Penang, Malaysia
Little Girl in Blue
Our impressions of Penang
More bustling, commercial, and touristy than Ipoh: Penang’s importance to colonial powers (its capital being George Town) and positioning as a port city on the peninsula has resulted in its prominence today as both a commercial and tourist center in Malaysia. We felt like it shared many similarities with Ipoh where we just came from – delicious regional food, awesome street art, charming colonial architecture – but on a much grander scale and with many more tourists walking the streets
Amazing and plentiful street art with an interesting cultural heritage: Penang boasts one of the most amazing collections of street art in the world. It feels like an open-air art exhibit – on every street and around every corner there are awesome murals coating the walls of traditional shop houses depicting scenes from every day life. Often, these works transcend the 2D to incorporate characteristics from their surroundings like a motorcycle or bench. It’s all thanks to a Lithuanian-born public artist who kicked things off with a series of six murals for the city back in 2012 (all of which are still famous to this day)
Cements Malaysia as one of our favorite countries to eat in: By the time we arrived in Penang from Ipoh we were in full stride with our Malaysian eats. We were able to find a few more cafe restaurants and familiar dishes we had grown to love so much like roti canai. We also discovered even more delicious dishes like char koay teow and white curry that are specific to Penang. We had no idea how much we would come to love the food in Malaysia when we first touched down in Kuala Lumpur three weeks prior. After our last few days in Penang, we can confidently say this was one of our favorite countries to eat in
What we saw in Penang
Haircuts: We’ve had people ask about how often we get haircuts during our travels – it was in Penang that Doug took the plunge on his second haircut of the trip (the first being in Delhi) and Jessie got her eyebrows cleaned up (still no haircut to this point). Our approach is pretty off the cuff – we happened to walk by a solid looking salon and Doug had been fed up with the length of his hair
Self-guided Street Art Tour: Penang has the most impressive collection of street art we’ve seen anywhere (even Ipoh). The Penang government gave Lithuanian-born public artist Earnest Zacharevic creative freedom to brighten up the city with murals painted on the sides of the city’s Chinese shop houses for the George Town festival in 2012. The results were awesome murals titled “Mirrors George Town” depicting scenes of everyday life and Penang culture. Since that initial project, there have also been several others that have turned the city into a living art exhibit that still “wow”s people walking the streets of the city to this day. We spent much of our time in the city walking the streets and admiring these amazing works of art. Some of our favorites included: Little Children on a Bicycle, Little Girl in Blue, and I want Pau!, and Big Mouth
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion: Cheong Fatt Tze was a Chinese immigrant who moved to Penang, married into money, and used that status as a launch pad to becoming a hugely successful businessman in the region. He was once described as “The Rockefeller of the East”. Today, his beautiful mansion has been carefully restored and repurposed as a museum that pays homage to Cheong Fatt Tze and his family. We were incredibly lucky to show up conveniently 10 minutes before one of the 3 daily tours. The tour was incredibly well done and led by a very engaging and experienced British-speaking guide who had a knack for shamelessly plugging the museum’s restaurant, bar, cafe, and boutique hotel. Some of the highlights included seeing the dining room used for the “Crazy Rich Asian’s” mahjong scene, learning about Cheong Fatt Tze’s favorite “Wife No. 7”, and learning about the restoration process that the guide credits with helping Penang gain UNESCO status
Chew Jetty: Penang is famous for its Jetty’s, which are basically whole communities of people situated on stilted houses and docked walkways off the harbor. Chew Jetty, one of the more well known ones, was luckily right across from our hotel so we walked through one morning. It was neat to walk out on the water and see the temples, houses, and shops
Penang Hill: Penang Hill was the perfect activity to sweat out our hangovers following a night of drinking at Antarabangsa Enterprise. After an easy public bus ride to the base of the hill we found ourselves at the Heritage Trail trailhead. There is a tram to the top, but we were in for the hike today. It was a beautiful and challenging 3,000+ step climb to the top (yes, an insane amount of a stairs), but totally worth it with beautiful views of the city and ocean and super interesting flora along the way. A surprisingly awesome hike and hangover cure!
Shopping: We came across many awesome boutique shops walking the streets in Penang, so decided it would be a good place to do some shopping. Two of our favorites included Howard Place, a cool prints shop where we picked up a series of photographs capturing three colorful traditional Penang building facades for our next home, and Unique Penang Art Gallery, a hip Paper Source-type place where you can post-date postcards for them to send home to the US on your behalf! We each picked out a fun card highlighting Penang and wrote notes to our future selves for when we return
Where we ate and drank
Left Handed Char Koay Teow: Char Koay Teow is a famous Malay wok fried noodle dish with prawns that carries a heavy, delicious char flavor from the wok. Many stalls wok fry the noodles in pork fat, but luckily there are a few well known spots like Left Handed that cater to the Halal community (and also inadvertently Jessie). As the name suggests, left-handed chef Uncle Chan works the wok with his left hand and cooks up a seriously delicious version of the dish. We tried the dish a few more times while in Penang and this was still the best. We also had our first Chendol here – a super refreshing dessert consisting of shaved ice in coconut milk topped with palm sugar, red beans and Pandan jello
Pokok: Unlike Ipoh, Penang has a few streets lined with charming bars offering cheaper beers (in addition to just Guinness like in KL) and live music. We ended our first night posted up on the patio of one of those bars, Pokok, and enjoyed a few cold Edelweiss beers and many hands of Forward
Hon Kei Food Corner: Shoutout to our Cameron Highlands friends, Lois and David, for recommending this awesome spot. More reminiscent of our Ipoh eating experiences, Hon Kei Food Corner is an open air cafe serving up hot bowls of delicious noodles. Doug slurped down a soupy bowl of noodles with ground pork (opting out of the innards specialty they’re most known for) and Jessie with shell-on prawns. Both bowls washed down with some reliably tasty iced coffees
China House: China House will hold a special place in our hearts. We loved this place so much we went back twice for their cakes! Situated in an old colonial building, China House is a super hip restaurant and bakery serving up some of the best cakes we’ve ever had. They also use white paper for table cloths and supply each table with a box of crayons for doodling – the best table doodle of the week wins a prize. We did some doodling the first time and then played hangman the second 🙂 We tried a number of the baked goods – our favorites were the pecan cinnamon roll with cream cheese frosting and tiramisu (best we’ve ever had!)
