Penang

They say that Penang (which is north west of Kuala Lumpur) is one of the best places in the world for food. They’re definitely right. That’s why on my first night I ended up eating 3 local burgers while it was raining and watching the ladyboys walk past. It was great. The next day I went to this temple called Keh Lok Si. No idea if that’s how you spell it but anyways, it was awesome. Maybe it’s because it was during Chinese New Year that it was really good. It was seriously “spot the foreigner” over there because there were only a few white guys. The view from there was great; saw a giant statue, saw some great temples, had popiah and then I went back.

Honestly, it was great. Would’ve been greater if I had someone with me to say something like “this is great man” but it’s all good because when I came back to my hostel I saw some guys that I also met at the Kuala Lumpur hostel which was quite a coincidence I guess. Ended up skipping my Langkawi trip and exploring Penang for another 4 days with them.

Penang is great if you like street art, street food, street…drinks? It’s nothing like KL. The food courts are awesome and I had some really good food, completely missed Chinese New Year which was apparently uneventful, but I did go hiking for 2 days. First day was on Penang hill which took 2 hours to get up there and next day was the national park which took around 2 hours as well to get to this place called turtle beach. There was only 1 dude with flip flops of all the hikers that I’ve seen in those 2 days. That guy was me. It was a bad idea but I guess I made it through fine. I’m probably keeping these flip flops forever. Frame it. Hang it on a wall or something. It was extremely tiring but fun and now my legs are spaghetti. It’s probably time to buy some real shoes.

As for food. For some reason Malaysian food was hard to find and Chinese food was everywhere. Honestly though, the best food I had in Penang was these damn burgers. I had 5 burgers in total during my stay in Penang. All at the same place.

Got 1 more week left in Malaysia and now I’m off to Cameron Highlands with a friend in a minivan that’s going high speed on the shoulders of the road, just to avoid traffic. One of the couple of crazy things I’ve seen so far I guess. As for Cameron Highlands, It should be colder than 29 degrees so that’s something to look forward to.