PENANG: Starting from the top… Getting an initial taste of Malaysia.

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After almost three weeks of city living in Chiang Mai, not to mentioned being inland for over a month, we knew that some lazy living by the beach would be a welcome change of pace and scenery. Having decided on Malaysia as the setting for our December holidays, the weather dictated that we stick to the West side. So we spent our first week in Malaysia on the northern coast of Penang, in the beach area of Batu Ferringhi. We probably would have spent the whole month there had our last-minute accommodation search not proven so tricky, forcing us to fragment our lodging and locations.





After the joy and success of renting a holiday home in Vietnam, we searched for something comparable here, keen to stay in one place during the holidays in order to ensure they are totally stress-free. However the landscape and economy of Penang is remarkably different from the central coast of Vietnam. Penang is not only a tropical island, but the northern coast resembles Miami more than anything we’ve seen elsewhere in Southeast Asia. Likewise, we quickly understood that the local norm is to live in a high-rise condominium and this is the only kind of apartment available to short-term visitors. Unfortunately, plenty had understood this long before us and most places had long since been booked for the holidays. The same applied for the charming Chinese shop houses in Penang’s historical capital city, Georgetown, as well as anything in the guesthouse or bed&breakfast range. So we had no choice but to break down our month into various short stays in a combination of holiday rentals, hotels, and guesthouses. This ultimately worked to our advantage as it allowed us to discover and experience the various facets of this diverse island from top to bottom, as well sneak in a quick visit to Kuala Lumpur. Furthermore, we were lucky to find the first five days of our desired timeframe available at one of Penang’s more desirable addresses: the Satrisna Home in Tanjung Bungah, one of the posher sections of Batu Ferringhi.



Satrisna Home is a beautifully decorated two-bedroom apartment on the 19^th floor of a handsome set of seaside towers, officially called The Cove (but informally called “The Lady Fingers” by locals due to the skin tone color of the buildings and the fact that there are 4 of them standing together.) The Cove complex includes both a lovely little private beach and three large pools, one of which is entirely dedicated to children with a slide and fun fountains. There is also an expansive playground on the grounds and easy dining options just across the street. As a result, we hardly ever left during our week there! We knew we had many more days available to us to explore the island and so just enjoyed the novelty, comforts and beauty of this luxurious and surprisingly modern corner of Penang.



The only occasion we were lured away from Tanjung Bungah was when we accepted the offer of a boat that approached us at our beach, proposing to take us over to Penang National Park. We had heard of a famously picturesque beach within park territory that can only be accessed by boat or 2 hour trek on foot, known as Monkey Beach (or Teluk Duyung). Our friendly boat captain offered to take us there and even catch us some lunch on the way, which he’d have cooked for us once at the beach. How could we refuse? The beach was indeed lovely, and true to its name, full of cute little monkeys running around delighting every visitor except our two terrified kids. On the way, we had decided to all try our hand at catching lunch. Besides my family and our friendly Chinese-Malaysian captain, there was also the one crew member, a kind Philippine lady who was to be our cook for the day, and two other passengers who had been talked into the excursion similarly to us. They were a Malaysian/Philippine couple who lived in Abu Dhabi. The captain handed us each a line with a hook at the end and some raw shrimp to serve as bait, along with some brief instructions. After a short while, I began to feel a tug at my line and to my complete shock, I pulled out the first fish of the day! It was not an enormous fish, but proved to still be the biggest catch of the group. It was to be a clear case of beginners luck however, as I only caught one additional- far smaller- fish after that and my streak came to a rapid end while the rest of the group not only quickly caught up with my success but easily exceeded it in quantity. Arnaud was the champion of the group, catching at least 5 or 6 fish in total. We were then dropped off to enjoy the beach while our captain took off again to amplify the options for lunch. In the end, the menu consisted not only of our morning’s catch, but fresh shrimp, squid, vegetables and some exceptionally good chicken satay… all grilled for us there on the sand, under the shade of our own little beach shack.



