Downtown food tour (days 2 & 3)

Penang is absolutely known for its food.  In fact, the first time I ever heard the name of the island was when a restaurant in Chapel Hill opened called Penang.  I had no idea what it served.  I still don't know what it served, but Seth and I have been doing nothing but sampling the local cuisine since we arrived.  We are pretty adventurous--we prefer to eat with the locals and will try almost anything.  However, I draw the line at organ meats.  Seth doesn't mind these parts, but he said he won't eat frogs (and there was an opportunity for that two nights ago). I think I'd do the same. The fun part is that the food is so cheap here that if for some reason a dish isn't agreeable, it costs almost nothing to buy a different one (a big meal costs about $1 to $1.50). 

Our first breakfast: curry mee (curry soup with egg noodles, similar to Australian laksa).  While we were eating in her home this lady showed us photos from her trip to Europe.

 

Serving at one of the outdoor markets: chicken heads

One of the temples we came across in Chinatown

Due to the crazy mix of cultures (Malaysian, Chinese, southern Indian, Muslim, some European and Thai), there are lots of foods to try.  We wanted Indain for lunch but had no idea what or how to order.  I made gestures to order a fish curry, rice, veggies, and was very pleased with the results. 

The bustling stall where we had lunch

Little India

The name of this tea sounded like masal.  It basically tasted like what we call chai. 

We spent the later (and hotter) part of the afternoon wandering around a gigantic shopping mall.  Apparently it is attached to an even larger shopping mall in the Komtar tower, but we didn't know this at the time.  Here is a grocery store in the mall that sells very cute individually-wrapped sushi, made by an equally cute Muslim girl (the cute Japanese girls were probably hired by the more authentic sushi shops).

This smaller mall has 8 stories with a cinema and Karaoke bar at the top

Ice kacang, a dessert similar to cendol, made with shaved ice, sweet red beans, sweet corn, pieces of nutmeg flesh, sweetened condensed milk, and ice cream on top. Delicious!

Hawker stalls with hanging squid

In the evening we took the bus to meet the rest of the family at a complex of hawker stalls just outside of town.  What you do is claim a table, then go around to the different stalls and pick out the food you want.  The food is brought to your table and you pay when it is delivered.  We ordered a bunch of dishes to try and we ate family-style. 

Seth ordered an authentic assam laksa (the local Penang variety, which is very different from the coconutty version you find in southern Malaysia and in places like Australia).  Unfortunately I think I prefer the Australian "abomination"

We go out running early in the morning, before the sun is up.  We found a small park by the water where we can do laps.

Our laps include going around Fort Cornwallis

For breakfast we had some thick, black loh mee (surprisingly mildly sweet) and spicy hokkien mee

 

Some stalls around Chinatown

Pickled fruit is popular here--I wish I knew what these were!

Jack fruit

Lunch was Indian food again.  This was a very popular cafe, and like yesterday, we were rather confused when ordering, but it was worth the effort!

Fish curry and vegetable curry

View from Komtar (a very tall building)

We took the lift to the 60th floor of Komtar. You can see our hotel down below (lower center-left: Hotel Sentral Georgetown)

We stumbled upon the larger shopping mall in the Komtar tower. Holy crap it was huge.

Night-time hawker stalls.