It was time to say goodbye to Ipoh and move on to our next stop — Penang Island. We had four weeks ahead of us, and this time we were looking forward to simply settling in and seeing where the month would take us.

We boarded the train at Ipoh station and headed for Butterworth, then crossed the water by ferry to Penang Island. But we weren’t staying in George Town, where most visitors base themselves.

Our home for the month was in Tanjung Tokong, about twenty minutes north of George Town.

It turned out to be a very good place to slow down.

Settling into Tanjung Tokong

Our apartment was in a modern high-rise built into the side of a hill. The rooftop had an infinity pool, there was a gym, and various levels of the complex had small parks and playground areas.

The scale of the building was impressive — especially the parking garage, which occupied twelve levels. I’d never seen so much parking in one building.

Even the elevator had its own little cultural puzzle.

It was a small detail, but it reminded us that we weren’t simply staying in a modern apartment building. We were living in a place shaped by the cultures around us.

After a hectic final week in Ipoh, which had included spontaneous overnight trips to Pangkor Island and Taiping, we were happy to do very little for the first few days.

Our routine quickly settled into something pleasantly ordinary: a sunrise swim in the rooftop pool, a little time in the gym, a walk through the hillside park, and then work on our projects.

There were plenty of restaurants around us, but most of the time we preferred cooking at home.

For a month, Tanjung Tokong wasn’t just where we slept between excursions.

It was home.

Our Little Hillside Jungle

The small park built into a hillside beside our building became part of our daily routine.

It also had something many urban parks don’t: wildlife.

Birds were especially plentiful, and the little park came alive with their bright colors and varied calls.

And then there were monkeys.

Long-tailed macaques regularly occupied the trees above the path. They weren’t especially pleased about people walking underneath them and would sometimes chatter angrily at us from the branches.

But that didn’t mean they disliked human presence altogether. Quite the opposite.

Halfway up the hill stood a small Chinese altar. Residents left food offerings for ancestors and deities, and the macaques had figured out that this was an excellent place to find a snack.

They would calmly help themselves even when people were passing on the trail.

But the macaques weren’t the only monkeys living around us.

Every now and then we’d catch glimpses of other monkeys disappearing into the trees. They were much more elusive and timid, usually vanishing before we could get a good look at them. For quite a while, they remained a mystery to us.

I, on the other hand, was mostly happy to exercise in our park rather than face the combination of heat, humidity and steep hills beyond.

Still, his little explorations showed us that there was far more nature around our apartment than we’d expected, and gave us a nudge to venture farther afield.

When the Floating Mosque Didn’t Float

One morning we decided to explore farther afield and took a Grab to the Floating Mosque. The name alone was enough to make me curious.

The mosque is built out over the sea on stilts, and when we arrived, the tide was low. Very low.

Instead of floating above the water, it appeared to be sitting on an enormous mud flat.

Oddly enough, what impressed me most wasn’t the mosque itself.

It was the bathroom.

It was spacious and surprisingly luxurious, with marble and gold details. Shoes had to be removed before entering, and everything was sparkling clean.

You could have eaten off that bathroom floor.

Afterward, we decided to walk along the shore toward home and call a Grab when we’d had enough.

That plan lasted about five minutes.

The tide was out, leaving a huge stretch of muddy flats between us and anything resembling a pleasant seaside walk.

And by nine in the morning, the sun was already scorching, with no shade along the shore. So we gave up and tried to order a Grab, but it wasn’t that simple.

The first driver cancelled. Then the second.

Just as we were wondering what to do next, a bus pulled up beside us.

We realized we were standing at a bus stop.

Perhaps Penang was trying to tell us something.

We decided to listen and take the bus.

There was just one problem: we needed the exact fare, and we were short by one ringgit.

While I was frantically thinking what to do next, the woman sitting in front of us noticed our predicament and quietly offered us the missing change. When I tried to give her a larger bill in return, she waved it away.

It was such a small gesture, but it completely changed the mood of the morning.

Our grand plan for a seaside walk had failed spectacularly. Two Grab drivers had abandoned us, the tide had exposed a giant mud flat, and the heat had already defeated us.

But we’d discovered Penang’s buses — and a stranger’s kindness.

Sometimes the best part of an outing is the part you didn’t plan.

Following the Sea and the Hills

As we became more comfortable in our neighborhood, we started venturing farther out on foot.

