Stammtisch

Hello again!! (Ich komme von diesem tollen, sagenhaften und unglaublich sexy klingendem Stromberg –Zitat einfach nicht weg! Es besteht aber eigentlich auch kein Grund dazu!!!)

Today I will tell you about the „Stammtisch“ on Tuesday.B.Braun Stammtisch Pokal

As I mentioned you earlier we went to an Indian restaurant which turned out to be not only a restaurant but also a cultural meeting point where children learn traditional dances and Indian celebrations etc take place. The restaurant is also not run by “professionals” (probably the cooks are though) but by volunteers who give their time as a donation to the Indian society. The idea of donation is also reflected in the way of payment: Since there are no prices in the menu the customer can give whatever he/she thinks it’s appropriate for the meal.

I first ordered a Masala tea aka Chai tea following my routine here always not knowing what I will receive. It tasted really different to any tea I drank so far because it has some spicy flavor in it.
Masala Tea

The food later on tasted also great and consisted of numerous tiny little bowls with different sauces and vegetables in them. It was of course served with flavored rice and some kind of pancake/bread that seemed to be made out of semolina (Grieß) I haven’t had before.
After the meal which was by the way only attended by three people (the “big bosses” had an important meeting) Pam and I decided to end the evening at TGI Fridays with a drink. It was really nice there and Chan the barkeeper was really a great entertainer.
For the weekend I don’t really have plans yet except for the farewell party for Anna on Friday. What we are trying to organize right now is a fishing trip with a boat because another trainee said that it’s possible to do here and is supposedly rather cheap. We will see!

Proudly present: The "Iron" King

Hey There!

I have to tell you something about yesterday… Some really funny things happened after work. When I went to the gym with Pam I decided that my neck felt not good and wanted to get a massage after working out. When I went there though they told me that I could only get one for an hour. I only had half an hour because then Pam would be done with her workout on the bike so I told her I didn’t have an hour. So she said she couldn’t do anything for me and after asking twice again I left the room. That’s really funny because normally people here are so friendly and I thought would definitely be able to change from an hour to half of it just to make some money.
After that I went home and for the first time in my life ironed some clothes. As Pam told me this morning I didn’t make any major mistakes except that I should iron black pants inside out so they don’t get white marks. I am really proud of myself that I was able to do it. Even though it is very easy I will not start to iron now. It still takes to much time and its just plain boring.
At night we watched Rambo II which Flo bought on the night market on Saturday. Really great movie to watch with 4 guys and some beers!
Tonight we will go to a “Stammtisch” which will probably consist of 4 people and takes place in an Indian vegetarian restaurant. So I guess it will not be comparable at all to one in Germany. But we will see.

SS&MonkeyBeach

Good Morning!

It’s Monday morning and I am back at work. Actually this is my fourth week already. Quite a long time event though it doesn’t feel like it at all. This morning it was raining very heavily again after we didn’t have any rain for about a week! Yesterday I spent the afternoon with some other Germans at the pool just chilling, talking and a little bit of swimming of course. Later I went to play my first match of Badminton which is something like the national sport in Malaysia. It was me an Andrej against a Chinese Dad and his son. Actually Andrej is very good and the Chinese evidently just started to play as well and so we won every set. Afterwards I played single against Andrej and got my a… kicked. I was already really tired and the field kept getting bigger and bigger! I am definitely out of shape. So I will go to the gym right away after work today.