Antarabangsa Enterprise: Antarabangsa Enterprise is one of a kind and can probably only exist in Penang. It is a wholesale beer and liquor store tucked away on a corner alley that also operates as a retail bodega / bar at night. You walk in, grab your desired brew from the fridge, grab a few plastic stools from the empty lot next door, and join the cast of characters in the alley that include local regulars and a rotating group of tourists. The beer is suspiciously cheap compared to other shops and bars, which is why it so famous among those who know about it. In a country where the majority of the population doesn’t drink, this place stands as reliable force and magnet for those who do. It is a very social atmosphere – the night we went we befriended a group of regulars who come almost every night and then expanded the group to include a proud Catalonian man (he gave us a passionate explanation of the symbolism in the Catalonian flag) and older British man. We enjoyed a few particularly strong beers here and left drunker than we had hoped for going in
Otto’s Pizza: we were in need of something to soak up the alcohol from Antarabangsa and Otto’s was the answer. We walked by on our way home and luckily snuck in a takeaway order before they closed. The only two people left in the restaurant, we watched the owner and chef prepare our burrata pizza and black truffle calzone through the order up window. Influence of strong beers aside, this was some legit and fresh wood fired pizza. Probably some of the best we’ve had on the trip. We devoured it in our hotel room and even contemplated going back the next evening
Bee Hwa Cafe: Bee Hwa Cafe is an awesome cafe restaurant that was exactly like the places we ate at in Ipoh and ended up being one of our favorite meals in Penang. It was busy when we went but we luckily found a booth in the back. We dined on Penang white curry with prawn, a spicy and flavorful coconut milk-based dish, and Hokkien mee. Given we were in a Malaysian cafe, we couldn’t leave without also having some iced coffees and kaya toast – both things Bee Hwa Cafe does exceptionally well
Presgrave Hawker Street: After our demanding hike up and down Penang Hill, we were ready for a feast. Our research and the bus route home led us to Presgrave Hawker Street – a small enclave of hawker stalls off Presgrave street serving up some of Penang’s best known dishes. It was here that we tried two new, awesome Penang specialties – oyster omelette and wan tan mee. The oyster omelette was exactly as it sounds and rich, piping hot, and delicious. The Wan Tan Mee was an indulgent, succulent bowl of soy drenched noodles with pork prepared 4 ways – roasted, wrapped in fried wonton, wrapped in steamed wonton, fatty bits – balanced out by pickled chili. Like the symbiotic hawker stall restaurants in Ipoh, we ordered two iced Chinese herbal teas from one of the restaurants to secure seating for our various hawker stall goodies. Sipping on our iced teas and dining outside in the early Penang evening sun, it felt like a summer evening meal back home.
Penang Road Famous Teochew Chendol: Yet again the name describes everything you need to know about this place. We walked over on a particularly hot and humid afternoon to get this Chendol. There was a long line but it moved remarkably quickly – we had never seen such an efficient operation. The Chendol lived up to its name and was super refreshing and delicious. We think this would kill it on a sunny August Chicago afternoon.
Jetty 35 (Yee Loong Coffee): We stumbled upon this spot one morning right around the corner from our hotel. Situated inside an old repurposed warehouse building, Jetty 35 is a super hip collection of cafes, shops, and art exhibits. We spent a few hours one day being productive in one of the cafes and walking around admiring the different shops and exhibits
Roti Canai Jalan Argyll: We were craving one last breakfast of Roti Canai before leaving Malaysia, so we found a traditional halal spot that was known for it. We got there a bit later in the day, so they were out of the veg-friendly curries. We enjoyed two rotis fried with egg, one of which was used as a vehicle for Doug’s spicy chicken curry
Chulia Street Food Stalls: Perhaps the most well known and traveled street in Penang, Chulia is chalk full of shops, restaurants, and food stall. On our last night in Penang and Malaysia we thought it only appropriate to indulge in some delicious street food. We hopped around to a few different stalls, enjoying a delicious bowl of wan tan mee from another impressively efficient operation and char keow kak, a naturally vegetarian dish of wok fried rice cakes similar to Bot Chien in Vietnam (one of Jessie’s favorites)
Where we stayed
Savv Hotel: Savv Hotel was awesome all around. It’s a nicer boutique hotel situated in the heart of the city on Pengkalan Weld street overlooking Chew Jetty and the ocean (luckily, our room had a view!). The room was large, modern, and very comfortable. One of the best parts was that the tap water was treated, so we could fill our water bottles and brush our teeth without thinking twice. We were in Penang for 4 nights and were sad to leave this place when it was all said and done.