One afternoon we took a Grab to Gurney Drive, a popular seaside area with a promenade, food stalls and plenty of local activity. At the end of it, we found a quieter stretch of beach where traditional boats were moored along the shore. The tide was low again, and some locals were gathering shellfish from the exposed shoreline.

It wasn’t the polished seaside scene we might have expected.

It felt more like a glimpse of everyday Penang.

Another day, we decided to walk to the Botanical Gardens.

According to the map, the route was about four kilometres and mostly downhill. That sounded promising.

Valery had already explored the hills around our apartment and, using Organic Maps and AllTrails, found a trail that seemed to provide a shortcut through the greenery.

The map wasn’t exactly wrong. The trail was mostly downhill.

It just neglected to mention that some of that downhill was very steep and slippery.

The shade was our saving grace. Without it, the combination of tropical heat and the steep climb down would have been considerably less enjoyable.

By the time we reached the Botanical Gardens, I was tired enough that I wasn’t particularly impressed by the gardens themselves.

But we soon understood why they are a local favorite for walking and exercise.

People came to visit, but the monkeys lived there.

A little later in our stay, we visited the Waterfall Hindu Temple, climbing the hill under the watchful supervision of resident macaques.

By then, we were beginning to understand that in Penang, nature wasn’t always somewhere you went for a special excursion.

Sometimes it was simply there, beside the road, behind your apartment or along the path you happened to be walking.

Meeting the Mysterious Monkeys Again

Our biggest hill adventure came when we visited Penang Hill.

We went early in the morning, taking the funicular up to the top before the heat became too intense.

And then we saw them, right next to the station: a family of dusky leaf monkeys.

Suddenly, we recognized the same shy monkeys we’d occasionally glimpsed in our little neighborhood park.

Here on Penang Hill, they were much less timid, and we finally got a proper look at them.

The adults were dark, while their golden babies were simply adorable.

They were impossible to resist photographing.

So the mystery of our neighborhood monkeys was finally solved. We had been sharing our hillside with dusky leaf monkeys all along. They had simply been much better at hiding than we were at finding them.

Once we’d had our fill of the monkeys, it was time to explore Penang Hill. At the top were a resort, a mosque and a Hindu temple, but our main interest was the walking trails.

By the time we reached the bottom, I was ready for a long rest.

Apparently, slow travel doesn’t always mean easy travel.

Sometimes it just means you have more time to recover.

Kek Lok Si: One Layer at a Time

Another day we went to Kek Lok Si temple.

It did not reveal itself all at once. We had to climb up the hill to see more and more of the complex, with something new appearing at almost every level.

Our first stop was the turtle pond.

I had never seen so many turtles in one place, sitting on the rocks and sunning themselves. Apparently, it was quite a closed turtle society, as a sign made very clear: “Strictly no liberation of tortoises into the pond.”

We continued upward, exploring the different levels, staircases and terraces.

The most impressive building was the main temple, an old and ornate structure whose lower walls were covered with small niches housing thousands of tiny Buddha statues.

But my favorite part was above them.

The upper walls and ceiling were covered with beautifully painted murals. I felt like I could spend hours wandering around, looking up at their intricate details and trying to understand the stories behind them.

Unfortunately, my neck did not cooperate.

There was plenty more to discover as we continued through the complex. We climbed the pagoda, although it was undergoing renovation at the time, and stopped to take in the views from there.

Some of the buildings around the pagoda housed monks, a reminder that Kek Lok Si isn’t simply a historic attraction but also a living monastery.

Eventually, we took the funicular up to the highest level, where a huge statue of Guanyin awaited us.

In hindsight, we probably could have skipped that part. We had to wait for the funicular to take us up, and once there, there wasn’t much to explore beyond the giant statue. We didn’t stay long.

But perhaps that was fitting.

Kek Lok Si had already given us plenty to discover on the way up.

A Place to Call Home

By the end of our four weeks, Tanjung Tokong had become much more than the place where we happened to be staying.

We had our morning swims, our neighborhood market, our little hillside park — and, of course, our monkeys. We had explored beyond our neighborhood, but there was no need to see everything Penang had to offer. We had time to follow a path, wander somewhere new, or simply enjoy another morning at home.

For a month, we weren’t just visiting Penang.

We were living there.

And that was exactly what we had hoped for.