Beautiful Georgetown

Thursday 27/11

In the morning we didn't wake up too early as we were going to have a nice day checking out the city. And Georgetown really was what the title says - beautiful. The beauty in it was the street art. We hopped our bikes and after we had gotten to an information centre for some maps, we were off to explore the wonderful streets.

First things first though. We bought our tickets to got to Langkawi island. The place were we got them was close to the port. And while Pedro was off to buy tickets where he could pay by card, I stayed to chat a bit with a local guy who was, to my surprise, very educated about history. He knew about USSR, and was up to date about the Ukrainian situation. As I had not been reading news so much, it was great to get some recent news. Soon Pedro returned and had the tickets already with him. Then we took the map to see the first place to stop for pictures.

Ernest Zacharevic is a Lithuanian artist, he created these 3D street arts in Georgetown. I must admit, these look even better in real life than in pictures.

This one with the bicycle appeared to be the most famous one. It had the most tourists and tuk-tuks stopping by. There were also some locals selling souvenirs there. We also fell for the souvenirs. I got some lovely magnets to bring back home.

The city has also other sorts of arts here and there.

For the end of the day we left our bikes at the  hotel and took a bus across the island. There we stopped in a neat looking place for dinner. While we were waiting for our food the waiter let us into a music room they had just there where Pedro played a bit of guitar and some drums. Turned out to be a peaceful evening.

We Got on a Bus Again

Wednesday 26/11

As we had gone to bed very late the night before, it was not easy to get up early. But we had decided to start the ride to centre early, so we would not have problems later on. We knew that with bicycles it was not easy to get around in the city.
Pedro lead the way again, as his navigation skills had proven to be fabulous since the beginning of the trip. I was surprised how easily he found the way through the highways. Needless to say, I was delighted that I did not have to get on a highway again. It had been much too scary on the night we arrived to Kuala Lumpur.

We tried to ride towards the Petrona towers, but there was a think mist in the air, and we could not see the towers, it was as if they had sunk to the ground over the night. We stopped near the towers to take the last pictures, first we stopped on the other side, where there was a parkish area. We sat down to enjoy the view, and then an officer came to tell us that we are not allowed to park the bicycles there. It seemed ridiculous as we were the only people there (it was quite early), and we were not disturbing anyone or damaging anything. As the officer left we remained in the place and took pictures. We then went to the front of the building, and again officers were eyeing us as if we had a visible bomb on us. It was so silly of them! When we stopped for pictures, two (not just one, but two(!)) officers approached us to tell us that we should keep bikes on the side. It all seemed as a joke, I really did laugh out loud. But we got the pictures taken and then we headed towards the KL Sentral where our bus was going to depart from.
We stopped in some shops to buy snacks for the trip. We arrived at the bus stop early, and then we waited. The bus was right on time. The driver, his helper and Pedro placed the bikes and our panniers in the buses baggage area. The bus was very comfortable. It had two seat row on one side and one seat row on the other side. There were not many people on the bus. Each seat had a screen in front of them where the passengers could watch movies, listen to music or play some games. Seemed extremely fancy. Then the helper guy went around to give each passenger a pillow. Later on he gave everyone a snack. We did not expect this at all! Later on I found out that we could have taken a regular bus route, not a fancy one, for half the price. But who knows, maybe the other companies would not take our bicycles, so either way, it was good.

We disembarked from the bus and headed towards the town centre where we would get in a hotel and see the city. However, along the way I had encountered a problem - another flat tire. The back tire was very used by now, I had suggested to Pedro that we should change it before the tire itself gets a hole, but we never did that. We stopped there were I had discovered the flat tire under a highway where there was a decent place for us to rest the bikes. Pedro again pulled out his repair kit and was awesome to fix the inner tube.As he was fixing the tube, cars and scooters were passing by and giving us strange looks. At one point there were some police officers, it looked like they were trying to regulate the traffic. The tire was fixed we were ready to keep going.

Once we arrived to Georgetown centre we got to our hotel. We showered and settled in, then decided to go out and find where the port is to go to Langkawi, as we figured that would be a good option to do later on. We found out that there are three ferries per day going across. The ride is about three hours, and they had two in the morning, one at 8:15 and one at 8:30, and one in the afternoon at 14:00. As it was late, we headed to the hotel to decide about the plan for the next few days.

We ended up deciding to stay in Georgetown for the next day, and take the first ferry the following morning. It ended up being a great idea!