Beautiful Colors of Penang

Georgetown is such a vibrant city, full of culture and beautiful architecture. I promise, I did more there than hunt for street art and eat food in cafes! For example...

I walked around the historic district for hours each day, taking in the sights and sounds of the streets. The old shophouses, mostly restored, retain their gorgeous and distinct colors. 

Trishaw drivers pedal tourists around town, though this has become more of a novelty than a practical way to get to destinations. They are almost as expensive as cabs, a far cry from the cheap fares in Cambodia. The drivers are mostly old uncles rather than the sprightly young men we encountered in Phnom Penh - it's impressive that they have so much energy!

Whenever I travel to a new place I always look for secondhand bookshops. Usually the shops have a unique and cheap collection of interesting books. Georgetown's Chowrasta Market has many of these shops located on the second floor. Look at these massive piles of books, all bound together with string to keep them from tumbling down in a cascade. It takes a lot of patience to go through all the outdated textbooks and mass-produced romance novels, but I managed to find some good reads!

One of the highlights of the trip was touring the Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, a beautiful and historically significant restored house that now functions as a landmark and upscale hotel.

The house was built by Cheong Fatt Sze, a successful Chinese immigrant and businessman. It was used as the filming site for the award-winning film Indochine.

Tours are conducted three times a day in Mandarin and English, and the guides are quite knowledgeable about the history and the architecture of the house. I highly recommend it if you have the time, and it's a nice way to spend a hot afternoon indoors.

Fort Cornwallis was also on my list of things I wanted to do in Penang. It's a star-shaped fort located near the water, and makes for a nice walk when combined with the other old colonial buildings in the area. By itself though, it was a bit underwhelming. Not many of the original structures remain, so it's mostly a flat grassy area with some plaques describing the history of the place.

One thing I noticed on my walks throughout the town is that there are so many religious sites. One street is called the street of "religious harmony," because along that short way there is a mosque, a Hindu temple, a Buddhist temple, and two Christian churches of different sects. It's so nice to see this diversity in such a dense and small place.

Lastly, Penang Hill makes for a nice half-day outing. It's a bit far from the Georgetown area, so you definitely want to catch a cab or a public bus if you are on a budget. One bus, which I took, drives from the jetty area all the way to the hill in about 40 minutes, and it takes a nice winding route around different neighborhoods of Penang.

The hill is a very tall hill indeed! There is a funicular train which goes up the hill; roundtrip is 30 MYR for visitors. The ride takes about 10 minutes, during which you are going up the side of the hill at about a 60 degrees angle to the ground. It's quite steep and your ears might pop like mine did!

The view at the top is gorgeous, about a kilometer above sea level. Another bonus is that the temperature is much cooler at the top of the hill.

Besides the nice views, there isn't too much to do on top of the hill. There is a nice food court, a quirky-looking Owl Museum, a playground for kids, and you can also take a buggy ride around some of the paths. Still, it's a nice way to spend a few hours in a semi-natural setting. 

I'm really glad I got to visit Penang - it was one of the last places I haven't visited that was on my list. It's not a major tourist destination in Southeast Asia (it has neither exciting nightlife nor beautiful beaches), but it has a lot of understated charm which I think would appeal to many types of visitors. It's not as big or chaotic as Kuala Lumpur; it's larger and has more diverse activities than Malacca. Additionally, Georgetown itself is only one part of the larger island of Penang, which does have beaches, water sports, and fishing villages.

 If you are ever in the region, you should go have a look for yourself! 

Delicious Finds

Penang is known for its amazing and affordable food. A taxi driver told me that there are Singaporean tourists who fly all the way here just to eat a few meals. Personally, I don't know if I would go to those lengths, but what I did try was really good! I had a few meals of traditional local foods, and others of different cuisines from unique local institutions and cafes. 

On the first night, I stumbled across a food stand on Chulia Street, the backpacker district. It's called lok lok - think of a roadside, communal eating experience of hot pot. There are various raw ingredients skewered on wooden sticks and arranged for self-service. The sticks are colored at the ends which let you know the price of that particular item. 

You just take whatever you feel like and stick it in one of two pots of boiling water. When it's cooked (up to your own discretion!), you can remove it from the water and dip it in various spicy sauces. It's a fun experience because all these different people are just standing around, cooking their food and eating on the street. There are different vegetables, meat balls, seafood, tofu and eggs. It's not the most sanitary experience, but I figured the boiling water would disinfect the food. I tried about 5 skewers of food for 4 Malaysian ringgit (MYR), or a little more than $1 USD. 

