The Snake Temple

Next we went to a place called the Snake Temple. As we got there we passed this fruit stand. The big green things are actually coconuts. I forget what the smaller fruit was called.





The Snake Temple:



I'll give you 3 guesses as to what they have here!







Can't go to the Snake Temple without playing with a snake!



Only RM15 for a picture!

After that we met Beng Wah's family for lunch at Queensbay Mall. We ate at a Thai place. The pineapple fried rice actually came in a pineapple! Just above that to the left are Thai Spring Rolls, and the brown things to the right of that is chicken wrapped and cooked in banana leaves.

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.

Random pictures of stuff

Not much time to post, so this will be brief.



The Intel site here is in a "Free Trade Zone". Big high tech companies locate on one of these 3 zones Malaysia has set up here in Penang, where the otherwise expensive taxes on facilities and output are reduced or waived. Intel has multiple buildings scattered in this particular zone. Each zone is fenced in and secure, and apparantly has it's own "customs" guards around it monitoring what goes in and out. This building is the newest/nicest here, called PG12. The CPU design team sits there. Yes, there was a thunderstorm shortly after I took this.




More shots of PG12



This is PG2 (and the PG2.1 add-on) where the Validation team sits. They got moved there when PG12 filled up.



This truck was parked outside the FTZ. I thought the description on the side was funny.

So, you know how Intel Jones Farm is right next to the Hillsboro Airport? And we joke at work about what would happen if a plane hit the building? Yeah. So the Penang site is in the landing pattern of Penang International Airport. Huge wide body airplanes fly so low over the building on their way in to land that the furniture shakes. This picture below doesn't do it justice!





On the way home one evening the taxi driver told me that these are Pinang Palm trees, for which the island is named. They grow small fruit that some people chew (look carefully, they're in there!).

A bad shot as we drove by, but this is the biggest McDonald's I've ever seen! It is 2 stories.





I believe this is the state mosque. You know how in movies they show the daily prayers being blared out over middle east cities? Well, they do that here, and it's kind of unnerving.



Unfortunately, the camera didn't pick it up very well, but this very old kind of run down laundry place, just inside the doorway they have a very modern computer. Anyway, zoom in and check out the detail in the beautiful flower tile on the outside wall. They don't make stuff like that anymore.


Sunrise this morning. It doesn't start getting light until about 7:20am, and gets dark around 8pm. It only changes by about 30 min either way with the seasons, since they are so close to the equator.



OK, that wasn't very brief, and now it's past time for bed - so that's all for now!

Vacancies!

One quick note. While looking for a place to have dinner in the mall next door Sunday night, I saw this sign at a large electronics store called Sen:

Obviously they don't have the same laws about equal employment! Or I don't quite understand why being 20-35 is a requirement to be a salesperson.



Many places here seem to be hiring, which is a good sign. But, there was a place around the corner from this store that was also hiring a salesperson - but only women need apply!

You can also tell that "people are cheap" here. They have people doing all sorts of trivial jobs we would never pay someone for in the US. And MANY people working at the same time when fewer would certainly have been sufficient.

For example, there is a gellatto stand just outside the mall. Pretty much one freezer case of gellatto, about 10 flavors to pick from. 5 people were working beind the counter! 2 or maybe 3 would have been more than enough.

Other unrelated/random things I've noticed: while people may "speak English" here, a lot of times you know all the words they are saying, but they don't make any sense together. Also, Malay has no articles, so native Malaysians often don't use them (or don't use them correctly) when speaking English. And Malay has no plural - you say the word twice to indicate there are more than 1. So ayam is "chicken," and ayam-ayam is "chickens".