Reserve a Penang and Perak vacation package with one train in the middle

Five nights on the island

The Penang and Perak vacation package starts on the island, and the first thing to do with George Town is walk it badly. Head out with no route. The old town is small, a listed core of about 110 hectares recognized in 2008, and the streets run in short blocks of two story shophouses with covered walkways out front, so you can keep going through a downpour.

Eating is the reason most people stay five nights and not two. Stalls keep their own hours: some open at seven in the morning and are gone by eleven, some only appear after dark, and plenty shut one fixed day a week. That means a certain amount of turning up to a closed shutter. Ask at breakfast what is open tonight and you will eat better than any list will get you.

Two fixed points are worth the effort. Seven jetty villages still stand on stilts off Weld Quay, wooden houses under zinc roofs put up between the 1880s and the 1960s, and families live in them, so you walk quietly and you do not photograph through doorways. The funicular up the hill behind town climbs almost two kilometers of track at up to a 52 percent gradient and takes about five minutes.

The one day that has a clock on it

Seven of the eight days answer to nobody. The moving day does. You settle up in George Town in the morning, get yourself and your bags down to Weld Quay, cross to the mainland, and go up into the transit building on the far side to find the platforms. None of it is far. All of it takes longer than you think with a suitcase, so leave a clear two hours before the train you hold.

The other way across is the road bridge by car, which skips the boat and sets you down at the same building. That is the choice that makes sense in heavy rain, or with more luggage than you want to carry over a footbridge. Either way the office holds your seat in advance and puts the departure in writing, because the stopping pattern changes and the nine o'clock train is not the ten o'clock train.

Three nights in the old tin town

Taiping is quiet in a way that catches some people out. It grew on tin after ore turned up in Larut in 1848, made a great deal of money, built the first museum in the country and the first railway line, and then stopped growing. What is left is a grid of low shophouses, a lake on the edge of it, and very little that asks anything of you.

The lake gardens were laid out in 1880 over worked out mining ground, which is why the water sits in odd flat shapes. The rain trees along the roads there are well over a century old and lean right out across the tarmac until the branches touch overhead. People walk it at six in the morning and again at six in the evening, and the middle of the day belongs to nobody.

The hill that stands over Taiping rises to about 1,250 meters, and the road up is a single lane of 13 kilometers with no room to pass, so private cars do not go. Four wheel drives run by the district office do the climb, and walking up takes most of a morning on legs that will complain the next day. A landslide shut that road to vehicles for years, so the office checks the current position before you book.

Who the second half is wrong for

Say it plainly: the back end of this trip is slow. If five nights of eating and walking leaves you wanting more of the same, three nights in a small wet town will feel like a punishment. There is no nightlife to speak of, kitchens close early, and on a flat gray afternoon there is the museum, the lake, and a coffee shop. People who like that like it very much indeed.

Then the rain. Taiping takes around 3,200 millimeters a year, more than any other town on the peninsula, and its driest month still brings about 159 millimeters. The hill behind it takes far more again. Pack for rain on every one of the three days, carry shoes that dry overnight, and treat an indoor afternoon as part of the trip rather than a day lost.

The move in the middle

Getting out of George Town is the fiddly part, and it is short. The station you want is on the mainland, across the channel at Butterworth, inside a transit building that opened in 2018 and joins the rail platforms to the ferry landing by footbridge. Foot passengers cross from the terminal at Weld Quay, ten minutes from the jetty villages. The boats carry people, bicycles and motorcycles, no cars, and the crossing itself is about ten minutes.

Then the train. The west coast line is electrified and double tracked along this stretch, so the run south is level and quiet, past paddy and oil palm with the Bintang range standing up on the inland side. Allow about an hour, a little more on the services that stop at every small town. They leave roughly once an hour through the day, and Taiping station sits on Jalan Stesen, close to the middle of town.

How

the west coast intercity line, standard class

How long

1h to 1h 30m

How often

roughly one an hour through the day

Who runs it

the state owned national railway, which runs both the fast intercity trains and the slower stopping ones along this stretch

Each end taken by itself

• Reserve the George Town vacation package, 5 nights, $1,460 on its own
• Book the Taiping vacation package, 3 nights, $870 on its own

The price of $2,330 per person is the five George Town nights and the three Taiping nights added as they stand, with nothing put on and nothing taken off.

Clocks that run this pair

• Days 1 to 5, George Town. You arrive under your own steam. Five nights on the island with nothing booked and nothing to be late for.
• Day 6, the move. Check out, cross the channel on foot or take the bridge by car, then the intercity train south. This is the only clock in the eight days.
• Days 6 to 8, Taiping. Three nights by the lake gardens, with the hill, the museum and the old grid all within a short ride of the station.
• Day 9, out. Onward travel is yours to arrange. The price stops at the last breakfast.

What the figure holds and what it leaves to you

A price on this site covers the ground only: the rooms, the named transfers between them, and the people who meet you. It does not cover getting to the country or leaving it.

Train times, the crossing schedule and the state of the hill road above Taiping all change, so the office confirms each of them in writing at the time of booking.

The months this pair holds together

This coast does not have a dry season so much as a less wet one. The island records its heaviest rain in September and October, each of those months running well over 300 millimeters, and the peak inland sits in the same part of the year. The early months are the steadier ones: still hot, still humid, but with more mornings that stay open long enough to get up a hill.

Heat is constant rather than seasonal. Days sit around 32 degrees on the island and in the low thirties inland, nights in the low twenties, and the humidity does not let up. Work with it. Out early, indoors from noon, out again at five. If you need cool air to sleep, say so when you write in, because older shophouse rooms vary a great deal on that.

Asked about this one more than once

Can I run it the other way round, Taiping first?

Yes. Trains run in both directions through the day, and the three quiet nights work either before or after the island. Most people find the slow half lands better at the end, when they are tired of walking and eating. A few want it first, so they arrive into the noise rather than out of it. Say which when you write in and the office builds it that way.

Is the train workable with large suitcases?

It is, with one caveat. There is room at the ends of the cars and above the seats, and the platforms are level with the doors. But if you cross the channel on foot you carry your own bags onto a boat and over a footbridge on the far side. If that sounds like work, take the car over the bridge instead and join the train on the mainland.

What does the $2,330 actually cover?

Eight nights of rooms, breakfast at both, the seat between the two towns, the crossing, and transfers at each end. It does not cover getting to the country, the meals you will care about most, or entries anywhere. The figure is per person on the basis of two people in one room, and a room to yourself is quoted separately.