Georgetown is also known for having an abundance of quirky and hipster cafes located in renovated shophouses, serving both local and western foods. I found one on Lorong Chulia called Roti Bean Cafe for breakfast the second morning. They have a simple menu, and I ordered egg in toast, alternatively known as "egg in a basket" or "toad in a hole" for 5 MYR.  It was delicious - thick buttery toast and a nice soft-boiled egg plopped in the middle! Good fuel for the rest of the day.

Another nice cafe is located on Lorong Soo Hoon, and the name is a play of words on the street. It's called "Soo hongry!"A homey little place, the menu is limited to the few specials they serve each day. There wasn't a physical menu - the waitress described each dish in detail after I sat down.

I ordered the portuguese chicken, which was cooked really well. Cafes like these are a great way to get out of the heat during the midday, eat a meal or drink some coffee, and relax with a book or a journal. Some of the other cafes that I enjoyed are the Mugshot Cafe, Budan's Brew, and China House.

Another fantastic hidden find - a vegetarian Chinese restaurant also on Lorong Soo Hoon. It was quite empty but I went one day for dinner since it was pouring down rain and the location was right next to the guesthouse. They served a special vegetarian set with a soup, multigrain rice, various veggies and mock meat. The portions were just right and the food was cooked really well! I also ordered a cucumber juice on the side, to top off an extremely healthy and nutritious meal.

There are quite a number of vegetarian restaurants in Penang, and the food seems all done quite well. I wonder if this is due to a large population of Hindus and Buddhists.

One famous dish in Penang is the assam laksa - a spicy and sour noodle soup made with fish paste and various herbs such as lemongrass and basil. It's hard to eat in the summertime heat though! Various people swear by their favorite hawker stands, but I'm not the biggest fan of the dish so I just picked it one day at a food court.

Hawker centres and food courts are a big part of the social scene - it's where friends, families, young people all go hang out and eat a meal together. Many of them open in the late afternoon, and stay bustling until the early morning hours. Sometimes there are live performances in the larger food centres. There are always numerous stalls, from traditional noodle stalls to interesting takes on western and Taiwanese food.

There's usually a juice vendor to sell fresh-squeezed fruit and vegetable juices!

The last night I tried popiah at a hawker centre called CF Food Court. Popiah is an interesting dish, sort of a take on a spring roll. Inside a thin flour wrap is fried shredded turnip, tofu, and a sweet and sour dark sauce. It's an interesting blend of textures, and relatively healthy for hawker fare!

I really enjoyed all the different meals I had in Penang. Some of the food is similar to what one might find in Singapore, but it's about 3 times cheaper! I don't think it's the only reason one should come travel to Penang, but it definitely is an integral part of the overall experience. 

Street Art in Georgetown

This past weekend I went to the the island of Penang, Malaysia, a designated UNESCO World Heritage site. I stayed in the historic core of Georgetown. This quaint place, full of winding alleys of traditional shophouses, unique cafes, and various religious institutions, also has street art around every corner. For me, it became a game, trying to find all the fun and quirky designs hidden throughout the town center. Here are some of the things I found! 

Much of the art is somewhat interactive and takes into account physical elements that it is located next to. Some of the designs were a bit wacky and funny, others were quite realistic and hearken back to some nostalgic element of the older days. 

There are various free tourist maps that point to the locations of the artworks, but I preferred to just wander around down the streets and discover the works myself. Often they were located on very typical looking building faces. It took a lot of concentration and observation skills, and I now realize how much we miss out when we are walking around, even if we think we see everything!

There were times when I would walk past a place a second time and notice something I didn't see at all when I passed by initially.

Some of the artwork also has educational and historical value. Many of the streets and lanes in Penang have interesting associations or stories. There are wrought-iron sculptures, such as the one below, that describes what the street is known for. 

The street art was one of the highlights of the trip, and added another dimension to the fun of exploring a new city. 

Malaysia, Take Two

For my last weekend in Southeast Asia, we decided to make another trip to Malaysia, exploring other parts of the country. Unlike our first trip, we took a bus from Singapore to our first stop, Malacca, the UNESCO World Heritage Site. There's a lot of history to this small town - it was a Dutch as well as Portuguese settlement, and Cheng Ho, the famous Chinese explorer, visited it. The ride from Singapore was about 5 hours and it was nighttime when we rolled into the sleepy little town.

The area is predominantly Muslim, which explains why so many businesses and restaurants were closed, due to the Ramadan holiday. We wandered around the town for a bit before we found dinner at a busy little Chinese vegetarian place. Along with the requisite veggies, we ordered a spicy mapo tofu and a mutton curry. The mutton was made out of some type of vegetable protein product and it was delicious! All of the dishes were quite spicy.

The next morning, we woke up early to explore the historic city center, where the museums, ruins, and churches are located.

