Penang Trip 2.0 Part I

If I remembered correctly, and based on the blog post I made, the last time I stepped on the land of Penang was 2009.

I went to Penang again a few weeks ago and surprise, I went there together with my classmates, not family. I always mention that organizing trips are almost impossible with my classmates but we did it, and it was kinda last minute too.

After thinking about transportation, accommodation and what are we going to do there, we decided to fly to Penang via airplane because the tickets are actually kinda cheap! We're staying at a friend's relative's house. Transportation. I'll fill in about that later.

DAY ONE

So we all met up at KLIA2 in the morning. It was my first time departing from KLIA2 and it's been a long time since I took a domestic flight. I was so used to carry my passport around in airports that it felt so weird.

After we landed, we took a taxi to the place where we will spend two nights over there. It was an apartment on the 19th floor, but they actually combined the room from the 20th floor so it looks like a double storey house. The apartment has lots of rooms and lots of toilets too.

But the second storey was unused so it was kinda dusty, so we decided that we will all sleep at the living room instead. It's kinda like a sleepover and it's definitely more fun.

 The view from the apartment.

After settling down for a while, we decided to head to Georgetown. It was like a 15 minute drive and took an Uber. The Uber driver had trouble locating our area because I guess it's not somewhere you will go in Penang(?).

Before the trip, I asked people about how we should travel in Penang. Some said rent a car, some said Uber is fine, some said get a chauffeur. I thought it will be better to rent a car, since getting on taxis are gonna cost some money and there aren't a lot of buses to travel with if you're outside the area of Georgetown, but some of my classmates said they wanted to experience of traveling like foreigners(?).

Bullshit, LOL.

Anyway, by the time we reached Georgetown, it was probably around 2PM thanks to our delayed flight and our Uber driver who couldn't locate us. We were hungry so we stopped by Little India and just went in to the first restaurant we see: a nasi biryani restaurant.

We ordered stuff and we finally got to eat. Except the rice was spicy as heck. Me and two of my Kazakhstan friends couldn't handle the heat, so we had to order some dessert to cool our poor tongues. It was the first time I ate something so spicy till my stomach hurt.

After lunch, we went to the Wonderfood museum. I saw my cousin's picture taken there it looks great, so I suggested my friends to go there. It was really a great choice.

The museum showed all the traditional Malaysian food and the culture of eating in our country with really, really, REALLY realistic food sculptures/figures/display. It's like the super realistic food that you can't eat 'cause it's wax that you can find outside a Japanese restaurant.

The amount of detail is really mind blowing, and Wonderfood took it another level by enlarging their food to sizes that are larger than life. They also had crazy sections like what if food was black and white or if there is no gravity so they prepared unique-looking food(that you can't eat) to take pictures with. Pictures will explain.

Me and the love of my life.

It may look like we really spilled the food but they are already tilted to make it look like it fell. In fact, my friend in the middle didn't even use the chopstick to pick up the noodles, it was already floating.

In conclusion, we had a really great time there. The only downside is we couldn't eat anything there.

We walked around the area in hopes of discovering the famous street arts. We did find some but they weren't the popular ones like the two kids on the bike or something. Well, we did find the two kids on a swing and took pictures there.

After walking for a while, we wanted to head to Gurney Drive to have our dinner. Before we called an Uber, we stumbled upon one of the clan jetties over there. In fact, I didn't know it was the clan jetty until my mom told me on the phone that night. The jetty we visited belonged the Chews.

It reminded me of Pulau Ketam.

Finally, the Uber arrived and got us to Gurney Drive. We hung out at Gurney Plaza for a while before deciding we will shop later after we had dinner, so we ate at a food court nearby. I had a delicious meal of char kuey teow and their sour plum juice is different in Penang, hmm.

We realized there was a 7-Eleven nearby so we thought screw it, we'll just do shopping there. We got our breakfast there and water and basic supplies. We went home after that.

Before we knocked out, we played a game of UNO that will decide who will prepare breakfast the next day. I was the first to win so I was spared. It was really fun. I don't know, hanging around with friends till late at night is just that different.

I'm thankful to be able to sleep with a warm blanket.

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I decided to separate my trip to two parts!

1. It might be a really long post to read if I combined all three days even though we didn't do much.
2. It gives the look that I posted more in my blog.

Super random but shout out to Calvin! Thanks for always reading my blog, I will miss you even though I only met you once.