Our Great Adventure: Day 87 14/12/2104

After breakfast at our guest house we moved rooms to our luxury ensuite! Despite being fairly basic the guest house is OK and probably a good thing that we opted for the cheaper option here to help fund our flight from yesterday. We then headed to the bus station to organise our travel to Cameron Highlands, our next stop on route to Singapore, only to decide we'd pay the extra 6 ringitt (just over £1) and go by minivan from the guest house. We thought we'd do the heritage walking tour to help familiarise ourselves with the town so set off to the Heritage Centre to get a map, only to find it closed on Sundays. Hot and needing to replan we popped in a cafe for lunch of humus and vegetables, a very nice change from the toasted sandwiches we seem to have had of late. We decided to get the local free bus around the town in order to see the sights and then head to the port area. The old town is a real mix of cultures and architectures with Chinese shophouses, British colonial buildings, Indian restaurants and an array of pubs, boutiques, cafes and a mass of street food stalls. It's a maze of chaotic streets and narrow lanes with no pavements which makes it an interesting challenge for pedestrians. We got off the bus near the ferry terminal and walked around the headland to Fort Cornwallis, built on the cape and marking the landing of Captain Francis Light in 1786, claiming the island for The East India Company, which was effectively the mercantile arm of the British Empire! From here we continued around the headland and popped into the Eastern & Oriental Hotel for a drink. The hotel was built by the same brothers who built Raffles in Singapore and is definitely a throw back to colonial times. From here we wandered back to the hotel to chill out before heading out to dinner at a local indian restaurant. Simon has been dreaming about a good indian curry for weeks and was very excited to go to a highly recommended place near by. Unfortunately it didn't quite live up to expectations in the main due to confusion over the menu and what food they did/didn't have available. Being muslim it didn't serve alcohol so we stopped off at a bar on the way back hoping to try out a local Malay beer. Ashai (Japanese) was the only non western beer available (although they served Skol, which Simon said he hadn't seen at home for over 20 yesrs and didn't think it was still in existence) so we went with that then headed back to the guest house.