Island of Penang, and all its glorious obese-inducing food!

The year end holidays are here! Don't I miss the days where I used to get like freaking 3 months off. Damn I missed student life.

I'm like appreciating what little 2 weeks off I have and recently just returned from the isle of Penang. With all its wonderful heritage sites and terribly fattening but amazing food, yet so modern its easy to forget I'm still in Malaysia. Except the traffic. The traffic is horrendous.

The Penang Bridge

YAY I finally know how to make collages on the PC. LOL. Btw, the hotel with the terrible naming sense: Paradise Rainbow Beach Resort.

Now now, I know you just want to see the pictures of food. I swear they taste much better than they look in the camera. Partly cause I tend to start chomping first then take a picture while its half eaten haha. Oops. =p

Some amazing sunset - not photoshopped.

Wheee you can tell I'm having so much fun with the collages. Syok sendiri only.

So being tourists and doing what tourist do best is to first go to tourisy-like places, sayyy for example, Gurney Drive for food. FOOOOD. For starters its insanely crowded. As if the food is free and the waitresses (old uncle shouting at you to order drinks) are hot. Neither of which are true, I assure you.

The second thing you notice is every shop seems to be the "Best" in town. Exhibit A below.

Also not true.

And finally, for KL folks like us, RM5, RM5.50, or even RM6 seems like a decent price to pay. After 4 days in Penang, the average hawker food price for non-tourisy places actually ranges from RM2.50 - RM3.50. KL people will go like O.o but seems pretty standard here actually.

The only person native and indigenous to Penang that I know helped us to locate awesome food. Though her directions were pretty vague and occasionally wrong info =p Super appreciated btw, thank you!

Awesome-est Chicken Wings, EVER.

You know when you go like whaat? Its just chicken wings, how good can chicken wings get. The short answer is very good. Located along Gurney Drive is a shop called Song River and the chicken wing guy seems to get less business than he deserves. Help him out, because your stomach will thank you for it. Try out their chicken wings / drumsticks because its mouth watering and you won't regret it.

Our Tour Book. Piece of paper in this case.

Our places-to-go list and things-to-eat list that we researched up, because we are so sophisticated like that and can google stuff, and u know, stuff to do.

Obligatory Cam-Whoring Pics.

This is me. Though I seldom post handsome-looking pictures of myself. Here you go. You're welcome.

The second link! Incomplete. Drive at your own risk of certain death.

Past the incomplete second link which will complete very close to the Bayan Lepas area and airport. On the way to the Penang War Museum - which is at the other end of the island T.T. It's a real, like real, British fort back in the day.

The war museum. That's mom at the bottom right. 

The war museum is bloody cool. Not only does all the original british structures, tunnels, pillboxes still stand, they also have paintball here. Like, seriously cool. Makes all those fake paintball setting with those "air" bags look like crap as they actually have structures, trees, etc, here.

Entrace Fee: RM20 per adult. Forgot how much it is per child cause there aint any child left in my family.

Plus, the best view of the 2nd link!

My awesome pano shot. Take that super expensive Olympus DSLR, can you do that??

Picked up an awesome guide to food. Kudos to the Penang Tourism Board / Council whatever for such a good job.

Moving on to visit the Khoo Kongsi um, place. Basically its like a clan of the Khoo family being all big n powerful. Including the founder of Maybank O.o so yeah. Nothing of much interest here actually, and the entrance fee actually costs RM10 per person. Not exactly worth it IMO.

We moved on to have lunch (we have breakfast at the hotel) - so we were driving driving and then came across what seemed to be people lining up for free money. Oh wait, no, that's just for Nasi Kandar.

Doing what we do best, we stopped and join in the insanely long queue. Ironically, the shop name was called Line Clear. It sure as hell wasn't a clear line. The food was, well, nice, above average, but doesn't justify lining up with 30 - 40 people ahead of you in the hot, hot sun (the line went until the main road).

I reckon it was pretty cheap tho, was like RM5-7 only for something that would have cost RM15 in KL easily.

Do you see that sun? Do you? DO YOU? 

While normal people have like, 3 meals a day, we were busy having 10. After our love/hate affair with the Nasi Kandar, we moved on to Cendol.. and Rojak.. and... Laksa... *BURP*

After that we decided we haven't had enough food and then went on to Him Heang. This is literally the ONLY place in Malaysia that this brand sells their stuff.

MORE FOOD. Wan Tan Mee + Curry Mee + Small Fried Stuff

After some R&R at the hotel, it was night, and time for MORE FOOD. Highly recommended apparently was the Wan Tan Mee & Curry Mee on Chulia St. Wasn't too bad, isn't the best Wan Tan Mee but it was good enough.. and for RM2.50 somemore. Curry mee was the same.

Guess the building? It's the local council MPPP! Looks like a tourist attraction, doesn't it?

Wow a wedding... by boat.