Friday night/ evening, since we already went out at 9pm, all the students and other Europeans from Sunnyville and E-Park went to the SS (Slippery Senoritas)
Before the SS

because somebody had managed a deal with the owner to drink cheaper until 10pm. The deal went very well for the owner then of course nobody left after 10pm and we all stayed until the club filled up shortly before 11pm. But it was a great night with a lot of fun. Since we didn’t eat anything before we left the house we also told Jordi (my Spanish Roommate) something about the German culture: “Sieben Bier sind auch ein Schnitzel”! In English this might sound something like: “Seven Beer are also a Steak” so you don’t need anything to eat! But at a certain point we were all very hungry and we went to the Burger Stand in front of Soho (another club)! They make the best Burger here and the most expensive one is 5RM. So I think that’s a deal! The Burgers are not only very fresh and contain a nice amount of ketchup, mayonnaise and a chili sauce but the beef is also surrounded by an egg. I think you can see that on one picture! It is really great!
The next day, for some reason I still don’t know, we all had some hard time to get up before we had the great idea to see the National Park (“Taman Negara” in Malay) here in Penang. We wanted to see the Monkey Beach supposedly the most beautiful beach in Penang but as I already told you the water here is not very clean and so are the beaches. We (Jordi, Flo, Dominik and I) drove the 50min to the entrance of the park and started hiking. I know that it is hot here but this day hiking trough the jungle was really hard. After around 20min all of our shirts were totally wet. I am sorry that I am telling you this right now but it is something that is also very different than being in a “European climate zone”. In this climate you (that’s my experience) are not just sweating at the normal body parts like head or arm pits. Here every single part of your body is sweating! Within a short period of time you are totally wet on your arms as well as on your legs! It’s really different and you just have to accept and cope with it.
Anyway in the middle of the walk we saw a monkey in front of us and we all took our cameras out to take some pictures and all the sudden we were surrounded by the whole family of about 8 or 10 monkeys. They came closer and we definitely were scared of them and went out there very fast. As we arrived on the beach it was sure very nice with palm trees growing right next to it and only a few people there. The sand wasn’t very clean though and some people were riding jet skis and water-ski which made a lot of noise. Anyway I went swimming in the really warm water a little bit but as I told you before it was not very clean.
After we arrived at the car we went to Batu Ferringhi to the Night Market where I bought a lot of DVDs, Shirts, a swimming pants and a hat.
Well that’s it more or less for this weekend. Please fell free to leave some comments in the Blog (there are only 2 up to now) or write me an email.

I wish you all the best for this new week!

One day at Work

Today I want to show you in a short way a normal working day here in Penang. Ok, there will be some changes soon since Anna will be only two more days with us :-(
But here we go...
We meet every morning at 6.45am to be able to clock in at 7am.

After that we have a wonderful sundawn which I took this pic of right in front of the entrance to my office:
After that we went to production today and Anna showed me the project I will take over from here. But than it is lunch time and I had a great TomYan Soup that Pam suggested because it is her favourite. Thank you Pam!!
After lunch we always have some really nice and fresh fruits that you can buy here very cheap all day long from fruit stands!! Anna is eating Mango here at the moment! And normally eat Pineapple and HoneyDew. Just so you know but there is also Watermelons, Apples, Oranges, Papayas and other fruits that I don't even know yet.

After this its only abotu three more hours of work which normally fly by very fast! Before we go home at 4.40pm sharp!!!

W&W

After

Before

As there might be some doubters that I don’t work here since there are only pictures of me traveling and sightseeing I decided to prove the difference to you.
As I told you before most of the production here is under clean room conditions and therefore we have to wear jumpsuits and covers. So you can see me as I am dressed up in the office and afterwards in production. This is actually the normal way to dress up here: either a polo or a “dress” shirt. So the first day of work when I came dressed up in my jacket and tie everybody was looking at me like I am an alien from outer space. But they are used to the crazy Germans doing this and so they don’t really care.
Oh by the way, I was told yesterday, that rumors are flowing around that I look like Prince William… Don’t know where that comes from so I posted a picture of him and me here…. Please update me on your thoughts! I would like to know if only the Asian people think that way or if there is some truth to it. I am a little bit scared because he is already getting bold…and of course I party way better than he does!!

William

Robert

Alright I wish you a nice Wednesday and all the supporters of VfB Stuttgart a victory tonight.