This first local meal was to set the standard for a steady stream of delicious surprises confirming Penang’s reputation as a culinary paradise. The specific term for the kind of food that makes Penang so renowned is “Hawker food”. While this is most often street food, it takes on a specific practice and norm here consisting of groups of stalls representing different specialties clustered together in either a clear food hall or a simple street corner. Drinks are always sold separately and seating is usually independent from the vendors. You then approach the counter of your choice to make your selection, which later will get delivered to your table along with the necessary utensils (usually chop sticks and a tin soup spoon.) Only at that point do you pay for your dish, which rarely will cost more than 4 or 5 Malaysian Ringits (the equivalent of just under two US dollars.) The available selection can be quite different from one Hawker center to the other. In the larger centers, you will typically even find one or two stalls that serve up “Western” food. More often than not, there will be a cross section of cuisines available reflecting the cultural diversity that prevails in Penang, with Malay, Chinese, and Indian being the most prominent.



Among the classic local signature dishes we tried were Laksa, a noodle soup consisting of a tangy aromatic fish-based broth, ranked 7^th in CNN’s 2011 list of “World’s 50 Most Delicious Foods” (though we might not totally agree with CNN); Roti Canai, an Indian-Muslim flat bread that is fried with mountains of butter and can be eaten either savoury with a stew or sweet, as we did, with bananas; and Mee Goreng, a noodle dish with a spicy tomato gravy and slices of squid, potatoes, and tofu. The biggest winner was consistently the chicken satay however, which never failed to satisfy our hungry children.



We also tried a specific hawker pizza one night in Georgetown, after having read online that it was the best pizza in Malaysia. We had sought it out first for lunch, only to discover it was open just in the evenings. A few days later, we tried our luck again in the evening, only to discover we had come on the one Monday per fortnight that it was closed for cleaning and repairs. We finally had success on our third visit, though discovered that there was a 45-minute wait due to the numerous requests ahead of ours. At this point, we were not about to give up so easily and so persisted through the long wait to finally enjoy some very fine wood oven Penang pizzas. They were made and served to us by a lovely old Chinese couple proudly dedicated to refining their craft. For those of you wanting to give this pizza a try, you can find the stall inside the hawker center on the corner of Jalan Macalister and Jalan Rangoon.



It’s clear that food plays a central role in Penang life and is not taken lightly. And since Hawker traditions are so deeply seeded in Penang culture, it’s an easy bet that you are in for both a culinary and visual treat whenever opting for this kind of a meal.



Other memorable family meals in the area around Tanjung Bungah included the ridiculously good value and mouth-watering “Ooey-gooey” burgers at the locally run and very cute Café Gusto, as well as the fabulous Indian food at the popular, canteen-like Sri Ananda Bahwan. We tried several of the restaurants around the new marina at Straights Quay, but found them a bit lifeless and overpriced, even if the location was quite attractive. The same went for the tête-à-tête Arnaud and I treated ourselves to at the fancy Macalister Mansion, in Georgetown.



When it was time to pick somewhere a little extra special for our Christmas dinner, we were not disappointed at the artsy China House in Georgetown’s core heritage zone. In fact, we returned there a couple more times thanks to their heavenly dessert selection and the fact that they were so child friendly. The Swissness in us could also not resist trying out the rather popular Edelweiss Café, which offered some surprisingly high quality and authentic Swiss food, including a very decent “bündner gerstensuppe” (a speciality from my own canton, Graubünden.) The Yea Restaurant in the Time Square shopping mall was a new twist on Japanese BBQ which was highly entertaining for the children as you first picked out the food you wanted to grill from a buffet. Similarly, you could pick out your precooked food at the legendary Bali Hai Seafood Market Restaurant on the Gurney Drive seafront- so uncooked it was still alive and swimming in its aquarium! Another great dinner was had at the Venetian restaurant, Il Bacaro, inside the lovely Campbell House Heritage Hotel. There are still plenty more culinary hot spots that we intent to try out on this island and if they are worth recommending, I will be sure to make a special mention of them in one of my subsequent blogs about out stay in Penang.



Coming next: a blog about our feelings in regards to Penang, where else we stayed and what we saw.

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Comments

[Susan Jenny]

Food
Well we know from this blog that you are eating well out in Asia! Of course you make everyone hungry with each sentence. Hope you'll be able to get used to our cuisine again....