Day 48: in which we make it to the museum and eat lots of vegetables

We made it to the museum and learned lots some more about Penang, but after the bright idea yesterday of this being our first call, it didn't really offer much we hadn't seen elsewhere, so no great loss doing it today instead. The one thing I did see which I won't anywhere else is the funicular railway carriage in the photo. We were going to go up the Penang Hill, where the funicular was built years ago, but we found out it is being renovated, so we can't. Sad :(

We then headed out to see Chinatown a bit better. After walking for hours yesterday, when I looked at the map it seems we only discovered the outskirts of the area. An impressive feat when you consider that most of the centre of town is Chinatown! It isn't as distinctive as others in other cities in SE Asia. Georgetown is generally a nice place to be - well-spread out with pavements and spaces to sit if you want to watch the world go by. I like it.

By lunchtime I was hungry and rather than struggle to find somewhere that offered veggie too, we headed for one of the recommendations in the guidebook, a chinese veg restaurant down a side-street. It was tasty as it was a buffet and you picked what you wanted and paid according to options, so we could try out lots of new options, although we have no idea what they were called!

After lunch we visited the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion, which is now a hotel, but does guided tours twice a day to help with running costs. It won a UNESCO award for renovating the property so is a regular stop on the tourist trail. It is beautiful inside and out, a huge indigo blue property. It was built by a phenomenally successful Chinese merchant who was once known as "the Rockefeller of the East". Cue lots of arty photo's from JP and me.

After the tour, we headed back to the ranch to clean up before going out for dinner in the local area. We wandered in search of another food court, failed to find it, but found another veggie restaurant, this one with monks in it, so we ate there instead. Add in the delight of finding the fantastically named drink "Kickapoo Joy Juice" (see photo) and you'll see it was a happy food day for JQ :)