Kuala Lumpur

Good Morning!
I’m back at work! After a great weekend in KL I am sitting at my desk again writing down the last two days while I am waiting until my “Familiarization Program” starts at 9am. I will learn more about Quality Management and the Processes involved with it during the next two days. The girls say its just boring and nothing to learn but I will see.
Alright then: Friday I stayed at work until 5.30pm which is one hour more than I am supposed to work. This happened to me because I went to production after lunch without really knowing what we were going to do. Well I found out that we were going to validate a machine for two hours. You know the rest… But somehow it was also good because I drove home with the motorbike/scooter during the 10min it didn’t rain that afternoon.
At 8pm Dominik came over and we watched the Simpsons movie until we left the house and went to the bus station by taxi. By then it rained so heavy that we were really scared that it would ruin the whole weekend.
As I already told you we bought the expensive tickets and we were really impressed how great it was! It was a normal size bus but only 18 seats in it. That means that there are 6 rows with 3 seats in each. The seats are the size of business or first class seats in an airplane and after watching “X Men 3” I slept the whole trip. We arrived at Puduraya Bus station in KL at 4.55am which surprised us a little bit because we were told that the trip could last from 4.5h until 6h. To arrive exactly after 4.5h, the shortest amount of time given is not usual here.
After asking some taxi drivers where to go we found our hostel (Green Hut Lodge) at around 6am and at the Petronas Twin Towers at 6.30am. You can get free tickets to walk on the SkyBridge between them but since it was a weekend and there are only around 1000 pieces a day we were told to be there early. But 6.30am was definitely too early and so we went to an Indian restaurant to get some Roti Canai with Bananas for Breakfast. We went back in line afterwards and were able to receive tickets for the second elevator at 9.15am after watching a Petronas commercial movie. But hey it was in 3D!!! (And the glasses looked exactly like my sunglasses; so somebody asked me later if I had stolen them inside!)
The view from SkyBridge was quite impressive because you can see the entire city but since it is the most magnificent building in town there isn’t much else to see, except maybe the KL tower ( Fernsehturm), so it was not bad at all that we had to leave after only some minutes up there. After we went outside again and taking the obligatory pictures in front of the towers we decided to start our sightseeing tour. Luckily we passed a sightseeing bus (KL HopOn-HopOff) and decided to enter since it was only 17RM for students. We passed several buildings and important spots of the city like the National Mosque (which we were not able to enter due to prayers), Chinatown with the Indian Sri MaraMariaman Temple, Lake Gardens with a Bird and Butterfly Park, the National Museum, KL Sentral (Train Station) and of course Merdeka (Independence) Square. Except the last one with an impressive and supposedly largest flagpole in the world the spots were not really interesting.
We were back at the hostel at around 5pm and met with Julia (a girl from my college doing her internship in KL) at 6pm to have dinner. Afterwards we went to the Twin Towers again to see them lit up at night. After taking some more pics we went to the Beach Club which is located in the “biggest” party street in KL. It was quite interesting there then besides being an interesting Club/Bar it is also a pickup point for hookers. So at a certain area there will be the lonely “white guys” and they are being followed by many Asian girls with rather gigantic breasts compared to the rest of their body.
Yeah and of course there was a live band playing again and the lead singer looked like one of the guys from Lordi but was singing backup for songs from Rihanna, Black Eyed Peas and Shakira.
Next morning we had breakfast at 11am and went to the Batu Caves later on. In my lonely planet it says that it should cost 20RM one way but since we made the experience earlier that you cannot bargain with taxi (teksi in malay) drivers we paid 70RM for both ways. We still don’t know if it was a rip-off or if everybody pays that.
Well anyway the Caves with the 272 steps to get up there, all the monkeys and of course the 65m golden statue of an Indian God or something were really impressive. The cave is around 100m high and during Thaipusam in January one million Indian people from all over the world gather there.
Back in town we decided to see the biggest Mall called “Times Square” which is even more impressive and bigger than the “Mall of America” in Minneapolis. It’s a 12 floor Mall with around 900 shops, three cinemas (including one IMAX), an amusement park from the 5th to the 10th floor with a rollercoaster that included a loop and something like a freefall tower.
Our bus was supposed to leave at 4.30pm and so we had to get back to the bus station but the bus didn’t leave until one hour later and it took us quite long until we finally arrived in Pulau Pinang at around 10pm. The bus was rather old and had to struggle very hard at every little hill. The seats though were also very comfortable and big and so a nice trip took a good end!
In the end it was a really nice and interesting trip even though the sightseeing spots were rather boring. I hope you all enjoy the pictures and can see that we really had a great time.
I wish you a great start into the new week and hope everybody is doing fine.

