For all my claims of being a city person, I must tell you that cities are not really my favourite travel destinations.
I remember how during our trip to Cambodia, we cut short our stay in the capital city, Phnom Penh, and left for Siem Reap a day earlier than planned. We visited the palace, the museum, the Mekong riverfront, a Buddha temple and didn’t know what else to see. That turned out to be the best decision since there was so much to see in Angkor!
Phnom Penh National Museum
Then there was that evening in Yangon, when after visiting Shwedagaon Pagoda we thought of visiting the city centre next. But the ride in itself didn’t go well with old taxi seats leaving my kids with an itchy skin and the moment they saw the place we got down full of crowd, all they wanted to do was to go back to the hotel and that’s what we had to do!
Kandawgyi Lake, Yangon
Give us a choice between visiting Kuala Lumpur and Langkawi in Malaysia, Langkawi will definitely win hands down. The Petronas Towers was majestic, the Batu caves so beautiful, but beyond that how long can you walk through the malls or how many more British era buildings can you see? We did try to cover as many places as possible, but whether I would be willing to visit those again is the question.
Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Visiting Ahmedabad, I saw that it was a mix of many new high-rise buildings and old ones. But the walk through the heritage part of the city full of crowded roads which were not so clean had me wish we were back visiting places which just had the heritage part intact without all the development of the city surrounding it.
Bai Harir Vav, Ahmedabad
During our trip to Kolkata, the scorching sun left us drained despite the fact that we are used to this kind of weather. The traffic jam in the roads and the crowds everywhere and the fact that all the unpainted buildings there were unattractive. Not to mention the people who were taking bath on the road side! We did take a walk visiting all the heritage buildings from the British era, but the entire place seemed in dire need of a fresh coat of paint.
Some building in Kolkata
Even in Singapore, we avoid Little India on Sundays which is an off-day for all the migrant workers, since it has never been a comfortable experience walking amidst hundreds of men, despite the fact that no one misbehaves.
A street in Penang
Even as we walked around looking for some of the British-era buildings in the UNESCO Heritage area of George Town, Penang, my daughter asked us, ‘Ok so some random person built something and it got labeled as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Can you tell me why you want to see it? Do you really find it stunning?’ But take her to sites like Chittorgarh Palace or Rani Ki Vav, you don’t hear her complain. Well that pretty much sums up our taste.
We are not the ones who prefer roaming around malls, but sometimes that appears to be a comforting, familiar thing to do rather than roam around crowded streets.
Maybe it’s an overdose of visiting and living in erstwhile British colonies or maybe it’s the effect of walking in the hot and humid weather through the city roads which generally don’t have as many trees as in the countryside, but give us either a rustic retreat amidst nature’s beauty or a guided tour of a heritage site in a small town and we will be happy to indulge in those.
Believe me, my kids don’t have any complaints about shopping in T. Nagar or Mylapore. They enjoy it despite the crowd. Because, that is, after all, home! 🙂
We landed in Penang at around 3 pm on a Friday and departed from there at 8 pm on Sunday. I am sharing our itinerary with you, along with some alternative that you can choose.
Day 1:
16:45 hrs: Check-in to Hotel (Stay near Georgetown and not in Batu Ferringhi area if you want to cover more places in a short time) We stayed at Evergreen Laurel Hotel.
17:00 hrs: Leave for a Hindu temple tour:
Thanneer Malai / Waterfall Hill Sri Bala Thandayuthapani Temple (Situated on a hill which can be reached by climbing 500 steps)
Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple
Nattukottai Chettiar Temple – dedicated to Lord Muruga
20:00 hrs: Back to Hotel or explore the Georgetown area
Day 2:
10:00 hrs – 14:00 hrs: Explore Penang Hill
Penang Hill (known also by the name Bukit Bendera in Malay or Kodi Malai in Tamil) recently received UNESCO Biosphere Reserve status.
Take the Funicular Train to Penang Hill from its base
Sri AruLoLi Thirumurugan Temple
Masjid Bukit Bendera
32-pounder Canon
Viewpoints
The Habitat
Langur Way Canopy Walk
Curtis Crest Tree Top Walk
14:30 hrs: Lunch at Woodlands Restaurant, Little India
15:00 hrs – 17:00 hrs: Explore UNESCO World Heritage Zone of Georgetown by walk
(Will take an hour more if you go inside each place)
Little India
Goddess of Mercy Temple
St. George’s Anglican Church
Kapitan Keling Mosque
Yap Khongsi Taoist Temple
Hock Teik Cheng Sin Temple
Cathedral of the Assumption
Armenian Street – Best place for souvenir shopping
Street Art of Georgetown
Chew Jetty
Queen Victoria Memorial Clock Tower
Fort Cornwallis
17:30 hrs: Back to hotel to take a break from the sweltering sun
19:00 hrs – 20:30 hrs – Explore the rest of the Georgetown World Heritage zone
Bengali Mosque
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion
Han Jiang Ancestral Temple / Teochew Temple
Pinang Peranakan Mansion
Sri Mariamman Temple
Day 3:
7:30 hrs – 8:30 hrs: Catch the sunrise
While the lazy-me chose to do this right from my hotel room since we got a sea-facing room, you can start early and visit Batu Ferringhi beach to catch a sunrise over the beach.
