TBA Day 15: Last Day in Malaysia (featuring Bak Kut Teh)

I got a bit of a late start today because I decided to go ahead and watch the presidential debate (airing live at 9am) this morning. It’s probably the first time I’ve paid so much attention to such things but, as Stanley noted when we discussed it later, these things never make any difference anyway (as evidenced in striking fashion last election) so I’ll just leave it at that…

After the debate I set out to explore a bit down Gurney Drive, which is a road running along the coast where lots of expensive hotels are, as well as restaurants, a huge fancy mall, and what’s supposed to be a very good (though higher-than-average priced) hawker center. It was a gorgeous day other than the heat, and I found myself getting hungry (and about to die from heat exhaustion) when I happened upon a very busy open-air restaurant called Zealand Bak Kut Teh and Seafood.
I took a seat and ordered the Bak Kut Teh, a soup featuring a few different kinds of pork (pork rib, pork meatballs, pork shoulder, and pork belly) as well as mushrooms, tofu, and bean curd sheets all together in a wonderfully flavorful broth. It was served with steamed rice, a slightly sweet bread for dipping in the delicious broth, and some nice Chinese tea. The waitress also asked if I wanted steamed vegetables. I thought that sounded nice, although it turned out to be veggies with shrimp served in a really nice slightly spicy sauce. Tasty, but the result was that I was then dealing with way more food than I could reasonably eat for lunch.
All in all a really nice meal, though, and with the gorgeous view from my table (pictured below) I couldn’t complain, even if I never managed to make it all the way to that hawker center…
After lunch I wandered down a bit further to Gurney Plaza where, among other things, I watched a 6-year-old Asian girl playing Hava Nagila on an electric violin while doing little adorable dance steps and dressed in a glittery jumpsuit… I have no idea why that was happening, but it was fascinating and fairly awesome. Once I’d soaked in enough A/C to carry on, I grabbed a cab back to my hotel. The driver made the comment that if I’d tried to walk back in this heat I would have been barbecued by the time I got back, which I thought was cute. Turns out my brother is very wise in always telling me to take more cabs, and the cab ride home was US$5 very well spent.

I still can’t seem to eat like I used to, so a big meal like I had at 1pm pretty much does me in for the day eating-wise. It’s probably just as well since my transportation for the Thailand is picking me up at 5am tomorrow, so an earlier-than-usual bedtime would seem to be in order tonight. It feels so weird to just have this handwritten ticket from the travel agency while I’m setting off to board a mini-bus that will take me out of the country, transfer to another mode of transportation in Hat Yai (the first stop in Thailand), and then board a ferry to my final destination. It’s apparently all included in my ticket, and I’m sure it will be fine… I’m just used to booking things electronically so I have slight misgivings that my little handwritten paper ticket may not provide all that it’s supposed to. I guess there’s only one way to find out…

TBA Day 14: A Tour, a Garden, and More Butterflies

OK. So, I know that most people who read this blog are just checking in to make sure I’m having fun and/or that I didn’t die or anything while traveling alone through Southeast Asia. If I don’t manage to eat something delicious on a given day, it’s unfortunate for me but I suspect most people reading don’t particularly care… Yet, I realized as I was trying to force myself to leave the hotel (when I just want to go to bed) to go in search of delicious food (which I wasn’t particularly hungry enough to eat) that I’ve been feeling all this self-inflicted pressure to go eat something exciting every day even if doing so would be more work than fun… (And if you are actually reading this just for the food and are annoyed with me for not posting exciting food every day, to you I say “Dude. Get off my back. I’m on vacation…”)

I say all of this by way of apology for the fact that yet again there aren’t any food pictures in this post on my supposedly food-themed blog. I had muesli and an espresso for brekky up in the hotel’s “Leisure Garden,” followed by a fascinating (thousand island dressing? Really?) US$1 egg salad sandwich for lunch at a butterfly park, then a bit of delicious dried chilli pork, a couple crackers, and a beer for dinner (rather than leaving my room). Thrilling, I know… I sure do know how to have amazing culinary adventures, huh?

Now that I have the apologizing out of the way, I had a really lovely day. As I mentioned yesterday, all of the tours of the island had a 2-person minimum. When I was at breakfast, a girl at the next table asked “Are you going on our bus today?” After my answer of “What bus?” it was explained that they had heard that a single lady would be joining their group of 6 (British, German, Irish, and Aussie people aged 19-30 who are on a Bangkok-to-Singapore tour package together) on a tour of the island today. I’m not sure where that rumor started, but I looked into it and it was decided that I would be able to join them. Mostly I just wanted to see a bit of Penang outside of Georgetown, and the tour today accomplished that.

