Travels with Lar – Penang – Post 1

April 1 – 9, 2011
Penang, Malaysia
This was a work trip, but being a real international trip, it probably needs more of a write-up than the normal "I just went to Tempe" trip. So here goes. Keep in mind that this is my very first ever international, oversees trip. I have been to international Canada, but overseas makes this different and a little bit scary. Luckily, for my first overseas trip I was not alone.
The Trip There – Friday - Sunday
It is a long way to Penang, Malaysia. I left home I the evening on Friday, April 1 and flew to San Francisco. There I met the first traveling companion, Kelly and we flew 14 hours to Hong Kong. I slept and ate and read and watched two movies and wiggled my feet so the blood didn't just settle down and make clots. 14 hours is a long time. It was Sunday when we got to Hong Kong because we crossed the International Date Line and lost a day – not to worry, I got it back coming home. We had an 8 hour layover in the Hong Kong airport. We tried to get out for a short boat tour, but the lines through immigration were so long we didn't make the tour. At 3:00 PM we flew three more hours to Penang – my first real overseas destination.

That evening we met with other Mentor people who were there that week to do presentations and demonstrations for Intel and Agilent. We all went to dinner together, which was nice because two of the local people did the ordering and we ate family style. Of importance is the fact that Patti and Kazuyo were there. They would be helpers in my class.
The motel was the Equatorial, a five star resort overlooking the south part of Penang. It was nice but there were few other amenities around it so we had to do a lot of traveling by taxi to get where we wanted to eat or shop.

Jet lagged real bad – and I burnt up my computer power supply. More on that later – and thank heavens I was travelling with suave, well experienced people.