Eating in Malaysia

CRead We've been in Malaysia for almost 3 weeks now and haven't even scratched the surface of the food scene here. Because of the mixture of cultures, there is a tremendous variety of dishes to try, and we've hardly had a bad meal. More than that, though, is the fact that eating is a fun adventure here! I've mentioned the delicious meals we had in Kuala Lumpur and Singapore, but here in Penang we discovered a food court near our hotel that we've been back to 3 times called Red Garden. It is just one of the many, many hawker stalls in this fun city. I picked up a food map that could give you an idea of the variety of food here.

Red Garden is big, loud and colorful, not to mention cheap! You could easily eat for under $5 here,with delicious filling dishes , but you can also spend much more if you decide to try fresh seafood. 

You can choose your seafood then ask the restaurant to prepare it in a wide variety of ways. It seems that many of our meals have included fresh prawns, in a variety of sizes. Generally you order by weight,, or you can also choose small medium or large size portions. Last night on the island we stayed on, we watched as the diners next to us ordered the mother of all lobsters, about 31/2#, then send it to the kitchen to have it cooked in Chinese barbecue sauce. Our favorite is " butter prawns", served with Caramelized chicken floss. Don't ask me what that is, but it is delicious! 

Chicken wings are also popular, and these are the best! You order by the piece, and two large wings are about $1.25.

Probably our favorite dish, though, and one I could eat several times a week( I have!) is Char Koay Teow, wide noodles cooked with egg, prawns , bean sprouts and some greens. This size costs about $1.50 and is filling enough for two. 

At Red Garden you can choose from Japanese, Malay, Thai, Korean, Chinese and more. You pick a table, then go to the small restaurant stall of your choice to order, and  it is brought to your table where you pay. The drinks guy comes around and takes your order, too, which he delivers. 

Everyone seems to be having a good time! Ok, maybe not these people, but most of the others.

Compromises

Travel can be hard. Have I said that already? Yes, 5 times? All travel involves compromise, and sometimes that simply means being a good sport about things when you don't necessarily want to be. I think I was a fairly good sport about visiting the fireflies, even though we both agreed that it was probably not worth the effort.

Jim is a good sport when it comes to just about everything, though for a long time he did not like his picture taken. I finally told him he just needed to get over it! And for the most part he is now a willing participant.

We were at The Mugshot Cafe, our favorite bakery/ cafe on his birthday and I noticed this photo op! While he was not thrilled at first, he consented, even writing his name on the board,leaving the charge as " too talkative". And he gave me a tough look, as appropriate. Pretty good sport, eh? 

This place next door, the Rainforest bakery, makes croissants good enough to make us consider moving to Penang! It was a real treat to find this place just a long block from our hotel. At Mugshot they also make delicious Greek style yogurt with fresh fruit and excellent coffee. 

That, and the place nearby called JUNK have really made us enjoy this neighborhood. Junk makes great burgers and fabulous fries, and probably the best crab roll I have ever had. Both of these places are run by cute, hip youths and we hope they have much success. 

There is something very comforting about finding your neighborhood and becoming " regulars" even if it is only for a few days. That eases the burden of travel and makes you feel more at home in a strange place.

Thaipusam

When traveling, it is always a treat to be someplace when a local festival or celebration is happening. We have some wonderful memories of times when we saw something unexpected, and as often as not, the opposite can be true- the wonderful festival ended the day before you arrived. Or all the fun happened when we were sleeping.

We had heard about Thaipusam in Kuala Lumpur but really did not plan to be anywhere near there when over a million people flock to the Batu Caves to ascend the 267 steps to the temple. So we were pleasantly surprised to be able to participate, if only in a fringe way, in Thaipusam in Penang. They have built a new temple that is even grander, with more steps, but we were not inclined to either go at 10 pm, or in the heat of the day. We did, however find out that there was a shuttle bus taking people to the festival, so we found where it left from and just followed the throngs of women dressed in their most beautiful saris. It was a bit of a hot walk to the festival street, but oh,,what wonderful people watching! I have never seen so many colorful saris in one place, even in India. And they streamed past in a constant parade. 

But what was really fascinating to see were the young faithfuls who were sporting the most painful looking piercings, which were sometimes attached to ropes being pulled by other men.

