matty's travel blog: Penang 6.10.2012

On our First day (sa 6.10.) at Penang we went to the beach. The beach was okay but the water quite dirty,
so it was not much fun to swim in it. The only thing which would make sense at this beach would be some jet ski riding which was way to expensive. So i didnt do it and instead took some pictures of the sun set.

ko phangan beach

sunset at ko phangan beach

i think the cloud up there looks like a duck

On sunday the 7th of October we wanted to go sight seeing. Our first destination was a mosque near our hostel. We went into the mosque and at the door there was a man who asked us whether he should tell us something about the mosque and the muslims and their religion and so on.
Because we were very interested to get to know something about this religion we nearly spend the whole afternoon talking to this man.
What i learned of this conversation (and the conversation which i had with someone from Isreal at Pai) is a better understanding of the jewish, christian and muslim religion.
The jews have a bible which contains the old testament of the bilble.
The christians have a bible which contains the old testament and the new testament telling the life of jesus.
The muslims have the koran, which is almost the same as the christian bible , but as far as i understood has some extras which were added by Mohamed. There are also some differences in the believe:
While the christians believe that jesus is the son of god and died at the cross and came back to life and was then sent to heaven, in the koran - thats what the man said- is written that jesus did not die at the cross and didnt come back to life, but instead was rescued and sent to heaven before he could get killed.
This for the muslims makes jesus not the son of god but just another prophet, like for example moses.

the mosque we visited

these guys were laughing at me while i took the photo of the mosque , probably because i looked like a tourist with my camera :)

On monday the 8th of october we tried to go sight seeing again. First we went to a tower in the city,
which should give us a nice view over the city.
But it was not as good as expected, because you could only watch the city through a window.
Thats why we went to the roof top of the building, which was not alowed, but we did it nevertheless (dont tell anyone ;) ) which was much nicer, but a bit dangerous, because the roof was not very stable to walk on.

photo taken from the tower through the window

photo taken from the tower, through an open window (to take the photo was not that easy... because the windows were somehow small)

photo taken from the roof of tower

After visting the tower we took a tram up to the "penang hill". On top of the hill we walked around a bit, and had lunch at a small food court for about 5 ringit. ( about 1 euro)

tram to penang hill

railway from the penang hill down to penang

view from penang hill

me on top of the penang hill


a monkey on top of penang hill

For the way down from the hill we wanted to take a walk. The way down was about 5 kms to walk,
but a lot of fun. The nature was pretty, and there were so many monkeys on our way. Unfortunately,
we didnt have any bananas with us ...

the way down from penangn hill

the way down from penangn hill 2

a mirror on the way down from penang hill (its for the cars so they can see what is behind a curve)

another mirror (of many) on the way down from penang hill

On tuesday the 9th of october we went to see the so called "Kek Lok Si Temple. To get into the temple was for free. But we had to pay 2 ringit in order to be alowed to go up to the pagoda (the tower) from which you have a nice view on the city.