Just a little aside, first: we've been having a bit of trouble recently with local etiquette. There's an art to giving and receiving things here, but the problem is, no-one is consistent, so we're constantly confused. In general, Indian people will not use their left hand to give or recieve and item, as it's considered unclean, and in Singapore, it was good manners to use both hands to offer or take anything, whether a credit card or a shopping bag or whatever. A lot of people have been using the gesture that I thought was Burmese, where you touch your right forearm with your left hand as you take something with your right. It's easy enough to copy the person after you've seen them do it, but it's not easy guessing which manner they'd favour if you have to go first. We're not doing too well, but no-one seems to mind, and a lot of the time it's just normal grabbing. Oh well.

Without an alarm clock this morning, I slept until ten o'clock, and even then Mikey wanted to finish his book so I could sleep for another hour or so. By the time we headed out into town, it was lunchtime, so we had a sandwich (mine was a strange combination of tuna, drief beef, cheese, omlette and salad) on the beach and then caught a bus into Georgetown. It was significantly cheaper than the taxi (although five pounds for a 35-minute taxi ride isn't bad) but took twice as long. But we were in no hurry today. When we got to Georgetown we realised that we'd left the book of things to do at the hostel and had no idea where we were or where we should go. So we popped into the nearest posh hotel and asked for a map of the town, and then decided to have a little look at the museum. While we were in the hotel we noticed that the map said there was a geodesic dome round the back, and, seeing as someone went to all the trouble of building it we went to find it. After asking in many shops where it was, and getting different answers each time, we finally found the dome, which was rather disappointing. Not in a geodesic dome kind of way, because it was a fine example, but rather in a not worthy of a forty-minute search kind of way.

We took a taxi to the museum at the other side of town because it was too hot to walk, and we recieved a mini guided tour as we went along. The museum was small but very nicely put together, and showed snapshots of life in Penang in the '20s for all the nationalities that immigrated here.

Then, avoiding the trishaw drivers who wanted to take us for a ride, we went across the road to Fort Cornwallis, the British military post for when Captain Light came along and claimed the island. Nice, but very hot. After that we were almost converted to Islam by a young man in the Kapitan Keling mosque, who was very chatty and seemed to be impressed that I covered my head without prompting and we were both interested in the workings of the place. He chatted to us for ages, and it was nice to hear him talking about his religion. We both opted to wear the long gowns offered to us at the beginning, and we were both melting in their heavy polyester saunas by the end of it. The mosque, the oldest in Penang, was rather beautiful, with white walls and arches and golden Arabic script in little panels everywhere. The pillars were carved with geometric designs and the whole place was light and airy and rather welcoming.

After the mosque we walked into an older part of town. I loved the old houses, all of which have arched entranceways off the pavement, but a staggering variety of upstairses. Most of them have ancient wooden shutters, almost all unpainted since they were put there, several have trees growing out of the gutters, and generally the windows were arched and the walls lacking chunks of plaster, showing the red brickwork below the grey exteriors, but they were all different to one another. Chinese temples grew out of the side of sewing machine shops and cafes and every building was stuck to the side of the one next to it in a wonderfully mis-matched but perfectly-tessellating manner. In a slightly more wealthy neighbouring street all the houses were painted in pastel colours with complimentary shades for the shutters and columns, and the roads were paved with slabs showing geometrical patterns to make them less slippery in the rain.

We tried to get to the Chinese market before they closed, but failed. It was about 7pm and the sun was setting slowly behind the cloud, and by the time we reached the market everything was being put away. There were some giant woven baskets, made out of that palm leaf called pandamas which has very nasty spikes that have to be removed before you can weave it, that would have been large enough for me to sit in and still have room for all the stray kittens running around everywhere, but I didn't try it because you have to be polite in someone else's country. The market has been there for over one hundred and fifty years, and would have been wonderful to wander round. Maybe we'll have a chance tomorrow.

It was getting dark so we headed for a big shopping centre in the hope that we'd find something to eat. Thai food stalls were cooking up marvellous concoctions on the pavement, but most had fish in, so I avoided them. At the shopping centre I saw a sign for a Thai mango salad, but it had been mixed with ground anchovies and tiny salty prawns so I walked away. I did buy a mooncake, though, but only because Jake had emailed me and told me all about them that morning, and also because the lady talked me into it. Actually, she didn't because she spoke no English and I speak no Chinese all I really wanted to know was when the Mid-Autumn festival, for which the cakes were made, actually was. She put her hands together a few times and bowed a bit and then let me taste about four types of mooncake filling. So I had to buy one - I chose the green tea filling, and I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it now - it's the size of a large pork pie but filled with soft green fudge that's a bit too sweet even for me. I'm sure I'll think of something.

We popped into a bookshop and picked up a couple of cheap guidebooks, and I was chased by a man wanting us to enter his karaoke cafe. Which is, almost perfectly, my worst nightmare come true - not only the karaoke but being pursued by someone to take part. We ran. We walked through amusement arcaded where the bleeping and blaring of all kinds of machines was a litle overbearing, and then we stopped at a rice and noodle house for supper. Later, we grabbed a taxi back to the other side of the island and our hostel. It's thundering outside, and I think it will rain soon, which will hopefully cool the air down for the morning. I can hope!