Ouch, I can hardly look at them without flinching! They carried milk jugs, or had small ones covering their bodies, and there were shrines covered in milk offerings. 

And all along one street were colorful booths where they handed out free drinks and food. Jim handed me a glass of some sweet beverage and I said " I'm not sure I want to drink this". He replied, " you've gotta drink the coolaid!" Yes, that's true. And we went into two temples with the masses, and lit candles and had ash placed on our foreheads, just like the Hindus.

Heat

It is ALWAYS hot here. In the morning it is perhaps a bit cooler before the sun is in full force, but we have found that it is really too hot to do very much walking about. In Malacca and here in Penang we have  ridden bikes, but whereas in Malacca we had a pleasant , if hot, ride along the charming river walk, here in Penang the traffic is much busier and frantic with cars, buses and motorbikes vying for the same space on the road. There are occasionally marked bike lanes, but they sort of peter out after a block or so. We really haven't seen many others besides ourselves who are foolish enough to venture out on bikes, but our hotel provided them for free so we had to try them. It is a comical sight to see 6'2 Jim on one of these bikes which are built for small Asians. Even with the seat fully extended, they are way too small. My bike had a seat that was not attached to much...not the best maintained bikes.

After half an hour in the sun we were hot and exhausted and just happened to be near the Eastern and Oriental a beautiful colonial hotel right along the seafront. We wheeled our bikes to the entrance and the guard waved us away frantically. I told him we just wanted to get a drink , so he reluctantly relented to let us through. They did not care to have the likes of us on the property.

We sat on the lovely terrace looking out to sea. No one came to bother, or wait on us. I finally asked about a menu. "No drinks except tea and coffee", in spite of seeing other diners with glasses of juice.

So finally we ordered tea. Sufficiently cooled down, we set off again, but riding on the sidewalk, I was trying to avoid a parked motorcycle and fell hard on my bike. I picked myself up, telling jim I was ok. Pretty much true, other than a banged up knee. 

We got off the main road and biked along quieter streets for a bit. Finally I suggested that we stop in a cafe for bottled water. While we were sitting inside it became clear that the older woman sitting outside with her husband was not ok. By the time we got outside,she was totally unresponsive. It was scary. We and another Malaysian couple set about trying to bring her around with smelling salts and cool cloths. It began to have an effect, and she spoke to us finally but Jim wasn't sure that she was responding fast enough and she couldn't drink enough to rehydrate, so we decided that she should be taken to a nearby clinic for an IV and to lay down. The Malaysian got someone with a car to bring her and her husband Reg to the clinic and they followed. We wish that we had given our card to Reg and Eileen from Bristol so that we could check on her progress, but we believe that she was soon better. 

This really brought home the serious effects of heat exhaustion, and reminded us to drink all the time. Jim thinks that means a big bottle of Tiger beer in a bucket of ice, but I say lots of mineral water! 

As they told us on a tour, Malaysia has 4 seasons: the rainy season, then hot, hotter and hottest! it's not raining, but we're not sure which of the three hots this is.

The downside of Technology

The tricky part of traveling the way we are is that we are quite dependent on wifi for planning our onward reservations. It's not a problem until we encounter places with no, or unreliable wifi, which is what happened in our hotel in Selangor where we went to see the infamous fireflies. 

As a result, we arrived in Penang with no reservations, on a busy holiday . We could only hope that if we picked one of the guest houses from our Lonely Planet guidebook ,we could take a taxi there from the bus station. Unfortunately, lots of other travelers are also using that same travel guide, so when we arrived, our chosen guest house was fully booked. She willingly called another guest house for us, and we hauled our stuff around the corner. Love street( hmm, wonder how it got that name?) was lined with guest houses which sounds sort of charming ,doesn't it? Our friendly host was happy to take us in and gave us lots of information about the neighborhood. They led us back to our cell, er, room, which was basic, to say the least. A padlock for the door worried me a little. No soap, no toilet paper, no top sheet for the bed.  Needless to say, no flat screen tv or even the electric tea kettle and tea that we have come to appreciate.  It was a bit down the scale from our lovely suite in KL.