All the best from B.Braun 5 (the building I am sitting in)

Robert

Food...

I already planned to tell you something about the food here already a while ago. As you all know food is something that expresses the culture of a country and therefore is very important to most people, myself included.
Since there is a great variety of cultures living together here in Penang and in all of Malaysia there are of course also many different kinds of food. So far there was nothing that I didn't like or lets say really disliked. The only thing i will probably not be able to eat for a while when I get home is chicken because I am having already enough of it. In almost every meal there will be chicken. Well it always tastes different because of different spices, sauces or preparation but still its chicken...!
Well other than that the only thing that is really different here than from Germany and probably most of Europe is the fact that you eat three warm meals a day. In my case that was probably the biggest difference and it took me a week to finally adapt to it. But in the end I am starting the day the asian way now also due to the fact that I like to get up as late as possible and don't want to prepare breakfast at home by myself. So at 9am we take the morning break and go down to the canteen. There I will get some fried noodles and rice, french toast (which actually tastes like in the US) and maybe something else. To drink I either order a fresh juice or I get something they call coffee here. If you know what it is it might actually taste like the drink we call coffee in Germany/Europe.
Oh and by the way the meal and the drink on the pic cost me 0.5RM which is about 0.1 Euro... So that's another good thing about it.
Well that's it gonna be for this week because as you all know I am leaving for KL tonight. That means that you can read the next post on Monday morning for your breakfast... or you try it the malaysian way then;-)

Wish you all a nice and pleasant weekend!!

Earthquake

I just found an article in "TheStar" the biggest malaysian newspaper in english. It looks really dramatic but i can assure you that we did't feel anything in Penang. In KL and Singapore the buildings were shaking though.

But see yourself:

Penang is underneath the black arrow pointing towards the quake. So Indonesia actually keeps away the erruption and in the worst case the water from us.

Sunnyville Party

Yesterday was my first party here in Sunnyville. The students from the USM (University of Science Malaysia) meet every week at least twice in somebodys appartment and "warm up" before going into some of Georgetown's bars and clubs to party on. The funny part is that you don't need to check your watch if you want to go to Georgetown at around 12am because every time the guards will be at the door at that time to tell the people to be quite and leave. But nobody cares because they want to leave anyway.
But until then it was a really nice international party with people from Switzerland, Canada, Finnland, Norway, Sweden and of course many Germans. But it was really nice to get to know some more people and talk to them about their further travelling, study and general plans.
I think I don't have to mention that as a good employee I went home when the others went on to Georgetown. So I still had a good amount of sleep tonight ;-)
No its only one more day before we head on to KL... "I'm so excited and I cannot hide it...."
Oh by the way I/we didn't feel the indonesian earthquake here. No need to be worried. I just thought I let you know since I got a call only minutes after it happened when I didn't even know about it.
Hope everybody is doing fine...
Talk to you later!

Next Weekend

Hello Everybody!

