Having arrived in Penang, even though we didn't really want to go there, we decided we would have a couple of weeks to just chill. We opted to stay at the beach, and the Oriental was a good place to stay for the 3 nights it took us to organise an apartment.

Again an older hotel, the rooms were quite large. Wi-Fi was only available on the higher floors, and the manager let us check that it was working before we checked in. The room we were shown initially didn't have a fridge, but as soon as I said 'no fridge' when checking out the room, the manager told us he'd get us a room with a fridge if we wanted one. We checked in initially for one night to test the waters, and the next morning asked to be moved to a room at the back as it was a little noisy along Penang Road at night. This was organised immediately, although we didn't realise that the back of the hotel faced a mosque complete with a very loud call to prayer 4 times a day. Before going to sleep on both nights we stayed in that room, I convinced myself that I wouldn't hear the 5.30am call and I didn't - slept straight through it. Peter said it woke him on the first morning but went straight back to sleep and he didn't hear it the second morning.

The staff were great and the rooms kept very clean. There was a full bath and we also had a really good view of the bay. There were only local channels on the TV, but the internet was streaming so fast it didn't matter. In the time we were there, we were able to find and organise an apartment at the beach.