Butterworth to Penang Malaysia

Our train dropped us off at Butterworth, Malaysia which is at the mainland across the Strait of Malacca.  From there we had to find the ferry that would carry us across the water to Penang.  This was an up and down adventure...climbing stairs to one place to go back down other stairs and back up more stairs.  But eventually we found our way to the ferry port and made it onto the ferry. There were 2 decks of cars in which people stood around.  We choose to stand close to the railing for the good view!

The city of Penang is quite beautiful (especially in comparison to Bangkok) but the Strait of Malacca is very polluted.  The coloring was a funky green cloudy looking substance and we saw multiple dead fish and lots of trash in the water. 

After a 20 minute ride on the ferry, we made it to Penang.  Our plan was just to walk to our homestay but it turned out to be an extremely hot day (101 with the heat index!) so we opted for the bus instead.  Penang has a very cool free bus system that takes you around the main parts of Penang.  If you want to go outside this free bus route then you can pay to use other buses too (which we did as you will see later in my other posts). 

We had a family suite at this homestay.  The bunk beads were on the 2nd floor of the homestay and the master bedroom was up the flight of stairs pictured on the 3rd floor.  

We ate at Kappa Restaurant a couple times during our stay in Penang.  Not only did they have the best homemade shoestring french fries but they had fun things to play with as well!

Little India was right around the corner from our homestay.  We found great restaurants and more street food.

Indian breakfast on day 2!  Super yummy!

The boys outside Restaurant Kapitan.  The walls were nice and colorful!

During one of our wanderings we stumbled upon the 1st Subway we had seen on our trip so I got really excited although we didn't eat here. 

And of course we refrained from eating Subway because the street food in Penang was amazing!  Trucks like these lined the street with every common Malaysian food you could think of!  And maybe a few un-Malaysian foods too like french fries. This was the first time on our journey that we felt safe enough to eat some street food.

Our favorite noodle dish!  We ate this dish multiple times while we were in Penang.

No we didn't eat any octopus, but it was crazy to see different creatures like this one all ready to be eaten.

Oliver's favorite thing to look for on our trip was playgrounds, so our homestay owners let us know that there was a playground just a few blocks from our place.  As we were wandering to the playground, we found this beautiful fountain outside some beautiful architectural buildings.  Which all turned out to be government buildings.

We also found the remains of some Chinese New Year celebrations!

Chinese New Year decorations with more government buildings in the background.

Fort Cornwallis was like most forts that you see around the world but I am always impressed by their structure and size.  The original fort was built in 1786 and although it was built by the British Military apparently it was not built as a defense fort but for administrative reasons.  So of all the forts I have ever seen, I do believe this is the first fort that was not built to defend an area!

A view of the wall with its cannons, a lighthouse, and a ship's mast.

We made it to the playground before walking the perimeter of the fort, then returned again to the playground.  Both boys were very excited to get a chance to play and unwind in a wild fashion.

One thing that we noticed in Penang is their abundance of ravens!  These guys were everywhere...annoyingly so! Oliver thought they were funny!

Something that we noticed both on our trip through Thailand and into Malaysia were these exercise machines in the parks.  The boys loved these things more than they loved playing on the actual playground equipment.

After a long day of walking and exploring we ended up back at our homestay working on some of our drawings.  The bananas you see pictured were from a street market.  We had fresh fruit (only with a peel so we wouldn't get sick) usually before bed and again in the mornings when we woke up so we could go wander and look for food without getting hangry!

Trains and More Trains Through Bangkok

At the train station in Chiang Mai! All ready to ride the overnight train to Bangkok.

We had a Japanese style car with 4 beds all on one side of the train.  

I am taking the photo from the aisle here.  

Although we had plenty of activities for the kids to do, both boys loved watching out the window.

Watching the sun set in Thailand from the train window.

We arrived in Bangkok close to 7 am the next morning.  We all got little to no sleep since we were unused to all the train noises.  

And the rocking from your head to your feet was a little uncomfortable!

Unfortunately we didn't get any good pictures from Bangkok.  We rode the trains around, wandered around a mall, and found a McDonalds but overall our view of Bangkok was it was very dirty (you should have seen our feet and the kid's hands after walking around touching things!) and very hard to navigate.  We had plenty of offers of taxi rides but all the prices were crazy expensive (at least in comparison to Chaing Mai).  In the end we wandered back to the train station to wait for our next train down to Malaysia.  In front of us, monks had their own section of seating. 

 On train number 2, heading out of Bangkok.  As you can see, Oliver is still loving looking out the window.  Aaron is watching his GPS on his phone to see where we are going on the train, and Carson has resorted to drawing.

 Train number 2 was a Thai style car.  I loved this style a lot more! There was one aisle down the middle of the train with beds running the length of the train on either side.  So instead of getting a small space to sleep in, it was closer to having a double size bed top and bottom! During the day we would keep our belongings and bedding on one side of the train then have our seats with a table on the opposite side of the train. Here you can see our storage side, you will see the table in the next photo down.

 Here you can see Oliver sitting on one side of a booth style seating with our table in the middle. Yes Oliver is still staring out the window.  Here he found some old train cars and engines!

 Going through Thailand and Malaysia we saw so many unique areas. From beautiful houses set back on a nice property like this one:

To shacks like this one: Yes this was someone's house (the smaller shack)!

 In the next 2 photos, you can see how our beds folded down.  Oliver and I slept perfectly on one bunk with plenty of room.  And as I said before I loved this style.  As the train swayed from side to side it felt like we were being rocked to sleep.  The train tracks in Malaysia were much smoother in comparison to Thailand too so that might have had something to do with the quieter ride ( = easier time sleeping)!

