Went to Penang in Malaysia for a bit. It was very cool. It reminded me of Toronto in some ways, except you don’t have to go to different neighbourhoods to get the different foods and cultures. You just have to walk half a block. I wandered through Indian, Muslim, and Chinese areas in under ten minutes, with different types of shops and different restaurants and everything.

Lots of English spoken here and, unlike many other places I’ve been, older people speak it well. A cab driver told me that up until 1981, school was taught in English, so people who went to school before then speak excellent English. Now, I believe, they teach in Malay, except I think that there are schools that are taught in Tamil and others in Chinese.

The food was all fantastic and varied – I’m looking forward to going back to Malaysia sometime.