I just wanted to let you all know that I will go on my first trip here in Malaysia this weekend. We will go to Kuala Lumpur ( KL as the people here say). Dominik and I booked the hotel on Monday and I bought the bus tickets yesterday. It is 38RM (4,6RM = 1 Euro) to get there for about 5 to 6 hours of driving I think thats not bad. Since we will be driving during the night I bought the most expensive tickets were each seat can be built into a bed and has its own TV!!! So I guess we will be travelling pretty comfortable. Then we will arrive in KL on Saturday morning around 7am and then visit the city for two days until we drive back Sunday night. Here you are not able to buy a retourn ticket in advance of your trip. You can only buy them one-way.
Other than that I was at a Gym with Jordi yesterday and this one was quite alright but we will look at another one on Thursday because this one is supposed to be a lot bigger. But the prices here are also very cheap. So its about 50RM a month or for the second one its 5 RM for each time you go there!! So I cant complain.
Today is Anna's farewell (she is leaving in 2 weeks) and Ong's Birthday party in our department. Normally it would have been next week but then it is Ramadan and then all the Muslims cannot eat anything and so we do it today.
I hope all of you are doing fine and I would be very happy to hear from you every once in a while. Also feel free to give me your comment or opinion on this blog.

Bis bald

Robert

The Weekend

Yesterday we marked another sightseeing spot on the Penang list by visiting Penang Hill. It’s the highest place on the island and you have a wonderful view of Georgetown, Butterworth and many other parts of the island. Luckily my new roommate, who works for B.Braun in Spain, has a car here and we didn’t have to pay for a teksi (that’s the way its written here)! To get on top of the Hill you can either walk through the jungle for some hours or you can take a train! The railway that is still used today was finished in 1920 and is still used today. The only things that have changed since then are the cars that were renewed in 1977 from wooden to “normal” ones. Both types were/are imported from Switzerland then nobody knows more about mountains then them!! After a 30min ride from around 0m above sea level to around 800m we arrived at the train station nearest to the top. From there we followed a trail which was supposed to lead us around the hill but at the end we found out that we had to walk the same way back. But it wasn’t bad at all. Along the trail we saw a lot of the old houses the English traders built there which are really magnificent. They built themselves houses there because it is much cooler up on the hill and the humidity is not bad at all. As you can see on the lawn the owners still like the English way of life.

At the end of the trail was a Canopy Way, which is basically a walkway from tree to tree up in the air. It is really impressive how high but still very strong the trees are. The construction of the path was concerning us though a little bit because we were pretty sure that it would definitely not pass any German security check. But we are here in Malaysia and many tourists before us have passed this without any harm.

On our way back it started to rain a little bit and so we waited under a tree for some minutes and luckily Anja (Norwegian) had a Mango in her bag and so the waiting time was actually very short! As we arrived the train station because we wanted to go down but it was not only our group that had the same idea. We had to wait for about 2 hours until it was our turn because it there is only space for about 80 people in one car. While we were waiting two monkeys with big bellies appeared and wanted to be fed. Of course some of the people gave them sweets.

At night Jordi and I went to Georgetown to have dinner and to go out later. We ate Indian food which was really good and later went for a Pint of “Tiger” and later into the SS (Slippery Senoritas) Club. Going out here is really expensive compared to the normal spending. The entrance fee was 5€ and a bottle of beer (0,33l) was around 3€. Surprisingly all the people in there didn’t bother to buy the alcohol in glasses, they only bought bottles and only the best: Finlandia, Absolut Vodka, Jack Daniel’s and Gordon Gin. Ok, there are many rich people here so they are able to afford that but I still don’t know how they could handle so much alcohol. Most of them are half the size of a European and they drank quite a lot. The music in there was also very good: The good old American rap from Dre, Eminem and others. It was really good. They also had a house room that I have to check out next time. So as a resume I can say the first night out was quite a blast. I hope next time I go there will be some more Europeans with me so we can really show them how to party ;-)!!

After sleeping quite long on Sunday we went to Queensbay Mall which is the biggest one in Penang! But I had to recognize again that it doesn’t matter in which part of the world you step into a mall because you will find more or less the same stores in all of them. Some things here are a little cheaper than in Europe but for most parts there are the same prices.

