Hi everyone,

We woke up in Penang after a decent sleep and decided to skip breakfast completely as we had a lot of eating planned.

Penang is known as the street food capital of the world and today we planned to find out why. Given it is pretty difficult to navigate Penang, we figured the best way to experience the street food was to book a food tour with a company called “a chefs tour” where a guide takes you around to about 15 different places to try out the delicacies.

We turned up to meet our tour guide Lee-Ann who is a local chef. We started at a little place where we were served a bowl of Penang Hokkien prawn Loh Mee which was a prawn and noodle soup that had the broth boiling for a minimum of 4 hours.

It was the three of us dining with four Lithuanian doctors who had just been at a convention, their English was limited, but they were very nice and appreciative of good food. We walked up the road after this and were served a breakfast set. Which was Kaya toast with Kopi and a soft boiled egg. Very similar to what we had in Singapore, but this was much, much better.

It was then onto our next stop which was two different food stands out the front of a dilapidated looking building. One of them Michelin recommended the other didn’t even have signage. We had Char Kway Kak and the other had chee chong fun.

Then we rolled down the street to a place to get some Asam Laksa. It’s not quite like the laksa you know though, a bit more sour and spicy and without the coconut milk that a traditional laksa has.

Then it was across another road for some saucy noodles and a fish ball soup. This was really nice, Julian ate nearly a whole bowl of the noodles to himself, he loved them.

Following this we had some hainanese chicken rice, we were already well accustomed to this meal, having had it numerous times in Singapore. It was alright here, it came with a drink called a 932, still not really sure what it was, but it was refreshing.

Then we walked to a little dim sum restaurant and tried three different dim sum, a har gow, a siu mai and a little prawn thing wrapped in tofu skin. It was all very nice. It also came with a tea called pu-erh that is fermented with different herbs and was lovely.

It was then time for several desserts. The first was a coconut tart that was so good. Julian loved it too.

Then we went to a stall and had many different assorted pickled fruits that were all pretty gross to be honest, but we tried them.

Then we had some sweet popiah which is like a peanutty, sugary, coconut mixture wrapped in a very light wrap. It was damn good.

Then last but not least was a cramped little stall where we sat on small plastic chairs while cars drove about a metre away from us and ate a shaved ice thing with lemon, lychee and fig jelly in it. It was really refreshing and delicious.

We finished off the tour and had very full bellies and felt like we have given Penang street food a real good crack.

We walked over to two different attractions close by, one was the Hin Bus Depot which is an outdoor market with live music and a funky atmosphere. We didn’t stay long though because Julian did not want to be there and was not handling it well.

and the other one was called “the top” which is like a carnival but is located within a high-rise. Hard to describe, but we played in here for a little bit and bought tickets to the dinosaur attraction but again Julian had, had enough and wanted to go back to the hotel room, which is fair enough because we had been out for many hours and it was hot.

We got back to the hotel and spent the rest of the afternoon cooling down and we ordered some Indian on grab from a Michelin recommended restaurant and ate that. It was pretty nice.

This is our last night in Penang. It is harder to travel here, especially with Julian. We underestimated how difficult the chaos of Asia would be in a small and very disorganised place. It can be overwhelming at times, even crossing the road can be a very stressful event. We are off to Kuala Lumpur in the morning and are looking forward to getting back to city travel. Though we have enjoyed our time in Penang.

Step count: 9,538 or 6.80kms – it felt like a lot more, walking around here takes it out of you because you’re constantly on high alert.

Costs:

Prestige Penang: $293.38

Umbrellas: $9.19

A Chef’s tour: $175

Hat: $8.84

Grab transport: $5.33

The top: $58.08

Dinner: $46.79

Supplies: $7.68

Total: $604.29

Much love,

Ronnie, Aimee and Julian.