Feb 8 - The owner of the hotel kindly gives us a ride down to the ferry terminal. The room was cramped with bad wifi but the owner is nice enough. He has pigeons on the roof of the building and explains to me in detail how he fits them with GPS so he can track where they go when he releases them. They know to go to certain other buildings in other cities, where he has friends who feed them and send them back. In some cases this involves hundreds of kilometers. A well trained, strong pigeon can cost up to $200,000. The most expensive ones come from Belgium and the Netherlands.
It is simple enough to get on the ferry (no charge for the return leg to Butterworth), and a short walk to Penang Sentral bus terminal. Get some lunch and sit around waiting for our departure.
Of course, the bus station at Alor Setar is well north of the town center. Rather than wait for the slow city bus, we take a taxi in. Our hotel is joined to a public swimming pool. Walk into the center of town to buy some supplies and search for food.
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Alor Setar was founded in 1785 and has been a historically important city since. Immediately prior to this, the region had been occupied by the Bugis (a group originally from Sulawesi), but with the help of the British, including a previously mentioned Francis Light, the area was taken back for the Malays.
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Odette gets some pool time up until it closes at 20:45. I manage to get some work done, given the much better wifi we have here than in Penang.
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