That’s it for this weekend I hope you all have a good start into the new week.

Yeah...Finished 1st week

The first week of work is over. Five days of permanent learning and getting to know new people and also a lot of fun!
I already told you about the first two days of work and they were really great I was very fascinated about the production area but still somehow lost with work and uncertain about what this internship would actually consist of. Wednesday was just awesome because I went into production twice and got to see the molding of the plastic “wings” attached to the catheters as well as the “putting together” of some different kind of catheters. All of this took place under clean room conditions, which means jumpsuit and covers which is always a lot of fun to put on. At least for the moment since it is new to me.
Well Thursday was not so much fun though because a lot of colleagues were gone and the one I am kind of assigned to had too much to do so he couldn’t help me with anything. So I was basically just reading some old validation files to learn the procedure etc. But luckily Pam was there and my Lotus was set up so I was able to write on the Messenger with her.
Today was really interesting though. I participated in my first meeting for the new machine which will be delivered on Monday and we have to Validate in two weeks. Then afterwards we had to finish the reports and visit the Production of Aesculap. This was so different compared to the production sites I was used to. The machine we are validating is for washing scalpel blades. So what they basically do is to punch the blades out of metal, form and then sharpen them before they are washed and then packed. These steps are all rather dirty and smelly compared to the clean rooms I was used to. They also make all the surgical scissors and other stuff like that there. I will visit that later because it was already time to go home for me.
Other than that I have a roommate now which is a 32 Spanish guy from Barcelona. That’s really great because then I can also speak some Spanish and practice on that a little bit. The funny thing was that he locked himself out of his room the first night he came here because he accidently pushed the button to look the door on the inside and then closed it without noticing. Yeah we only had two keys and of course the one we needed was not one of them. So we tried different things to open it but it wouldn’t work. After calling his office in Spain they wrote an email to his contact person here and then the next day somebody opened the door.
This weekend we would like to see some more parts of the island but since it is rainy season (sounds funny but the dictionary said so...) you never know whether there will be rain or not. Well actually it is not that bad because normally it just rains at night but sometimes also rain during the day. And its not just raining its pouring down like I have never seen before. I am pretty sure after two days of rain like this everything in Germany would be flooded. I don’t know where all the water goes… maybe into the sea ;-)
We would like to visit Penang Hill, from where you have a wonderful view of the whole island, as well as some other sightseeing spots around here like a Spice or a Butterfly Farm . Otherwise we will have to go to Queensbay Mall to shop and spent the day at a gambling spot (Spielhölle).
Well I hope you are all just doing fine and have a wonderful weekend.

All the best from Penang

Second Day at B.Braun

Hello again! (siehe Stromberg ;-) )
Today I want to tell you from y second day of work. No, you don’t have to be scared I won’t tell you everyday what I did at work but today was kind of special and I got to know a lot more things.
It started this morning around ten o’clock when I had breakfast. We had rice, of course, with anchovies and one portion with eggs. The rare thing about it was that the food was packed in banana leaves and newspaper. So you are able to take it with you. It tasted really good.
After breakfast one of my coworkers took me with him into the production area where they make catheters. Since this production is held under clean room condition we had to dress up with special overalls, put covers on our shoes and a cover on our head. Because most men here have beards they also provide a cover for beards. Dressed all in white then we could enter the production. It was really interesting to see all the different parts being put together and I couldn’t believe how many parts belong to such a catheter. To be honest, before today I thought they are just a peace of plastic. But it’s not that easy. I attached a picture with three different kinds of catheters but I admit that you can’t see so many details on it. We also produce sutures, other surgical equipment as well as medicine. At the end of my time here hopefully I will have seen every production.
Since there are also two other employees in my department who started only some weeks ago we were told some details about how the processes are running in this department and basically what everybody there is doing. So the day went by very fast even though at the end I had to type in numbers from a validation test from a sheet into Excel for about an hour and a half before I had to go to catch my “personal bus”.