We stopped first at a spice garden, which I think even my gardening-obsessed parents would have found somewhat boring. It was beautiful, but it was still just a bunch of plants… From there we headed out to a butterfly park, where everyone was amazed by how fun such things can be. I actually really enjoyed it even though I’d just been to the one in KL, since the butterflies here seemed happier to get camera time. The white ones that were so elusive in KL were just lounging around waiting for you to photograph them here.
After the butterflies we headed up to take a look at a temple and get a hill-top view of Georgetown. I should mention, by the way, that it was also really nice just taking in the scenery along the coast as we drove from one location to the next. I was talking to an Aussie chick from the group while we were looking out over the city, and we were both surprised by how big and city-like the Georgetown area is. We were both sort of expecting a quaint little island town experience (with great food) when we came to Penang.

The tour group was a really friendly fun group of people, and it was a nice way to spend the day. At this point, though, I think I’m pretty much over this whole “doing stuff” thing and am really ready to get to my bungalow on Ko Phangan on Sunday. Tomorrow I’m hoping to hit the Gurney Drive hawker stalls and/or another culinary spot that I’d so carefully mapped out before my trip. I didn’t anticipate before I came how much I would really just enjoy hanging out in these cities doing nothing in particular. Turns out I’m having a really great time even without the “culinary” aspect of my adventure taking as prominent of a role as I’d planned… Further proof of my new-found philosophy that planning is for losers, I guess…

TBA Day 13: Exploring Penang

So, my first impression of Penang is that I really dig this place. It's a nice size, people are friendly, and the terrain is super-flat... I don’t know if it’s getting cooler as I move north or if I’m just adapting to the heat, but I think I’ve finally been able to transition from “sweating” to “glistening” when I’m outside…

I went out and did a bit of exploring this morning on my way to find a travel agent to book my trip to Ko Phangan for Sunday (it was the one part of my trip I hadn’t been able to book in advance online, which was sort of stressing me out in the way that things that aren’t locked down in advance tend to…). As I mentioned above, this city is completely flat, which makes it a lot easier for a kid like me to get around a bit. The travel agent lady was really nice, and when I must have seemed like I was hesitating for a moment she asked where I was from. I told her and she said “Wow. You’re so very pretty! And nice!” Apparently (according to Stef) this is a common sales technique in Malaysia. Maybe it works (if only on a subconscious level), since I ended up booking the trip with her…

I’d noticed this morning and again when I went out to look at old buildings this afternoon that all these guys on scooters kept saying “hi” to me and trying to get my attention. On my way home this afternoon one of them actually pulled over ahead of me on the road so he could talk to me as I walked past. I’m not good at being a bitch (well, I suppose that’s not true… but I’m not good at being a bitch to strangers…) so I actually stopped to hear him out. He explained that he knows it sounds crazy, but he is looking for friends, and maybe I could spend some time with him and we could be friends. He clarified “I’m not going to make love to you, just spend the time,” which I honestly appreciated because I did feel less uncomfortable once I knew we were both aware that there would be no-love-making. In the end, when “no thank you” didn’t work I went with “I have to go now…” and walked away… but felt sort of like a jerk… Poor lonely Penang scooter-boys…
So, I ended up in Little India this afternoon around 4pm, and as the aromas started to waft around me I realized that (having missed lunch) I was definitely ready for some linner (or lupper, as some people call the lunch-dinner/supper version of brunch). I stopped at Restoran Kassim Mustafa for… chicken of some sort? (pictured below) and a really delicious mango lassi (with banana in it, which isn’t something I’d had before in a lassi…) for a grand total of US$2. The chicken curry thingy was really good and turned out to be pretty much exactly what I was feeling like eating today, so that worked out nicely. They do a pretty hopping business there with people pulling up on scooters and taking away baggies filled with delicious curry from the vats in front of the guy by the street. Good stuff…
I was hoping to take a tour around the island this afternoon, but they apparently have a 2-person minimums on everything so that didn’t work out… I’ll have to see if I can track down a tour that doesn’t discriminate against single people tomorrow… All in all a really nice day, though, which I will now cap off by sitting around with my book for a while. In conclusion: Yay, Penang!