Oct 22 PENANG, Malaysia

Arrived in Penang and was highly impresses by my surroundings. We were anchored out in the channel between Penang near Georgetown and the main peninsula land of Malaysia. Now that we were anchored we would have to be tendered back and forth to land. Using one of our lifeboats we would fill up this metal boat with no ventilation to get to land. It was so hot and a long tedious process every time so I tried to avoid it at all costs. Early in the morning a group of us got ready early to go on land ASAP to go shopping! We ( James, Patrick, Jewel, Nina, and Casey)  were ready to go but as soon as we were about to get on the tender, The Voice announces that the ship hasn’t been cleared yet. Some people had already gone ashore that were not part of the group of FDP’s that had been cleared to go ashore..not fair! Once we got on land we headed over to the Queensbay Mall. It was a GORRRGEOUS mall right on the water. Malaysia in general is surprising very mountainous and green. It was raining out/muggy most of the say so it was perfect shopping conditions. There were so many stores I didn’t know what to do with myself so my first stop was the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf coffee shop to get amped up. My target store was Forever 21, of course. Mostly got some essentials for China/Japan because I am getting so sick of the clothes I have packed. Also went into a store called TopShop which is basically a mix between Forever 21 and UrbanOutfitters. After spending a good portion of the day roaming the mall for clothes, shoes, and other useless things we headed back to the ship to shower and change for dinner/going out. Headed out with Sara, Jewel and Jocie. Headed to a restaurant called SoHo to eat but when we got there it was mostly American good and we wanted some local food so we just grabbed a drink and watched Jocie eat her burger because she didn’t want local food. We saw a local night market across the street (Red Market) and Sara and I purchased a dinner plate for RM3.00 which is less than $1 USD. J saweet. The fun had a small delay because Jocie received a call from Ali telling her that her grandmother had finally passed away (it was coming for some time and they were just waiting for when). Jocie headed back to the ship after many hugs and I love you’s. Jewel, Sara and I headed to the bars because it was ladies night! We get in bars free and drinks free. 1^st stop was a place called F.AM.E and had the set up of the bar, lots of lounge areas and a dancing stage. Not many people were there so we headed next door to Slippery Senoritas which was bumpin! There was a live band that was doing some great covers of all the recently pop/hiphop songs. The bar was lit up with orange lights. Had a couple of drinks and met up with a bunch of other SAS kids and danced most of our time there. Sara and I ran into the owner of the bar and he gave us a free round of drinks. Definitely had to do with the blonde hair ;). Unfortunately the last tender heading back to the boat was at 1 am. So we had to haul ass back to the marina to catch it. If we didn’t get it we would be spending the night who knows where lol.