We wandered down the street, checking on various hotels and we saw some lovely places, out of our budget however. So after a hot walkabout, and a visit to Little India where we visited a Hindu temple which had a resident rat ( that ran right toward me) we went back to the cell block, and finally go on wifi in search of another hotel.

We were delighted to find Chulia Heritage Hotel, which feels like an oasis in busy Penang.

The wifi isn't always available here, but it is pretty good!

Buses and Fireflighs

One of the "day" trips advertised out of KL is to the Firefly Park in Kuala Selangor. There, after dark, you can take a boat on the river to see thousands of what we used to call "lightening bugs" when I was a kid as their lights come into unison in the bushes and trees on the bank. 

But Selangor seemed to be on the way north, and my internet search indicated that we could catch a bus from there north to Penang Island--our next destination. The guide book said to take the 141 bus, and so far every bus we've been in, local and long hall, has been pretty nice--comfy and air-conditioned. Maybe we should have wondered when no one seemed to know where to find the 141. 

It was clear from the other buses we saw while we waited that this would be a different class of travel. It did come. It was a very old, dirty and cramped city bus, the likes of which we had never seen in Malaysia.  The ticket taker did help us stow our luggage (behind the last row of seats), and we did get to sit (not everyone did). No live or dead animals. It was less than one-tenth the price of a taxi to the same town. The guide book said it was a 2 hour journey, but it took 3. And it was clear when we arrived that there'd be no buses to Penang from this town. 

We found our hotel--basic but clean--and the desk clerk found us a driver to the park. He also told us that due to the public holiday tomorrow, getting back to KL for the Penang bus would be very difficult. At dusk our driver arrived. He sped through town and into rice paddy country, delivering us to the park where we were issued life vests, loaded on a boat, and floated across the river powered by a quiet electric motor.

Sorry, no photos. Cynthia laughed

remembering the tourists trying to take pictures of those tiny fireflies (much smaller than the ones I saw as a child). No way.  It was cool, though. As we inched along the bank we did see the lights go from random and chaotic to fully synchronized.  That was neat.  Was it worth all the travel? Not sure, but on the way back to the hotel our driver said he could take us back to KL in the morning for 150 ringgits, and when he learned that where we really wanted to go was Penang, he said he could take us to Klang for only 70, and we could bus to the Island from there.

After the 15 minutes of firefly sighting, our big excitement for the rest of the evening was the discovery of a new 24 hour laundromat next to our hotel. Because if the grand opening, we got in on free laundry! 

 At 8 am the next morning , our driver arrived with his wife and toddler son in the car, and they drove us to Klang, where we had an hour wait for our bus, which was a comfy, air conditioned ride.

Singapore

I

Backtracking a bit, I want to take us on a trip through Singapore, which I consider to be one of the great cities of the world, chock full of amazing architecture. I read recently that Francis Ford Coppola always takes a city tour when he arrives someplace new just to orient himself. We are beginning to see the wisdom of this plan, especially when you don't have all the time in the world to discover a city.

So we took a half day tour after traveling by bus from Malacca, Malaysia.

Singapore is big, busy and more expensive than places we had recently been in Malaysia, so we had a bit of culture and sticker shock when we arrived, but we have an agreement that when we travel we will do a few activities that are most important to us, and not skimp on fun because we may never pass this way again. So we decided on some things we wanted to see after our city tour and set about to see them. A river cruise in a vintage style bum boat was very informative and fun. 

The Marina Bay Sands resort is an amazing hotel/ casino that is a focal point of the new Singapore. We didn't have the desire or energy to visit it, however. 

Dinner at Gluttons Bay hawker stalls was a high point! 

I had been to Singapore over 20 years ago, and I found myself trying to find a bit of the city I remembered from that time, but it was hard, as it has changed incredibly. Raffles hotel is still there in all its' grandeur , the home of the Singapore sling, but is now dwarfed by towering skyscrapers under construction. We did luck into the beginning of The Road to Mandalay there, however. This is a road rally with participants who are driving vintage vehicles from the early 1900's up to cars from the 70s, starting in Singapore and driving to Mandalay in Burma over the course of a month. That's sort of the same route we plan to take, except we'll be traveling by motor coach!