I am posting this from Penang Island, Malaysia. A week ago we left our place in Singapore and all the amenities there; ipad, movies, nice place. We took the train all the way up to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The hotel room there was troublesome to get to and it stunk like heck there too.

   Someone must have had a durian in the room. It's a very stinky fruit that apparently tastes better than it smells. It is forbidden for people to bring durian in hotel rooms. I know why first-hand!

   The next day we were planning to take the overnight train up here to Penang, but the tickets were all sold out so we eventually found a bus to take, but by that time most of the day had gone by and we had to leave. That meant we didn't do any attraction at all there. When we reached Penang is was past midnight but a day earlier than we had planned and we still had to take the ferry out to the actual island. By the time we found a hotel it was past 1 in the morning. The hotel we stayed at was just horrid and a few rooms down there were very loud people in the night.
   The next day we eagerly left our hotel to stay  with the couchsurfing family that we had planned to stay with. It turned out that they had four young boys ages 2, 4, 6, and 8. They were absolutely crazy in the small apartment. We stayed with them two nights and then went to catch our train to Bangkok, Thailand. When we finally got to the train station on the mainland, we found that there had been a derailment and we couldn't go that day.
   We eventually decided that our best course of action was to go back to Penang, and on the ferry back over we met a kind Malaysian family who took us to a hotel they knew and got us a discount too. Overall things worked out and I enjoyed my time here in Penang. Tomorrow, though, we finally go on the train to Thailand.