09:00 hrs – 12 noon: Go Buddhist temple-hopping or visit Penang National Park
09:00 hrs: Visit Buddha temples in Burma Road
Reclining Buddha Wat Chaiyamangalaram
Dhammikarama Burmese Temple
10:30 hrs: Visit Kek Lok Si Buddhist Temple
13:30 hrs: Lunch at Annalakshmi, an Indian vegetarian restaurant
14:30 hrs: Penang Botanical Gardenor visit KOMTAR or vist some malls like One Pranglin Mall & 1st Avenue Mall
Bali seems to be currently the go-to destination for many people all over the world and we too decided to join the bandwagon and explore the place. 🙂 With beautiful scenery of every kind and abundance of rustic cultural landscapes, Bali did live up to all the hype.
From the moment we landed till we flew back, we saw that Bali was generally clean overall. Only downside was the high prevalence of smoking everywhere (even within temples! & even in the presence of children).
Roads predominantly had only two lanes – one for either way. So there was traffic most of the time, since it was like a procession of vehicles in a single file. But the good thing was, there was discipline despite the slowing down caused by traffic – no overtaking and no honking of horns at all. In fact, traffic or not, we hardly heard the sound of horns, despite there being too many two-wheelers too on the road. Barring a few mini buses in Ubud, we hardly saw any form of public transport anywhere. Everyone seemed to have their own two-wheeler or car.
The terrain was generally not plain, so a lot of the commute was having slopes and sometimes hilly regions too.
The buildings here, be it shops or hotels or houses, were predominantly of only one or two storeys. We didn’t spot any building beyond 4 storeys at most. I wonder if this could be to facilitate easy evacuation during any volcanic eruptions.
Places around all the tourist attractions had a lot of restaurants or food stalls (called warung in Indonesian language). A lot of these places had boards clearly mentioning that vegetarian options are available. Indian food too was advertised to be part of the menu in many places.
There were temples literally everywhere, especially in areas in and around Ubud and other countryside regions. The temples were all clean and well-maintained too.
Statues of Hindu Gods like Arjuna, Gatotkacha, some Dwarapalakas (guardians) or some divine figures similar to Dwarapalakas were found in many junctions of roads.
A lot of shops and other commercial establishments seemed to have idols of Lord Ganesha.
A lot of roads were named after Hindu Gods and characters of Mahabharata and Ramayana. The characters ‘Jln’ which precede the name of a road is a short form for the Malay/Indonesian word ‘Jalan’ which means ‘Street’/’Road’. One could spot everything from Jln Hanoman to Jln Eka Laweya to Jln Kunti.
Paddy fields, coconut groves and banana plantations were ubiquitous all through the island.
This, more than anything else, kept giving me the feel of travelling through our very own fertile Kaveri delta region. 🙂
While I love travelling and exploring new places, our recent trips have been requiring a lot more planning and deciding on places to visit. This curation of itineraries have now become as enjoyable as the travel itself.
Travelogues & Travel Vlogs:
There was a time when I read a lot of travelogues and travel blogs and imagined what each place would be like looking at the few photos added as part of that article/blog post.
But nowadays, with a lot of travel vloggers/ digital nomads / YouTube creators posting a lot of their personal travel videos, there is a wide variety of visual media about every other place. Not to forget all those aerial videos shot by a drone, which gives such a beautiful, extensive coverage of a place, that watching a drone shot only results in more and more places getting added to your wishlist. Depending on the destination of your choice, this amount of information can either be a boon or a bane.
Any vacation planning always starts with the basic research of ‘things to do’ in that destination.
Being a family of heritage and nature lovers, we generally try to get information on whether a UNESCO World Heritage Site or a nature-related UNESCO spot like ‘Biosphere Reserve’ or ‘Global Geopark’ exists there. If it’s a destination within India, then we look for ‘Archaeological Survey of India’ (ASI) monuments too.
Sun Temple, Modhera, India
An adventure-seeker or a party-goer or a solo traveller or a foodie might look for a completely different set of things to do.
Curtis Crest Tree Top Walk, Penang Hill, Malaysia
Trip Duration:
This list of ‘things to do’ generally determines the approximate number of days required to visit a place. I also like to glance through all those pieces like ‘24 hrs/48 hrs in a city’ to see if just that duration is enough for a place.
