Remember how I said Penang is on the Equator? And that it’s really hot? And that it would be unbelievably stupid to do anything strenuous in such conditions? Well, we decided to go for a hike. When we left the house, the humidity was 100%. That’s not an exaggeration. The search term “Penang weather” in Google showed the current weather had 100% humidity. I’m not even sure what that means. Like does that mean there’s only water in the air and no, uhh, air?

At any rate, by the time we took our fifth step we were starting to sweat. Or perhaps the 100% humidity was just landing on our bodies. The hike was an hour up an enormous flight of stairs through dense jungle. When we reached the top, it looked like someone had sprayed us with a garden hose.

“Hiking”

View from the top

At the top was a bustling recreation center full of people who took the cable car up. We wanted ice cream. And we wanted it now. Securing a table was pretty easy. We just walked around and people parted for our smell like Moses parting the Red Sea. We engulfed some Malaysian ice desserts and moved onto lunch, which was chicken and rice. After climbing back down we raced into our AirBnB, hung up our clothes, and built a little fort in front of the air conditioner.

Our plan for the evening was to do another hike because that’s just how smart we are. This time we would climb to a temple complex, supposedly the largest Buddhist temple in southeast Asia. Our clothes from that morning still were not dry. Rather than stink up another set of clothes, we just went out in our wet ones. Yeah, this is how we roll.