Penang day 2

It’s hot, oh so hot. Too hot to spend more time than absolutely necessary in the sun, so we keep to the shady side of the street and the galleries which line many of the streets in the historic district. Today we are exploring the heritage walks around the city. The city is an amazingly eclectic mix of styles from beautifully preserved colonial civic buildings – the Supreme Court, the Town Hall and the City Hall being some glorious examples – to complete streetscapes of faded nineteenth century shophouses with original shutters. Elaborately decorated Chinese temples vie with unadorned white mosques and classical churches at every turn. This is not the unusual sanitised, over-restored UNESCO site we have seen elsewhere; there there is a faded charm, a truly lived-in feel, and the tourist is not in the ascendency. In fact apart from the few guest houses around Love Lane and the streams of trishaws that leave and return from outside the Town Hall, the tourist presence is very low key. Such a pity that we have only a short stop here – this is definitely a place to come back to.

For lunch we make our way to Little India; an area lined with Indian shops selling saris and Punjabi suits, spices, Indian groceries and Bollywood music. We step into an open-sided neighbourhood cafe with stainless steel tables and plastic stools and are immediately taken in hand. No menus are produced, there are no ordering formalities other than to select drinks and ascertain whether we eat meat. Banana leaves are spread out before us in lieu of plates and a selection of dishes are served directly onto the leaves along with some rice, hot lime chutney. We have two dishes one of chicken and the other of tofu. Served on the side in stainless steel dishes. There is no cutlery – so we take our cue from other diners and eat with our right hands. The food is delicious. A feast for 16 Ringitts (£3)!

After lunch we do a little more sightseeing around Little India and stock up on some food for the next leg of our train journey which will take us to Singapore via Kuala Lumpur – a journey that will take 19 hours. The overnight sleeper to Kuala Lumpur leaves Butterworth at 9.15pm just 15 minutes late. We are travelling first class (the tickets are so cheap, at 81 Ringitts each (£16) it was seemed rude not to) which means we have a two-bunk compartment to ourselves with a wash basin and a chair (what luxury!)