Of Living to Eat...

Alright, this post is long overdue. Sorry for that, but it's better to be late than never. So, here it goes. Our trip to Penang was a long planned one. It's great that it was happening in the end. So last weekend, as most of my colleagues were heading to Terengganu for the weekend (company sponsored event, too bad, interns weren't included), I took a day off and 5 of us went up to Penang for a getaway weekend. So, we started off late on Friday, we planned to make a move at about 6pm, but because my friend was caught in a bad traffic jam, we only left Subang at about quarter past 9. We reached Ipoh, Perak, at about 11.30pm, traffic was kinda slow, and I called up Putt. He brought us to a nice place for supper, and eventually paid for it, (so, if you are starving, and want good food, go to Ipoh and look for Putt... ) thanks again!!! So, we watched the Germany vs Spain match. And to my delight, Germany came out the winner! We left the place at about 1.30am, and continued our journey North, we finally arrived at our destination, Cititel Hotel, Penang, at about 3.30am. The second quarterfinal match was on, but i was too lazy and too tired to bother, took a quick shower, and off to bed... Day 2:
woke up the next morning at about 9.30am, we kickstarted our day with some over-nutritious breakfast! Bak Kut Teh at Gurney Drive. It was pretty good, but slightly over-priced. Well, none of us can really speak Hokkien, and hence, we arrived to the fact that we looked too tourist(well, Xin was holding a dSLR, and I was holding another digicam too), and so, the slightly-overpriced (just our conjecture). So, here you go.. Bak Kut Teh, is basically, pork in thick herbs broth... normally served with rice. The soup is normally great. And best go with lotsa garlic and thick black sauce. Next stop, we went to Kek Lok Si, a famous temple on a hill, overlooking the Penang Island. We spent about 2 hours there, and settled down in a restaurant, which is famous for its laksa (Asam laksa). Laksa, is noodle served in slightly spicy and sour soup. I topped it up with a glass of refreshing sugar cane juice Next, as my friend just dropped us at the temple, and he went to visit his relatives, he came back, not having his lunch, and so, we stopped by somewhere, Jalan Padang if i remember correctly, to have this Jellyfish rojak. Rojak is some fried stuffs (flour, and whatnot), and radish, and something else, in peanut sauce. Pretty interesting, as the jellyfish, is kinda unique. And on our way back to hotel, we stopped by at the famous Cendol stall, for our dose of cendol fix. Cendol is actually "thin worm-like, pandan-flavoured, green-coloured flour noodles", served in coconut milk, palm sugar, and shaved-ice, beans, and etc... amazingly refreshing and cooling. So, after an exhaustive day, we retired back to our room for a shower and a short nap, before we go out for dinner and night activities. At about 5.45pm, we headed out again, this time to Macalister Road, for the famous roadside foodstalls restaurant. As there are many stalls at this restaurant, we decided to order what we wanted and shared the food. We started off with the pork porridge (with fried innards, and roasted pork aka 'char siew'). (me, seen eating some kinda kuih, flour snack kinda thing, not too bad)
This dish was fucking amazing. Really! It was that good. We ended up ordering one for every one of us because it was just deli-fucking-cious. (sorry for the language) But, it was that good. The porridge(congee) was smooth, and the fried intestines was chewy yet crunchy, and with the spring onions, and pepper, and char siew, the blending of the texture of this congee is just unbelievable... i swear that this was the most amazing congee I had... I bet many people agreed with me with their action, as the stall owner expected great sales, as u can see the amount of intestines he prepared, and also the pig stomach (see hanging, the one on the very right), the cooked intestines (2nd from right), char siew (2nd from left), and last but not least, the fried intestines. On top of that, we too ordered fried oyster with eggs. This is also one of the must-have if you happened to go to Penang. The oyster was fresh, and the sheer amount of it, in the fried egg, made it great. Next, it was the Char Kueh Teow (fried noodle). Normally, it was fried with bean sprouts, shrimps, waxed intestines, cockles. It was good, but not great. Had better ones.

So, we also had loh bak, another dish of mixtures of fried meat and flour, served with thick sauce, which I forgot to snap a picture. (I remembered, but it was too late as it was almost completely chomped down by our furious mouth, so sorry for that.)

So, this was what's left after our quick bite. Actually, half of the plates were already cleared off to make space for more plates, so, you can imagine how much food we had. But, it was pretty reasonable, especially, if you convert it to foreign currency. We, on average spent RM 12 on food for dinner, That's about US $3.50.

Originally, we planned to go for a karaoke session, however, seeing that we were to full, we decided not to. We spent the early night hours walking aroud the Gurney Plaza, a pretty nice mall. Later, we went on hunting for cheap champagne, because I would like to introduce the amazing Mimosa(cocktail) to my friends, but too bad, champagne is particularly expensive in Malaysia.

So, we resorted to being cheap, and we went for some cheap sparkling juice. :)
Later that night, my friend went to meet his cousin, and hence, we tagged along, and, I had another dish of char(fried) carrot cake, no picture again, because I left my camera on the car.

We got back to the hotel at about 11.30pm, and we went out immediately to watch the England vs Portugal match. We went to bar, The LOUNGE, the official England supporters' bar, to meet my friend and her friends. There, we had some beers, and the match was great. The atmosphere was pretty tense, especially when England was at the penalty shootout. A couple of us, me included, started to cheer for Portugal (how daring... ?) and well, Portugal won the match, and I was a happy man. (i don't particularly hate England, and I am a Man U fan. I wasn't supporting England, because English football, under Sven G. Eriksson was boring as hell, and England just couldn't perform on the world stages, be it World Cup or Euro)

So, after the match, we walked back to our hotel, and then, I resorted to shower last, because I wanted to soak in hot water, using the bath tub. Done with washing up at about 3.15am, went to watch the boring match of Brazil vs France (i heard some insiders' news, but well, doesn't really matter), and then after a scoreless first half, I went to bed.

Woke up the next morning, tired and all, but we managed to go to Jalan Rangoon for the special rice noodles there. The spicy and sour soup noodle was really good, the fried noodle wasn't bad at all. The honey-sauce chicken was amazing too.

I wanted to take some pictures, but my battery died. I was able to take a close-up shot of the chillies.
So, we resorted back to our hotel, packed up, and some of us took a short nap, and then, we checked out at about 1pm, and then started our journey south to Subang Jaya. On the way home, we stopped by Bukit Tambun, for lunch, and the seafood was pretty disappointing because most of the famous dishes were sold-out. And what could be worse? I had a food poisoning from the food I had there (I'm pointing finger at them because I suspected them, and i only had this problem once I reached home, if it was any earlier, it could have been resulted from other food, but nope...)

So, I had diarrhea for the next 2 days... in a positive light, I didn't gain weight from all the eating during the trip. :)

So, this is all about my eating and relaxing trip to Penang Island last weekend. :)

cheers!