Flight Offers:
Of course, not always do we plan and book tickets. There are also times when we book the tickets and then do planning on the go. For instance, we had an absolutely wonderful vacation at Langkawi, Malaysia without any planning. In fact, since we hadn’t seen much of Malaysia, the only reason that we chose that destination was because of an offer from Scoot airlines. 🙂
Scoot flight at Ngurah Rai Airport, Bali, Indonesia
For those residing in Singapore, you should check out those regular offers from Scoot (Jet Star & Air Asia too) to destinations in Southeast Asia (and India and Australia).
Advanced Booking for certain Attractions:
Once the travel dates are finalized, we generally check if any attraction requires pre-booking of tickets. For instance, if you want to go to the top of the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur to get some nice city views, then you should definitely book the tickets in advance since it generally gets sold out fast.
Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Also, do check out Klook for any offers on the tickets for attractions in Southeast Asia.
Accommodation & Food:
The location is one of the main points which we generally consider when searching for a family-friendly accommodation.
When you are travelling with kids, food is an important thing which you have to consider. In the case of foreign countries, we prefer a place near an Indian restaurant (preferably a pure vegetarian one, if possible). We use Google Maps to find restaurants and read their reviews before zeroing on one.
Poori at MTR, Bengaluru, India
If we are to reach a destination during the night time, we generally prefer a place near the airport/ railway station/ bus terminus (at least for the first day) and not in some remote location.
For city trips, we generally see where the majority of places of interest are located and try to find a hotel near that area. That way, we can either cover many places by foot or by just taking an auto or taxis from Grab / Gojek / Ola / Uber etc.
In hill stations, we give first preference to a place near the city centre, since that’s where you will have a lot of food options and easy availability of transportation too. Besides, walking long distances on hilly terrain isn’t really my cup of tea.
Hotel Shiva Vilas Palace, Sandur (Hampi), India
We generally book through Agoda or Booking.com and always look for the option for free cancellation before the check-in date. We again read the reviews on these platforms as well as on Google Maps before deciding on one. But, there have been times when the room which we finally got did not match the description or the reviews.
Local Transportation:
No itinerary planning is complete without deciding on the mode of transport in the destination.
Apart from the public transport buses and MRTs and, of course, the taxis – the usual full-day hired taxis or taxis from ride-hailing apps like Grab, Ola, Uber, Gojek, etc., each place also has its own unique transportation.
Tram at Kolkata, India
Toy Train, Darjeeling, India
Tuk-tuks in Cambodia, autos in Myanmar & India, hop-on hop-off buses in Paris & Singapore, free shuttle buses in Kuala Lumpur & Penang, trams in Kolkata & Antwerp, tongas (horse cart) around Mysore Palace, train ride through Luxembourg, toy train in Ooty & Darjeeling, boat rides in Kolkata, Cambodia & Myanmar, funicular train in Penang, cable car access for some temples in Haridwar, Udaipur and Pavagadh and so on.
I haven’t tried some of the above-mentioned options, but we do plan our day based on the available transport options in a place.
Google Maps:
Apart from all the above-mentioned points, to me, personally, this is the real culprit which spoils the wanderlust in me. 🙂 Checking out one place on the map shows some other place nearby and before you know it, you are seeing photos of it, reading about it, all within the Google Maps app itself, and before you know it, you either divert the car to that place on the way on a whim or end up adding one more day to your itinerary just to cover that one place!
Map of Langkawi, Malaysia
Checking out a place in Google Maps gives me the feeling of a child let loose in a chocolate factory! It’s another fact that I cannot resist a chocolate factory even now! We decided to skip visiting an archaeological site and instead went to the Amul chocolate factory during our trip to Gujarat! I still remember the aroma of chocolate that wafted through the air as we neared the factory and the sight of Choco Poco (Amul’s very own Gems) that literally poured out of the machine!
Amul Chocolate Factory, Anand, India
Sorry for deviating from the topic, but now you know what my weakness other than travelling is.
Destiny/Luck:
Ultimately, irrespective of how much ever planning that you might have done, there will be days when things might not go as per your plan.
Something like changes in weather can change your travel plans or even cold, fever or tiredness can make you cut down on the places to visit or even something unbelievable like a pandemic can occur resulting in lockdowns of cities and countries and cancellations of flights and trains!
But, there will also be days when you unexpectedly visit a new place which will give you a most memorable experience.
Just like life in itself, travelling too is all about going in with the flow and experiencing every moment of it. If I appear to sound a bit philosophical here, as you experience discovering one place after another and meet all kinds of people, you continue to get reminded of how you are nothing but a mere speck in this vast universe!
Happy Travelling!
P.S.: I love reading travelogues and travel planning articles as much as I love travelling itself. Having read so many articles like this, I really wanted to give writing something like this a try. 🙂
