2 of my coworkers were also interested to explore the culturally diverse island and eat some good Indian food; but what had really struck my interest was the rumors of street art in the small historic district of George Town! After riding in a mini-van for over 11 hours we arrived at the overwhelmingly huge Prangin Mall and grabbed a taxi to our hostel in George Town.
We dropped our stuff and b-lined it to Little India and enjoyed a family-style dinner. As we finished our meal we heard a commotion outside and it turned out to be the annual Hare Krishna Festival. Locals insisted we join in and taught us their dance moves & songs. Everyone was clapping, dancing, laughing and cheering in the streets as this would be the one day of the year that Krishna would come out to see the people!
Sunday we enjoyed coffee and bagels (!!!) at The Mugshot cafe before renting bicycles and spending the day exploring.
The waterfront was beautiful and we walked one of the larger jetty's - which was like a small pier with shops, home stays, vendors, boats, and a temple at the very end.
We also made our way through a few floors of the mall, a fancy hotel on the water, a cemetery, Chinatown, and many other historic buildings and interesting street-scapes, sculptures, and art along the way!
Monday we headed out of town on a local bus to the National Park where there are many trails and beaches you can hike to. We ended up taking a boat out to the farthest beach, Monkey Beach and then hiking for about an hour up to an old lighthouse! It was quite a trek up there through the jungle trail, but the view was amazing!!
Tuesday we had a more relaxing day, more coffee & another bagel :) Haley and I went back to Little India on a mission for chai tea and henna work and I spent the afternoon following the George Town Exploratory Map which highlighted the street art in the district.
It was interesting to see how many other people were also there to see the art and the locals were happy to provide maps and directions to the tourists! Many of the pieces I had to wait my turn to photograph as there were lines of people waiting to pose with the artwork! It was really interesting to see how excited people got about finding them and interacting with them. A little different than graffiti hunting, but fun in a different way. Also, there were still lots of uncharted small paintings, stencils, stickers, tags, and scrawls to find!
Then I spent the evening enjoying draft Guinness, hookah, conversing and sharing with 2 intelligent & inspiring women, and feeling grateful for all the experiences of 2013 and the culmination of contrast that brought me to this amazing opportunity to live abroad, travel, and cross paths with some of the most interesting people from all over the world!
And the greatest part is that while I consider 2013 to be my best year yet - 2014 is setting up to be even more expansive and more abundant!
~ gratitude ~
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