Coffeechee's 24 hours : Penang Eating Trail 15-17 May 2010

Penang!!! Heard so much about the food, a failed attempt in early 2009, finally I am here! However the journey here is little bit complicated. We booked the airtickets from Tiger Airways in late Jan, to fly on Sat morning, and back to Singapore Monday morning. However, in Feb, we received an email to inform us that our flight has been changed to Sat afternoon, and back on Monday midnight! (Equal to Tues morning). We had 2 options, called them to cancel and get full refund, or accept the change. Calling tiger hotline is a challenge, after putting me on hold for 2 hours, I finally got through (I was in between jobs in Feb, so plenty of time). I cancelled the flight, and wanted to book Air Asia. But Boon said that the air tickets was too expensive, so we booked Tiger again, thinking that we were not be twice unlucky..

Guess what! The same thing happened. Tiger changed our flight again, to the same bad timing! This time, we resigned to our fate, and stick to what Tiger has changed because we had no time to call Tiger.

Despite this hiccups, this food trip was excellent. I ate sooooooo much, much more than what i ate in KL.
Please do not faint when you read what we ate.

Upon touch down, we rented a car at the airport and tried to navigate the way to our hotel. We got a bit lost, and had to stop to ask for directions. The Penang people were very helpful, very eager to help (see the map he drew). After receiving the directions, we missed a turn t the hotel, and we found the Tau Sar Pia instead! So we made a stop to buy the Tau Sar Pia before finally reaching the Tune Hotel.

Tune Hotel is a budget hotel under Air Asia Group. The concept is buy what you need. You pay a rate for room and attached bathroom. You can add on for aircon, hair dryer, towels and toiletries and TV. The rooms are small, but very very clean and it has rainshower too! It works on a smart card system, so when you insert the key into the box, it will show how many hours of aircon you are left with! Highly recommended when it is still new.

Room View:

This is the machine that keep track of how much aircon that you have left with.

What is this? A Map drew by the local. Those rounds dots are traffic lights! Haha

Our first stop was the hawker next to the George Town Sunway Hotel. The instructions given were "Go and buy whatever you like" and the golden statement of this trip by Ah Teck was "Our money is big, we cannot go hungry here!"

With this in mind, we came back with: (for 5 people)
1. Char Kway Tiao (x2)
2. BBQ Chicken Wings
3. Fried Noodles
4. Satay
5. Popiah
6. Chendol
7. Cheng Teng
8. Chee Cheong Fun
9. Lor Ma
10. Fried Intestine Porridge

Hawker Stalls next to Sunway George Town Hotel

The Quek Brothers:

We finished the day 1 with Old Town White Coffee..

Day 2.
We started our day at the Old Town Coffee. We had Nasi Lemak and Hokkien Noodles, and we departed for our city tour. The inner city of George Town is listed as Unesco site since July 2008. We started with a walk, but under the heat, we could not take it and send Boon and GH to go back to collect the car, while Zhu, Teck and myself chill out at an aircon coffee place. We drove to Penang bridge. Penang bridge was open to traffic in 14 Sep 1985, 13.5km in length connecting George Town and Butterworth.
Lunch was at a restaurant in Butterworth town. We ordered individual portion, well, I had 2 portion! :-)

Tom Yum Noodles (GH)
Tom Yum Soup with Rice (Teck)
Penang Laksa (Boon)
Penang Laksa (Zhu)
Nasi Lemak (YH)
Penang Laksa (YH)
Chicken Wings
Dessert (Zhu & YH)
Big Pau! (Bought at the coffeeshop next to the hotel)!

We had our breakfast @ Old Town White Coffee

Lucnh #1: Nasi Lemak

Lunch #2: Penang Assam Laksa

After a short rest and nap in hotel, we were ready for dinner! This time, we explored the Gurney Drive area. Dinner was at Gurney Drive Hawker, and we had an amazing 14 dishes! No photo for the dinner, because: a) they were so hungry b) I was so hungry c) the place was too dimly lited to take photo..

1. Char Kway Tiao
2. Wan Tan Mee
3. Fried Noodles
4. BBQ Fish
5. BBQ Sotong
6. Chee Cheong Fun
7. Meat Ball Tang Hun
8. Yam Cake
9. Penang Laksa
10. Rojak
11. Lok Lok
12. Ah Bom aka Heaven (with Banana)
13. Crispy Pancake
14. Oyster Egg

Once again, we finished the day with Old Town White Coffee, courtesy of GH :-) We were all amazed by how big our stomach can be!

Last Day in Penang
We have decided that other than food, we should do some serious sight seeing. Well, we haev to still start with breakfast! We drove to the Penang Hill, wanted to take the train up, only to realise that it was closed for upgrading til end of the year. The other option to go up to the hill was to drive to the Botanic Garden, and take a 4WD up the Hill, at RM15 per person. This option was made known to us by a Dutch Guy, David who was also at the Penang Hill unknowingly. So we gave David a ride to Botanic Garden, and he took the 4WD with us up to the hill too. We also made a detour to see some abandoned old school. It was a pity that the weather that day was not good, the sky was greyish and gloomy, and could not have a clear view of the Penang Skyline.