Trip to Penang Part 1
For some reason, holidays in Malaysia invariably turn into some sort of gastronomical quest of searching for the best foods in town, and my trip to Penang was no different.
So after even though I had been driving for 5 hours straight and it was 5 o clock in the morning, my friends felt no guilt whatsoever in asking me "Where are we going for breakfast?"
Naturally, I had to oblige, and so we went on a morning breakfast hunt, looking for some crazy hawker who would think of selling char koey teow at 5 a.m. We did not manage to find any, but we did come across this rather famous mamak that sold banana ice cream pancake with chocolate and honey (or something like that). But fearing a premature heart attack (with such a potent combination of fats and sugar) and also what it would do to our stomachs, we moved on. We settled on eating mee suah right by the sea side on Gurney drive. Of course, that was after we got repeated lost trying to drive around the islands. Not bad for our first morning eh? Anyway, we checked into the hotel, and out of sheer pity we all agreed that we would only start out on our Penang adventure after I had some sleep. After all, I did drive the entire night all alone with no one to talk to while these bunch of ever supportive friends tested out my car pillows, leather seats and comfort levels of my car.
This lovely picture up here that you, see.. Thats not mee suah. That is a bowl of Penang Asam Laksa (Balik Pulau to be exact) that I drove half the island length just to eat. It supposed to be the trademark of this small charming pekan. At least that was what it said on the internet. Balik Pulau isnt really a island at all as its name might imply. It turns out Balik Pulau really meant Sebalik Pulau, or the other/back side of the island. So we drove around the island, taking long treacherous roads all in the name of tasting this supposedly famous delicacy. Now, my friend and I have had this theory for quite some time now. After enough, we believe that most of the foods you see which look deliciously presentable and fully garnished and sold by slightly younger people are not as good. You have to look for the old man with the small stall right at the corner preparing his food quietly, with minimum decos, and minimum garnish to the food; they are the ones with the best food, because for some reason, the older generation sold more based on the quality of taste rather than its presentation. So with that in mind, we went to the oldest looking store with the oldest looking uncle making the food and ordered 4 bowls of Penang Asam laksa. The Laksa turned out to be ok, but was a bit too sweet for our KL taste buds. I supposed Asam laksa will always taste like Asam laksa no matter where you go, and perhaps we had our hopes too high up expecting at any moment to be brought to tears at first bite.Of course, that's not all we ordered. Koey Teow soup and tau Foo Far that everyone else seemed to be ordering was on top of our list, and I must say, having zero expectations of it, we were more impressed by them than we were of the Asam Laksa.
Anyway, the nice thing about driving to the middle of nowhere is that you get to see a lot of greenery. It was also here that I finally remember to actually take a picture of my car! Its not a full shot of the car, but hey, if you have seen one Proton Wira, you have seen a thousand of them. This one is actually looking down on Balik Pulau from up the mountains after we finished eating and took a grand total of 5 minutes to see the entire town center. Suddenly I was glad that I remembered to wash the car before embarking! The trip was just the four of us; my girlfriend and I, my buddy whom I went to London and Paris with, and another friend of us, who was really the object of desire of my buddy. So while this was purely a holiday for my girlfriend and I, it was really a time of opportunity for my friend to get to know this lovely lady that we were nice enough to introduce to him!
There was also a part of this trip that I actually dread coming to but secretly was looking forward to it, which was the Snake temple. Now when you say its a Snake Temple, what comes to your mind? To me it was a temple filled, I mean filled with snakes everywhere you go, every step you take every corner you walk. I was even joking in the car that I hope there is no snakes in the toilet! Now here's something you may not know about me. I am terrified of snakes. More generally, I am terrified of all reptiles. There is just something about these cold blooded creatures that just makes me nervous in every inch of my body. But as with everything that we are terrified of, we somehow become mystically enthralled by them. Despite all my fears of snakes and reptiles, despite never before (and ever) held a snake or any reptile in my hand, I have watched more reptile documentaries than all my friends combine. I confess myself absolutely fascinated by them, but at the same time completely and utterly terrified of them. Can you imagine how I anticipated going to the Snake temple. But alas, it was not as I hoped/feared it to be.
The temple was really in honour of some Buddhist Monk who set up this temple and sheltered the snakes from around that seemed to know that Monks are vegetarian. There were no snakes on the loose, despite what the signboards said. This picture is of the alter for the temple, and that Idol you see is in fact the monk I said. To make things worse, the place was really really small, and it took us just another grand 5 minutes to see the entire temple. The fact that the temple was smack in the middle of a free trade industrial area. The temple sat right among miles and miles of electronic and electrical companies and large corporations. I forgot that Penang was a free trade zone and that companies like Intel, Dell and a host of corporations set up their South East Asia hub here. So much for mystic and wonder for the snake temple!
But to be fair, we did eventually find a significant amount of snakes, but they were all behind cages and glasses, which again I was both happy and secretly disappointed with. For all my fears of reptiles, I actually psyched myself into being ready to be scared out of my pants by these limb lacking leeches.... The local temple guide did a good job of explaining the various snakes to us, and this King Cobra was bothered from its slumber by the guide just for our benefit. I did learn that they detect you through you body heat and smell. That explained why the snake did not reach when the guide poked it with a metal stick but immediately erected to striking position when he sense a leg or body coming near. It was one thing to see in in a documentary, and totally another to see it proven in front of my eyes!
Going to KOMTAR again was a complete disappointment. When I was about 5 or 6 years old, my mother would bring me to Penang once in a while to visit my grandmother. We would travel to Komtar and take the bus from there to where she lived. Along the way, we would always go walking around the shopping center in Komtar. that was easily 15 years ago. Komtar was and remains a landmark in Penang. It is the tallest building you will see when you arrive at Georgetown. It used to be a gem of a place, literally a towering figure of Penang. But when I got there, it was not what it used to be.
The place was old, filthy, run downed with an unbearable stench. There were homeless people lying down on the floors, and it seemed more like a place for foreign workers of the likes of Indonesians, Thais, Nepalese would hang out. If there was once place closest in resemblance to it would be Kota Raya in KL. But even Kota Raya has now been closed down last year. There was a plaque place outside not far from where I took this picture, of Tun Dr. Mahatir signing the official launching of this place back in 1990. How did a place go down the dumps in such a short spam of 17 years? We left barely an hour after coming here. I had hope to show my friends this wonderful place that was part of my childhood, but I went away more disappointed than any of them.
To be continued....
posted by Compulsive Blogger @ 7:38 pm
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