 Aaron and Carson on their side of the train.

View of the smoky sunset.  Lots of people were burning their rice paddies in preparation for planting season so this haze was our last view of Thailand before going to sleep.

 We woke up to this beautiful view of Malaysia.  Mostly it was flat with lots of trees and farmland but sometimes we would see these huge rock uprisings. Not sure of the geological process that formed them but they gave the landscape an interesting shape! There was still a little smoky haze in the northern part of Malaysia but it cleared up the farther south we went.

Breakfast on the train was a typical Thai/Malay meal of curry, rice, and cabbage soup.

Housing in Malaysia was a tiny bit better in comparison to Thailand.  Most houses seemed to be built of nice quality materials and mostly everyone had some type of farmland.  At least until we got closer to the city. More on that to come on my next post!

Chiang Mai Part 3 of 3

The only thing we really missed in Chiang Mai was coffee.  Even the Starbucks there was terrible (or at least not American style coffee).  So when we stumbled upon this cute coffee shop Nes Coffee (right across the street and of course at the end of our stay) we were beyond excited.  Oliver had his usual morning chocolate milk from 7 Eleven.

Our big activity that really had the most impact on us during our stay in Chiang Mai was our visit to the Happy Elephant Home.  This is an elephant sanctuary/rescue home.  We did not ride the elephants nor were these elephants trained...as we would later learn when they saw some yummy grass they wanted to get into to eat.  The elephants were happily walking along when the baby and mom elephant all of a sudden changed course nearly bowling Carson over! Thankfully the staff are trained to handle the elephants when they do something no one expects.  The staff gently gives the elephants a nudge with their hands or shoulders speaking to them in Thai that they need to keep walking down to the river.

A little sidetrack there! Well, we were picked up at our guesthouse and driven to the elephant home.  Once we arrived we were given new clothes to change into (you will see our outfits below) since elephants can be a little messy.  Then we needed to prepare some food for the elephants (they are food driven, so as long as you have bananas in your satchel they will hang around to play!).

As our time with the elephants went on, I learned this would be Oliver's favorite spot.  And as big as even the baby elephant was, I wanted Oliver to stay up with me so he would be safe from any stray elephants.

Here is Aaron, with the baby elephant and mother elephant walking down to the river.  Even the baby elephant could push Aaron around when he wanted to.  They are amazingly strong!  Our host (in yellow) led the trip from the house at the top of a hill down to the river.  The other young man also lives at this sanctuary and helps guide the elephants while protecting guests.

Down at the river, we had a chance to interact a little more with the elephants. And the green scenery around us made for a great picture taking opportunity.  Here is the older elephant (we had 3 total, this one, a baby and his mother). This one was the least energetic and the most calm.

By the time the elephants were ready to get into the river, it had started raining.  Aaron and Carson both got into the river with the elephants but Oliver and I chose to huddle together to stay warm and watch everyone else work.  From there a truck came down to check on everyone and drove the boys and I back up to the house.  Which was good because I was freezing and we only had 2 bathrooms in which to change (among the 15 of us)! 

This gave the boys and I a chance to change and get out of the way as the rest of the crew hiked back up the hill.

Our last day in Chiang Mai, we took a picture of our guest house (pictured is one of the owners who is originally from Great Britain).  The boys loved their 2 dogs (Fat Dog and Mutley were their names!). We loved this guesthouse!  The owners were amazing and helpful and the location right across the street from the city wall made it easy to get to all the hot spots around the city.

After wandering around the city a little more, we took a taxi to the train station.  There was an old locomotive that was set up for the kids to explore. So while we waited for our train we took time to play!

My next post I will talk about the train 

(we rode 2 separate trains, both a different type of sleeper car).

Chiang Mai Part 2 of 3

Our 2nd private driver was Chai.  He was a lot of fun, was great with the kids, and had a huge base of knowledge of so many things (from tourists, to places to visit, to politics).

Our first stop of the day was Thai Silk Village.

We learned how the worms grow, reproduce, and make cocoons that are used to extract their silk webbings.

After extracting the silk and making it into thread, the thread can be dyed using natural plants, then women on looms design bolts of fabric like these here.

Our 2nd stop was the Paper Umbrella Factory.  Here we learned how bark is taken from specific trees, beat to loosen the fibers, then soaked to further separate fibers, then the fibers are dried on screens to make thin sheets of paper.  Finally the sheets of paper are placed overlapping with a special glue mixture until it is thick enough to form an umbrella or fan.  There were pre-painted fans and umbrellas for purchase or you could choose a blank one which could be custom painted.

Aaron decided to get our day pack painted with elephants.

Oliver picked out a pre-painted fan.

Carson picked out a blank fan with the wish to have a dragon painted.

Next stop was the Muang On Cave.  This was up in the mountains and had lots of stairs to get to the entrance.

Entrance to the cave.

There were a couple of narrow stairways (very close to climbing a ladder in some instances) but mostly the cave was large and cavernous.

There were many shrines, mostly Buddhist, throughout the cave.

One of the best things about the cave was playing with shadows.  Here you can see us standing on the left with our shadows projected on the wall.

As we walked back out of the cave and down the many stairs, we caught our first monkey sighting of the trip!

The next stop was San Kamphaeng Hot Springs.  The grounds here were very beautiful.  There was lots of green spaces and a playground to play on. 

A unique perk to these hot springs was the ability to buy eggs and cook them in the hot springs.  It made for a delicious snack!

Last stop of the day was Art In Paradise.  This was an interactive 3-D museum and was our favorite touristy place that we visited.  Everything you see below was painted on the walls and floors to make it look like the scene was really happening. 

Enjoy the photos below as they do not require any captions!

Last thing on this post: An evening walking street market!