3/20/2012

PENANG 2012


When Time Magazine calls calls PENANG "one of the ten best foody islands in the world", you do your best to visit it if you have the chance. And that we did, on Valentine's Day weekend, we went to Penang, Malaysia.

Fist thing about Penang, it's damn hot and I thought Singapore was hot, no, this was worse! It got so bad that we actually had to retreat into our hotel room and blast the aircon as heat exhaustion was a constant threat. Secondly, Penang is bigger than you think and Charlestown (A Unesco World Heritage Site) is only a small albeit cool part of it. There is a lot to see on this island and to do it properly, you need more than a weekend, so for this trip, we focused on Charlestown alone. Finally, the food. Time Magazine was right, there is a lot of great food on this island in the form of restaurants and hawker centers but what really sets Penang apart, is the sea of food carts.

There are some amazing Carts that offer amazing specialties like Laksa (Tamarind based unlike the Singaporean version with Coconut milk), Chedol, Mee, Satays... the list goes on and one. We ate from the carts for every meal and toured Charlestown each day to see the architecture, sites, mosques, temples and parks. PENANG is a very cool city, a cool island and one I would visit again. You can check out our pics HERE!