Blogs from Batu Ferringhi, Penang, Malaysia, Asia - page 4

The Asam Laksa is known throughout South East Asia as one of the best noodle soup dishes ever. Penang apparently is THE place to get the real deal. Now, I had read stories online about Penang Asam Laksa and all its majesty. I desperately tried to find it back home, but the best I could come up with was coconut laksa - and I wasn’t too impressed with it either. Before I continue, it should be said that I have a high bar set for noodle soups. As I’ve noted before, I myself am Vietnamese - with that I have known the world champion of noodle soups - Pho. I also know the light and middleweight champions: Bun Rue and Bun Bo Hue. So when I heard that the Asam Laksa is perhaps a worthy challenger, ... read more

After a quick nap and a hot shower (both well deserved), we hit the town in search for some trinkets and whatsits at Batu Ferringhi’s huge night market. What used to be a calm sidewalk by day, transforms into a frenzy of activity, full of shoppers trying to strike a deal. The bright fluorescent lights of each table and crazy neon colors of trishaws passing by reminded me of a Eastern influenced Las Vegas. It was madness! Scoping the goods at the night market. Shopkeepers were hawking their wares with gusto. You could buy literally anything, including: - Sunglasses - T-Shirts - Toys - Handbags - “Real” DVD’s and CD’s - “Real” software Then there was one table we walked by, that had one i... read more

Day 11 Today’s planned expedition to George Town was scuppered by the weather. When we woke up, the heavens had done the same and torrential rain was falling with a little bit of flash flooding. In the morning we found out the the Governor of Penang was visiting the hotel so watched when he arrived as a formal ceremony was performed. We decided that we would wait a while to see if it cleared up and round about midday we decided to head to one of the shopping malls instead. We commandeered a taxi and negotiated a price of RM50 instead of RM60. He quoted RM60 and said the mall was near the airport but that is bullshit so we didn’t feel like paying his quoted price and walked away to catch the bus. We went ... read more

Day 7 Did I say something about food and massage in our itinerary? This has to be one of the best places to indulge or over indulge in both. Once again we started off in the hotel veranda restaurant for breakfast, the feast there really giving us a good start to the day. After that , Peter went up to the room to write the previous day’s blog whilst the others took the laundry to a dobi wallah down the road. As we had a week’s supply of laundry to do, the laudry people charged less than $10 each couple for all that load. I must apologise for not posting the blog everyday but there’s no free wi-fi at the hotel so we have to search out a hotspot and load up a couple of days ... read more

Hey again… feels like loads has happened since we last wrote (even though you will be getting our last blog today too… we have been having computer nightmares in Malaysia)! So Pilch got an unconditional offer after his interview and starts at Plumpton on 11th May! We had to reschedule the telephone interview after realizing that we were in fact in a different timezone (we had gone ahead 1hour from Thailand to Malaysia) - we hadn’t realized for two days!! The day after our last blog we had a little bit of a nightmare day - involving trying to find somewhere half decent to stay on the island and then discovering the time zone change and then realizing we had a virus on our memory stick and had lost all our photos! We spent a long ... read more