Day 73 - Saturday March 11 Georgetown, Penang, Malaysia

Georgetown photos

position at 7:30 am: N4 17.04 latitude E100 17.26 longitude
(Straits of Malacca, about 80 miles S of Georgetown Malaysia, our next port)
temperature: 80F, 97% humidity, showers
distance since FLL: 23,838 miles

Clay got up early and did his 4 miles on deck just before it started to rain around 6:30am. The rain cleared deck 12 for about 15 minutes, but it remained warm and muggy.

Clay is ending his bout with runny nose and cough, but Debbie is still fighting a fever and sore throat. We ate in Compass Rose for breakfast, and then spent an hour or so reading up on Georgetown and Penang where we would be stopping in the afternoon. Then Debbie took a nap to rest up and Clay worked on copying pictures from laptop to CD's. We are now at CD#19 as far as pictures we have taken.

We went to lunch around 12:15pm and while we were in Compass Rose, we could see us getting closer to Georgetown during lunch. After lunch, Clay went up on deck 12 to take some pictures of our final approach. We were docked at Swettenham Pier on the port side by 1:15pm, only 15 minutes after our scheduled docking time. It took an additional 30-40 minutes to get the gangway in place and for the ship to be cleared. On the way off the ship, we saw the Captain and Staff Captain dressed in civies get in trishaws and head out. We were on a shuttle bus to the E&O Hotel (Eastern and Oriental) shortly after 2pm and at hotel just before 2:30pm. The only Frommer's 3 star attraction in town was the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion. Tze was the 'Chinese Rockefeller' and built a multi-conglomerate fortune in the late 1800's and early 1900's. He had five homes in the Orient: Penang, China, Singapore, Shanghai, and ???. But Penang was where he hung his hat. In the guide book, we saw you could get a tour at 3 in the afternoon. This house was only a block or so from the E&O, so we were in good shape to catch the 3pm tour.

The house was impressive (not in the Biltmore House nature of extravagant mansions). It was the design and attention to detail and traditional feng shui aspects of the house that made it interesting. The tour took about 1.5 hours and it was long on feng shui details, but was good if you stuck it out. There was only one other ship person there, and he did not stick, leaving about 45 miniutes into the tour.

The hour plus tour took a big chunk out of our time in Penang. The all-aboard time was 6:30pm as the Captain announced we were leaving an hour early so we could make our Myanmar time slot. It was about 4:45pm when we left the house. They had t-shirts so we both got one.:) We intended to just walk back toward the ship. Though the shuttle bus took a full 15 minutes to get to where we were dropped, it took a round about route and we thought there should not be a problem just walking back to the ship seeing what we could see on the way. Well, as we came out of the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, there was a bevy of trishaws that we walked by. One of them followed us up the street and said he would take us back to the ship for 10 ringets, a little over 2 USD. We looked at each other and saw the sweat running off each other, and said what the hell. So, we packed ourselves into the one trishaw and off we went. It took him about 10-15 minutes to peddle us back to the ship. It was fun. But this got us back to the ship shortly after 5. So, we walked back down the street to take a few pictures. Then we wandered around in a 3-4 block area just looking around. Every thing seemed to have closed down at 5pm so we saw very little except closed shops and stores. We finally got back to the ship around 5:45pm. As we got back, we saw the Captain and Staff Captain pull back in in trishaws. Not sure what they had been doing for 4 hours out in the trishaws???

We had dinner in Compass Rose and were back in the room by 7:30pm. There was a time change this evening, so this made the effective time only 6:30pm. So, Debbie decided it would be a good evening to do the laundry. And it was. Deck 8 had 2 empty washer and dryers.

Georgetown photos