Batu Ferrenghi

Time to have a break  from the hustle and bustle of George Town. We took the local bus to the top of the island to the small beach side village of Batu Ferrenghi.

It's always a good  taking the local bus. It's stops in out of the way places, you get to see parts of the town/village you would miss if you were on a rental car trip from point A to B and at RM1.40 (NZ$0.50) for a 50 minute trip it's economical too and it had killer AC :)

The beach is pretty much fronted with  large resort hotels, think Marriott, Golden Sands....all have private beach resorts as part of their property but there are still paths for the locals to access the beach thank goodness.

You can take a paraglide trip if that takes your fancy or just relax with a good book.

The entire area seemed very quiet and hardly anyone around and many food places not open. Some resorts obviously haven't made it through the Covid lockdown and border closure to tourists.

On the bus back you can get the perspective of George Town and it's many high rise apartment buildings that border the gorgeous old heritage buildings - it's quite a contrast.

There's many newer apartment towers and a lot of building sites that appear to have been sitting unfinished through Covid.

There are plenty of older blocks that are beginning to look worse for wear.  

Having built up an appetite we sought out a dish we loved a few years back, Squid Ink Aglio Olio with chili oil and grilled tomatoes. Lucky we chanced  seeing if this dish was still on the menu at our hotel restaurant today,  the waiter said they were closed tomorrow which just happens to be our last day on Penang. It was as delicious as we remembered and we even had the same waiter!

We also happened to be walking past Emily Darling cake shop in the heat of the late afternoon and feeling hot we naturally had an AC break, and a wee cake, and soaked up the atmosphere.

A lovely day and being at the beach today made us look forward to our time on Langkawi in a few days - bring on the swimming!  It will be so quiet compared to George Town - were looking forward to it :)