Batu Ferringhi

Since Wednesday we have been staying at a beach resort about a half hour drive outside Georgetown on the north coast of Penang Island. It is beautiful, there's a pool surrounded by gardens leading down to the beach. There is a swim up bar in the pool, stainless steel bar stools under the water that you sit on, see the second photo.

On Thursday we visited a tropical spice farm, where we thoroughly enjoyed a talk from a lovely Chinese lady who shared her passion for cultivating plants to use for cooking, bathing, and to take for their good health properties, as she showed us around, and got us to sample things like lemon grass tea, stevia( a natural sweetener), cinnamon nutmeg. At the Batik factory, we saw the process of making batik and I bought a few pieces to do some patchwork at home.

 Finally the butterfly farm, where we could wander through beautiful tropical gardens where there were so many types of beautiful butterflies.

Yesterday we went back into Georgetown to drop off our car and spent some more time checking out historic buildings.

Cheong Fatt Tze, a restored Chinese mansion dating from late 19 century, was particularly impressive, it has been restored so sensitively and carefully to retain the essence of the original. The photos as always tell the story much better than my words.