Malacca is famous for a dish called Chicken Rice Balls. This is a spin-off of the Hainanese Chicken Rice, a Singaporean national dish. The Malaysian version is a little anti-climatic: the only difference is that the rice is rolled into balls instead of being served under the chicken pieces. The rice is really tasty because it is cooked in the chicken fat. According to the owner of a nearby smoothie place, we should have gotten the chicken rice balls from the actual restaurant instead of the street vendor, which only sells an "imitation." Oh well, I still enjoyed it, along with a fresh carrot juice from the smoothie maker!

The city streets were lined with souvenir shops, small boutiques, temples, hostels and inns, and galleries of local artists. It was a touristy scene that somehow managed to retain a genuine cultural element.

We explored an old fort in the area. It must have been more intimidating in the olden days, without the tacky playground equipment and tourists lugging around giant cameras. There were also a ton of little museums with really random themes, such as the Museum for Democratic Governance, the Museum of Eternal Beauty, the Museum of Education, the Museum of Literature, and more. To be honest, the displays were a bit tacky and seemed forced.

I also had the experience of attending a Sunday church service at the Christ Church of Malacca. There was a really friendly and diverse crowd at the English service.

The smoothie place owner had mentioned that chicken satays are pretty famous in the area, so of course we had to try the dish. Basically it's chicken that is grilled on skewers and served with a spicy peanut sauce.

There is another fun activity in Malacca - riding these tacky rigshaws! They are brightly lit with Christmas lights and blare loud pop music. The driver will take you anywhere you need to go, and you agree on a price beforehand. I knew we had to have the experience as soon as I saw these wonderfully hideous things. On the second night, we rode one back to the hotel. It was quite an experience, weaving through heavy traffic and honking at nearby pedestrians.

On the third day we headed out to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. The bus ride took about 2 hours. We stayed in a nice little place called the Chinatown Boutique in the heart of Chinatown. Basically our whole trip revolved around shopping and eating, which was perfectly fine by me. Therefore, I don't have too many interesting photos.

For our first meal there, we ate at a hawker center in Chinatown. There was one vendor who sold various dishes by the "scoop:" one modest scoop of a dish was 1 ringgit, or about 30 cents. I picked out some broccoli, pumpkin, salted duck egg, and braised soy sauce egg. It was pretty good.

Our lone "cultural" activity in KL was visiting the Sri Mahamariamman Temple, a large Hindu temple. The architecture was very nice, but there was nothing too remarkable about the place.

We almost missed the plane heading back to Singapore because A) we were unaware that the airport is really far outside of the city, B) our taxi was very old and therefore drove extremely slowly, and C) we found out that our flight was leaving from another terminal that was located 20 minutes away from the main airport. Needless to say, it was an extremely stressful morning. But we made it safe and sound back to Singapore, and that same night I said goodbye to Southeast Asia and flew back to the U.S.

What a summer!

Malaysian Sunrise

After six hours of traveling (by MRT, bus, bumboat, then taxi), we finally made it to the Lotus Desaru Resort in southern Johor, Malaysia. The reason the region is fairly inaccessible is because it has not yet become popular with outside tourists yet. Most of the visitors were from nearby Malaysian cities and Singapore.

The resort was located right on the beautiful beach.

During the afternoon we got acquainted with our suite and the resort, relaxed on the beach, and played in the waves.

We had dinner at a nice Chinese seafood place. One of the complaints about the resort that I read online was that though it does not allow outside food, it also does not provide a great variety of restaurants. The selection was further compromised because on that night, the resort was hosting some conference and the attendees had a whole section of the restaurant reserved. We were still able to enjoy steamboat, which essentially is hot pot.

We decided to wake up the next morning to view the sunrise on the beach. The hotel concierge said that sunrise was around 6:30AM, so we set our alarm for 6:00AM to be on the safe side. Sure, vacation is supposed to be for sleeping in, but we figured that the sunrise would be too beautiful to miss, and we could always nap on the beach later.

Upon arrival, the sky was very dark. Only the faintest glimmers of light were in the distance. But daybreak came quickly! Each of the following photos was taken within a few minutes of each other.

I decided to do a few yoga moves on the beach, taking advantage of the unique photo opportunity...

At 8AM we were distracted by the wonderful aromas floating from the resort breakfast buffet near the beach. It was one of the best complimentary breakfasts I've had, with long tables laden with various western and Malay dishes.

The bread shown in the photo below the yogurt and the buns is called roti. It is similar to Indian naan but it is thinner and flaky. It was so good! I had it dipped with curry on the side. Following breakfast was more suntanning, beaching, and napping. Check-out occurred at noon, and then we began the long trip to the capital city of the area, Johor Bahru (JB).

At JB, we basically just tried some more Malay food, before boarding a bus at the Larkin Terminal for Singapore. 30 minutes and 70 cents later, we entered Singapore. This is probably the cheapest transnational crossing ever!