popsicle to complete the fun.
After the butterfly garden we chartered a small boat to take us to Monkey Beach. The beach was a bit nicer than the ones at Batu Ferringhi, but not much and there were too many boats going in and out, making the experience a bit unnerving. Add to that stress a bunch of monkeys constantly attacking our food supply. There was a tire swing that you could jump off into the surf. I tried. It wasn't pretty, and my glasses fell off into the murky waters. Amazingly, a lady from a small group wading next to us was able to extract them! We paid her off with a banana boat ride. We also dug a crab out of the sand. We were just a digging a big hole and all of a sudden it came out from a side pocket.
In summary: lemonade from lemons...
Our expectations may have been inappropriate, but we were generally disappointed with Penang. Lots of traffic, run-down neighborhoods, and relatively crappy beaches. We stayed at a convenient but shabby hotel on Batu Ferringhi. On the first day, we drove around the old city, visited the Peranakan Mansion (more because of it was showcased in the Amazing Race than anything else), a glitzy new mall, and the sprawling Kek Lok Si Temple. We earned a lot of merit there by buying roof shingles for the newly constructed old people home. We saw the over-crowded turtle pond, bought some souvenirs, and drove up to the Guan Yi statue. For dinner we had a nice seafood feast.
