59 Day: Tuesday 20th November: Songkhla - Penang, Malayasia

Crossed to the island over the 13 km bridge. Passed the fort built by the British and many good looking colonial buildings but many in need of renovation. It's very pleasing and somehow reasuring to be surrounded by reconisable archetecture even If much of it is in a desperate state. I can't say I like oriental archetecture.

Went to the wine shop next door to the hotel: Aldridge Australian wine cost nearly £7 a bottle.

Meal provided by Leighton was superb for the money: starter of carrot soup with brown wheaten bread, fish course of king prawn on salmon and ham salad and a main course of our choice (lamb) etc. This was probably the best meal of the whole trip and cost 30 rms about £4. I also had a bottle of Argentinian wine which was excellent.

Had an interesting conversation about socialism with John and Scooby but as always it was spoilt by Anne. This was the first and obviously the last interesting debate on this trip. I decided to go back to the hotel sooner than be talked to like some nursery kid.

We were stopping at the Hotel Cititel a five star palace. Large marble central lounge with a shopping type mall running off consisting of bars, restaurants, shops selling choculates, photo copies etc and some executive club with a ponsy looking official checking people trying to enter. Dressed in my pink sweaty tee shirt and knee length shorts I decided not to try for entrance. Next to it was a corridor running to some kind of conference room. A placard with an arrow pointing the way said 'Getting the best out of the box with Dell' and 'Assessing Staff Apraisal'. Needles to say I gave that load of bollocks a miss to. Something I couldn't miss was the fancy lift which operated with the room card. It was made by Mitsibishi and needed one of their top brains to work it. Spent about twenty minutes going up and down with a dozen other poor souls trying get the damn thing to stop at the right floor. I got little tired of smiling and saying hello to the same people each time the doors opened. Instead of going to floor seven it passed to eight and then went back down to three and then basement before repeating the process over and over again. It's still a mystery how we got out of there. In a few days time we'll be standing outside the twin towers in Kaula Lumpa. I think I’ll give their lift a miss.

So all in all the hotel looked impressive but had no atmosphere whatsoever. So much for posh hotels.