The next morning was just chilling and relaxing by the beach after a full day of travelling the day before. What was exciting was the wedding that seem to be happening and I had first class views. You know how we drive a convoy of cars and honk honk honk all the way to the bride's house?

This was way more amazing, a dragon boat with like 12 Heng Tais rowing and then confetti when the groom arrived and Bridge as well. Makes the cars n honking look so boring now, doesn't it?

It was quickly lunch time, and we travelled all the way searching for one particular hawker stall in the whole of Penang. It was called Maga Restaurant on Jalan Perak, because the curry hawker stall there won a hawker competition for the title of best curry in whole of Penang, and no joke, it was good.

The stall next door selling Ho Chien or fried Oyster was pretty good as well. Highly Recommended.

Suffolk House

We visited the Suffolk house as well - it was Sir Francis Light's former residence like 2 centuries ago. Entrance Fees are RM10 per person for self guided and RM15 for guided. I would recommended Self Guided because it gives you the time to slowly appreciate the culture that was 2 centuries ago, plus there is the brochure and each room has a description and read out.

Very interesting in my opinion, and a should-visit place in Penang.

Oh, a great place for some fine dining or high tea - the venue is nice but I can't say the same for their service. Apparently the place was booked out for like 4 tables =.=" They had 20 over tables but apparently their capacity is capped to serving 4 tables and the whole restaurant was closed because of that.

More Suffolk House

Peranakan Museum

So we moved on to the Peranakan Museum - for those who, like me, have no idea whats that, it's basically about the Babas and Nyonyas - mixed race marriages between the chinese and malays back then. The museum basically showcase how life was for a rather rich Baba Nyonya.

It was a nice and rather interesting place, but was lacking in any form of guide / description / words. It was just here, see this see that without any clue what this and that is. Including a vase which was actually a potty.

Popular place with wedding shoots as well for the hour we were there, there were two couples shooting.

Coffee Bean @ Plaza Gurney

This was a defining moment where I decided I just loved Penang. Here I was sipping on coffee by the sea and enjoying the sea wind, where a rainbow decided to show up just in front of us, at this huge modern mall that is Plaza Gurney. Life in Penang does seem rather good. Stressed out? Have a cup of coffee by the beach just like St Kilda Melbourne.

Had dinner with the aforementioned indigenous person.

Sorry WK haha.

China House - Coolest place I've been in Malaysia

Final night in Penang - I was brought to China House - just the coolest place in Penang it seems. Behind the inconspicuous front, was a busy and cost little narrow but insanely long place called China House.

They have everything, literally everything. Food, drinks, wine, coffee, cakes, burgers, food, pubs, ART GALLERY. Amazing place. Tiramisu in picture, while nice, loses to Alexis =p Wine, house red wine, horrible. Avoid.

And thats all folks, that concludes my Penang trip documentary :) Hope to those who are going to Penang in the future have a great time and find the summary below!

Sorry I'm just too lazy to put in like addresses and other key information you probably need :P google those!

Summary:

Places Visited:
Penang War Museum (Recommended)
Khoo Kongsi (Not Recommended)
Suffolk House (Sir Francis Light's former residence) (Recommended)
Peranakan Museum (Baba & Nyonya) (Neutral)

Places Eaten:
Gurney Drive Hawker Center (Not Recommended)
Song River (BBQ Chicken) (Highly Recommended)
Line Clear (Nasi Kandar) (Neutral)
TeoChew Cendol... Rojak.... Laksa.. (Highly Recommended - except Laksa)
Him Heang (Recommended)
Chulia St Wan Tan Mee + Curry Mee (Neutral)
Maga Restaurant Curry Mee + Ho Chien (Highly Recommended)
Unknown Shop @ New Lane (Neutral)
China House (Highly Recommended)

Whew this has been a long, long post. Hope it makes up for AGES for not posting anything :P

Logging off,
Lawrence

Merry Christmas 2012 and the passing of a great man.

Dear neglected blog,

I am sorry to have neglected you for months for reasons none other than being lazy.

I have been to many places and did many things yet I have not posted any of them there. Blame Facebook and Instagram for being so much easier than you, you who I have to type like essay like posts, tsk!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to those who are still following my very much neglected blog.

As some, but not all of you may know, this year has been quite an eventful one, and the year end, like what most are doing out there is a time for reflection and I would like to start by something that has happened recently that is close and dear to my heart.

I've been meaning to create a post about this, but could never bring myself to doing it until now.

On Dec 5 2012, my grandfather passed away. It was really a moment of sadness as we mourn the passing of a great man, always so cheerful and jolly, that no visit back to Ipoh or chinese new year celebrations will ever be the same.

Nevertheless, he lived a long and fulfilling life, and we will continue to remember and cherish him after his passing as we have always done so. Rest in peace, yeh yeh.

I'll continue my posts in the next posts. Until then,

Logging off,
Lawrence