Pics from the first weekend!!

Forgot to post them before. Here they are, but just some! for more visit StudiVZ!!

First day at work

First day at work!
Today on Monday September 3rd I had my first day of work at B.Braun. I had to get up at 6.30am which am so not used to anymore and was picked up by a Braun bus at 7.10am. He drove me to my building were I had some tea with another employee who I asked for the way and he said that nobody would be here at this time. People here are so nice. Later in the office I met my boss and colleagues who are all so nice. And one of them studied in Reutlingen for five years and knows every tiny little town around there!! Kind of scary, you can’t go nowhere anymore without anybody knowing your background!
After getting my badge and eating in a cafeteria there I had to read some PDF files to get me into the subject. Time kind of flew by and I was able to go home again where I have been sitting now for a while to get you all posted! I hope a lot of people will read this and have fun doing so!!
Keep me posted how you are doing and I hope all of you are doing fine!!
By the way all the pictures from my trip/ time here are posted on StudiVZ. For those of you who are not in this community let me know and you can use my account!!

Arrival and first experience

Hello Everybody!

I arrived here last Thursday morning without any delay or problems and I can tell you that flying with Singapore airlines is a really great thing. Endless movies and CD's as well as video games and really good food.

I was picked up here at the airport from the two trainees (Anna, Pam) who work at B.Braun already. They brought me to my apartment in Sunnyville where I live all by myself at the moment. But possibly a Spanish guy will move in here on Wednesday. I will have to wait and see.
But now I want to tell you from my first weekend here. As there was the 50th anniversary of independence from England on the 31st of August the night before was a big party with fireworks where I went with Dominik a trainee at Schott. Wasn’t that great but it was also my first time in Georgetown.
The next day I settled from jetlag and slept until 2pm. After that we went to go out with some other people who live either in Sunnyville or in E-Park an apartment complex nearby. We went into a Karaoke Bar first and afterwards into Georgetown. It was quite alright but Beer here is as expensive as in Germany in the bars. So being a good “Schwabe” I only had one/two beer(s)!
The next day I went with Dominik to the Kek Lok Si Temple which is the biggest Buddhist Temple in Malaysia. It was really impressive. There is a big tower and also a statue which shows the “Goddess of Mercy” (I think) and it is 36m high. I was very sad though that they are building a roof for her at the moment so she wasn’t that pretty ;-) They also have all the Chinese zodiac signs as little stone figures as well as a little pond with Koi fish.
At night we went to Batu Ferringhi which is a town near the only beach here in Penang. But it is still supposed to be rather dirty there. The reason we went there was a NightMarket which takes places there every night. You can buy clothes and DVD’s/Cd’s and “brand clothes” for little money! Oh I almost forgot, we went there with a cab and it took as about 45 minutes to get there, guess what it cost us 8€!!!
Sunday Dominik and I went into Georgetown to do some sightseeing there. We visited Kongsi’s which are clan houses from Chinese families living here. They came here as traders and those families are of course very rich and so their houses are very exquisite. A lot of gold and beautiful wood carving and there are some kind of figures on top of the roof that are supposed to weight some tons!! The only sad thing about the whole tout which we started at the Khoo Kongsi ( clanhouse of the Khoo family) was that we didn’t understand any of the symbolism of either the Chinese, Indian or Muslim temples/mosques.
Since it is some kind of Chinese religious fest right now, if we understood it right the one of the “Hungry Ghost” there were many people in the Chinese temple burning joss stick (some are as thick as an arm) and giving food etc. Some also bought birds which were in small boxes and freed them. But the same here… We don’t know!!
That’s it for the sightseeing for right now!! I hope to see some more next weekend! I would like to go on Top of Penang Hill and see for example the Spice Garden and the Butterfly Park.