Penang -- Week 3, Part 2

Day 17 - Monday
George is back to work and I am determined to make this work. I disconnect myself from all my tech gear (no blogging for now) and play with Regin before putting him down for a nap, and it's a long one. Over three hours. I love those. I can have a little me time and put away laundry from the cleaners, plus hand wash the piling dishes. In the evening, we go out to eat as usual, and to the grocery store/mall as usual. Hopefully when we're in our own place, we can stock up on all our needs and we can stop making so many trips to the store. It's a good day. Regin & I are in sync and I feel like I was productive with my house keeping. But I'm starting to get a little jealous of George. He comes home from work daily now with little tidbits of culture he learns from his coworkers every day. I'm starting to realize that he will get to know this island a lot better than I will.

Day 18 - Tuesday
George takes the day off and we go to the apartment to look at it, and the one above it, again. The one above has been occupied till this morning, so now we're going to make sure we don't want it. Funny thing is... it's better than we thought. The light is just as great as the other one and the view is even better. The maid's room (a.k.a. my art studio) has air conditioning and the furniture in the master bedroom is so much better! Not to mention the kitchen is a lot nicer. So... we're taking it! And we're hoping to negotiate with the owners to remove some (lots) of the furniture for a reduced rent. Hopefully we can play with the extra money for our own furniture which we won't hate.

With the rest of our day we drive around the neighborhood and again try to spot the wet market. Success (we think)! We stop for lunch at this Japanese restaurant where I have, quite possibly, the best fish (crispy-grilled mackeral) of my life, then go to George Town to find the art supply store.
Yay! I'm connecting in a way that's meaningful to me. And the people at the store are so nice, and speak wonderful English. And the guy makes me a custom sketch pad with my choice of paper which he cuts to size and binds! That's so cool. I can't wait to make some art now!

Then we walk through part of Chinatown (I think)
and check out some drapery shops (I'm dreading the curtains that are supposed to be coming with the new place.) We also meet this guy, who tells us how they prepare the dried fish he has for sale.
We ask if it can be eaten as is, he says, "No! You wouldn't want to do that, it wouldn't taste good." But it looks just like turran fisk (Faroese dried fish/cod) to me, so I tell him that where my mom comes from we eat it dry like that, he shrugs and says different places have different ways of eating things. He's a character. He tells us about his many travels to visit his son in the States and about this remote corner of Thailand that we absolutely must go check out.
Chinatown -- wholesale dresses next to slaughtered pig halves.

A little further down the street, and more dead pigs...
Komtar looms behind these little buildings.

The run-down look we're seeing so much of...
A kiosk on a bike! How many things can you fit on your bike? Ok, this is really a "trishaw" (like rickshaw) but still!
Who needs a pick up truck when you have one of these dealies? And it's so much greener too!We loop back around in hopes of walking past a couple of historical buildings on our way back to the car, but Regin's turning red from the heat, so we hop into the mall next to Komtar (the afore-mentioned skyscraper that was disappointing and had flea-marketish shops in the bottom few floors.) The mall is so much nicer than Komtar, and the AC is great. While cooling off, some sales associates flirt with Regin, pick him and walk off!
They huddle around him and chirp and squeal. Oh he is such the charmer! He's waving bye-bye and saying, "Bye-bye!" and smiling and loving the attention. But we still stare in disbelief that this region is so comfortable touching, holding, and even making off with strangers' children without their consent. It's both totally endearing and completely unsettling. But mostly I love that they haven't been ruined by the fears that Americans are so riddled with.

We stop to eat again, another Japanese restaurant, sushi this time, on conveyor belts, fun!
George and I are sadly digging the sushi that has tuna salad and egg salad the most. George thinks that he's loving the taste of the mayo that he didn't know he missed.
George and Regin stop to check out one of the (seemingly) millions of local stray cats. So many of them are missing most of their tails that George thought that local breeds had stumpy tails! There are also LOTS of stray dogs.

We didn't end up seeing those historical buildings on our walk, but we did see this mosque (as well as the following shots) on our drive out.
This last one is a hawker market. This kind of place is where you get the good/cheap eats.