Penang/ Singapore update from Alaina

As Karen mentioned in her post yesterday, it's really expensive to use the internet at our hotel in Penang so we're going online at an internet cafe near the hotel. Here's a quick update from the past few days:

TAIPEI:

We arrived at our hostel in Taipei late Thursday night. The hostel was in a pretty good location because it was near Taipei 101 (the second tallest building in the world) and some clubs. However, it was down a dark alley above a tattoo parlor so that made it slightly sketchy. The lady who owned it, Vanessa, was very friendly and helpful for getting around the city. We had a tiny room with two bunkbeds and the bathroom was down the hall.

On our first day, we had breakfast at "New York Bagels Cafe" which we assume was a established to cater to all of the people from New York working in the finance district. We had a delicious breakfast with bagels and cream cheese and eggs. The bagels were actually better than the ones I could get at Duke! We then walked across the street to Taipei 101. To get to the tourist elevators that take you to the top of the building, you first have to walk through the fancy mall that is next door. It was hard to believe how many fancy stores they had there (Chanel, Gucci, Prada, Louis Vuitton etc.) it made me think I was in LA or something. The view from the top was really cool and we used headsets that would tell us what we were looking at from different angles in the building. We spent the rest of the day going to the Sun Yat Sen Memorial Hall, a Paper Museum (where we made our own paper), and the Shilin night market. I'll add more details about the night market later once I can post pictures.

On Saturday we went to the National Palace Museum which has an amazing collection of Chinese art. Unfortunately the 25 buses of tourists from elsewhere in Taiwan ruined the experience for us because we had to fight with them to get close to the art. We decided to jump in a cab and head to the Confucious Temple which I will post photos of later. We wanted to buy some local souvenirs so we decided to go to the Taipei Craft Market which ended up just being a 4 floor tourist trap store selling overpriced items. We left disappointed and hungry and headed to the nearest mall food court for a late lunch. This food court almost outdid the foodcourts that we saw in Tokyo. We decided on Indian food since we were sick of Chinese food. We went back to the hotel to rest and Evan and I went out with two other guys that were staying at our hostel. We first went to a pub that catered to Americans and Europeans but got ripped off on the drink prices. We then headed to a club that was recommended to me by one of my future colleagues. $20 cover got us admission and two drink tickets. It took about a half hour to get our first round of drinks at the bar. The whole club was very smokey and crowded. It was definitely cool to see though. We stayed and dance for a little over an hour and then took a cab back to the hostel around 4:30am.

On Sunday we woke up late and grabbed some brunch (duck and tofu- it was delicious) before meeting Yatyng and the Zoo MRT station. We took a 30 minute gondola ride up a mountain to Maokong where we went to a teahouse and sat and had tea and dumplings for the afternoon. We then traveled back to the Hostel to start a load of laundry before going out to a night market again. I ate a scallion pancake and the sweetest most delicious mango I had ever had. Evan and I also shared a plate of food from a Mongolian bbq like place on the street where you fill a bowl with all the vegetables and meats that you want (in our case 2 types of tofu because all of the meat looked scary) and they cook it for you. We said goodbye to Yatyng and took a cab back to the hostel to finish our laundry and packing because we had an early morning flight.

PENANG:

After a four hour flight to Kuala Lumpur and a one hour flight to Penang, we got in a cab to go to the Holiday Inn Beach Resort. Our cab driver insisted on pointing all kinds of thing on the island out to us and even tried to have us make a stop for coffee. Fortunately we insisted that he take us straight to our hotel and we arrived safely. It was unbelievable to see how much development has gone on here in probably the last ten years. There are very tall apartment/condo buildings everywhere and many signs about new resorts that are being built. Our hotel is in Batu Ferringhi, a beach area that is 15 km from Georgetown, the main city on the Island. We decided to go into town for dinner at a restaurant we read about in our Lonely Planet book. After we got out of the cab and the driver drove away we realized that the restaurant was not what we thought it would be (we were dressed up and the restaurant was a casual cafe with plastic stools to sit on). It was also starting to rain so we jumped in another cab and asked to be take to the Eastern and Oriental Hotel (the equivalent of the Washington Duke or the Townsend for my friends from Duke and Michigan respectively) and had an amazing meal at the fancy restaurant there. My meal included lobster, soup, lamb, and a ginger/pumpkin dessert, and Evan and Karen had Caesar salad, mushroom soup, filet mignon, and peach flambe that was made tableside. It was a pricey meal but nothing in comparison to what it would have cost at home. We took a cab back to our hotel and walked around the market for a while before settling in for the night.

Today we woke up with 10 minutes until the breakfast buffet closed so we jumped out of bed and ran down to the lobby. The buffet was amazing with everything you could ever want to eat from cereal, fruit and yogurt, to custom omelettes and pancakes, to curry, rice and samosas. They even had a bunch of juice and an espresso machine which made Evan very happy. The sun was shining and it was getting pretty hot so we put on our bathing suits and laid by the pool and took a walk on the beach. We got to be outside for a good two hours before it started pouring (actually more like monsooning) outside so we had lunch at the restaurant by the pool and then went up to the room before coming to the internet cafe.

Tonight the plan is to head into town for some Indian food. Happy belated memorial day to everyone at home and congratulations to the Duke Lacrosse team on its first national championship!