Penang Hill

Beng Wah Chew, a manager I work with in Penang, was very kind to offer to spend Saturday showing me around Penang. I uploaded all the pictures from the day here - you can view them in slideshow mode.

We left my hotel at 7:15am and headed to Penang Hill . This "hill" is 833 m high (2,723 ft), so it seemed to me to be more of a small mountain than a big hill. And actually, it's a series of hills, with the biggest named Flagstaff Hill ("Bukit Bendera" in Malay).





You can either hike up (yeah, right!) or take the Penang Hill Railway, which is a funicular railway.







A view of the first stretch up.

When you are going up, there is another train coming back down, with the two connected by a cable. There is a place half way up each track where the two cars pass each other. There was a freight car on the front - here you see someone bringing their bike up to the top, presumably to ride the trail back down.



There are intermediate stations, and then a halfway station where you have to get out and switch to a different track. The whole trip up took about 30 min.









The second leg.

Various views from the top:





This is the bridge that connects Pinang Island to the mainland.





There is an (old!) hotel at the top, with like 8 rooms. Very rustic, but a great view.








Here is one of the "old" rail cars. There is another shot of one of the original cars later on at the Penang State Museum.



There were some power lines at the top, between which some absolutely huge fist-sized spiders had built webs. Note how bit it is relative to the light post.









They brought a canon up, posisble to let pirates know this place was defended. (Note how the sign doesn't quite make sense - a common problem I found, where you can understand each word, but they don't quite work together).





There is a Buddhist temple at the top (and also a mosque).







Here is a picture of Beng Wah.



We walked along further up for even better views. And, the mist was starting to clear out some by this point (around 9am). And it was starting to get hot now (well, hotter), and much busier.





Here is a video of the view from the top of Penang Hill:


Some people actually live up here, too. Here is one house, and the view they have:



Look carefully - do you see what is in the tree? No fair peeking past the picture! Looking right at you!




Penang hill has monkeys! Thought we had to walk for quite a while to find any.







The botanical garden (stay tuned!) had MANY more, and they were more aggressive there. If they see you with a plastic bag or something that looks like food, they will apparantly come up to you and try to take it from you.