TBA Day 12: The Lap of Luxury

Perspective is a funny thing. If you showed me the above picture a month ago, I'd say it looks like a cheap hotel room. Sitting in that room today, I'm telling you it's the most awesome room in the entire world. I don't know where to begin... There's the ELEVATOR to get to the room for one thing, the A/C (standard in all my rooms this trip so far because I am a wimp), the private bathroom that even features one of those fancy "bathtub" thingys instead of just having the shower spray directly onto the floor and/or toilet, a freaking mini-fridge and TV (!) and an actual bed that isn't just a mattress on/near the ground. This is my last hotel before I head off to island bungalows, and I'm feeling quite pleased with my choice. I was already pretty psyched about arriving in Penang, but when I walked into my room and went through the "Wow! This is the fanciest place EVER!" feelings I became that much more optimistic that a good time will be had here.

Travel went really well today... I had a lovely 7 hour train ride (comfy first class seat, beautiful scenery, great book to read) followed by a quick ferry ride over to Penang and a cab to my hotel. The only rough part of my trip was the cab ride to the train station in KL. My driver started off by explaining to me that all Muslims are stupid (because they have the audacity to try to travel outside of Arabic-speaking countries without learning English first) and are also useless and horrible people. He forayed briefly into shock and horror about the fact that I am not married even at my advanced age (and explained to me that only god can determine whether or not I have babies, I have no say in the matter... which... um... I'm pretty sure that's not true... at least based on my understanding of where babies come from...) and then went back to decrying Malayisa as a horrible place because there are too many Muslims. Needless to say, I was quite happy to arrive at the train station and get far away from him...

It's past my bedtime, so I'm going go to take a shower (without even leaving my room!!!) and hit the hay. Looking forward to exploring Penang in the morning...