Malaysia, authentic Asian people, food and atmosphere

Penang, or Langkawi? It’s a tricky choice: both have glorious weather, gorgeous scenery, friendly people and a surprising amount of things to do.  At least according to a local tour agent. We were supposed to be in langkawi today, but due to a dispute among the locals causing road closures, we were rerouted to Penang. I hear langkawi has more luxury hotels and all that goes with it. Penang is more unspoiled. So I'm glad we were rerouted. Here's what we saw as we entered the port.

My wife and I decided to "Let the day find its way rhythm". And we did it in a big way. Penang has a free hop on hop off we took advantage of to get a feel of the city. We did our usual full loop first and then decided what we wanted to see more of. But before that, a friendly warning. It's a poor town in Malaysia, and that comes with beggars and some aggressive people wanting to sell to the "rich cruisers". Getting out of the cruise terminal took a couple of stern "get out of my way" to locals whose tactic was to get you to stop and listen to their tour schpeal by whatever means necessary. Don't make eye contact!!! But the good news is once we were a few thousand feet from the cruise terminal, it was back to normal. Normal, meaning nice people, eager to serve, pleasant to deal with but very little English.

After the first full loop, we stopped at the Campbell Street mall. So, so many vendors selling a true variety of goods as well as some standard touristy items. We purchased some great items for all 4 of our kids. CAN'T wait to give them these very personalized gifts. No pics of course....I think they read this blog 🤔 😉

The market is close to Chinatown, and it was almost 1pm at this point, so off we went. But unlike the marketplace which accepted usd, the restaurants did not. One restaurant owner belly laughed at me. So we found a currency exchange place and exchanged $10 USD. That will be relevant after you hear what we ate. We got 40 Malaysian ringots for $10 usd.

Forget all you know about how restaurants work. It's very different here. Not much in the way of wait staff. Menus are posted on the wall. Pictures were helpful, but very few english descriptions. So we decided to do restaurant hopping for appetizers. The first one we got was fried pork belly over rice. It was good but they only offered to-go. So we found a shady spot and ate that. Did I mention it was over 80 degrees and humid. We're used to that but most of the cruisers aren't.

At the next place we ordered pork buns and fried pot stickers. They were GREAT! So much complex flavor and texture. They exist where we live, but only in name. These were authentic!!!!!!

At this point, we've only spent 21.5 of our 40 ringots. With full bellies, we left and reboarded the bus to continue the loop. We stopped along a street that has 5 different temples, 5 different religions. We got a personal tour of the Muslim temple, which was very interesting.

We then headed to another unesco site, chew getty, which were primitive homes built on stilts over the water. Interesting but not sure how it made that list. I found this on "The Guardian"

Once, the “clan jetties” on the outskirts of George Town on Penang island, were a bustling seafront hub. A ramshackle collection of stilt houses and sheds, stretching along a line of wooden piers each bearing the surname of its Chinese clan, they are one of the last intact bastions of Malaysia’s old Chinese settlements.

The seven remaining jetties survived two world wars and Japanese occupation, but as the decades wore on the piers deteriorated. And when the formidable threat of encroaching developers raised its head, the owners of the jetties had only one place to turn: they made an 11th-hour bid to Unesco for protection. The effort succeeded. In 2008 the clan jetties were awarded Unesco world heritage status – though not before two of the clan enclaves were razed to make way for a housing complex.

In the middle pic at the bottom is 1 of the many art installations around the city. Here are 3 I found, but I think there's about 40.

On the way to chew getty, we stopped for some ice cones, which turned out to be gourmet snow cones, with chocolate ice cream tucked inside the ice. It was great and it hit the spot on this hot day. Total cost, 11 ringot. Now we're up to 32.50 ringot of our 40 we got for $10usd. We could have stayed there all day 😉.

Lastly, like so many ports we've visited, some beautiful flora line the roads and buildings. In this case, exhausted trishaw drivers also line the streets 😴

We headed back to the ship exhausted but not before getting a few geocaches. After changing clothes, we went in the pool for an hour and then had dinner at the buffet. Kudos to the culinary team for offering ramen, a classic and authentic Malaysian dish.

It was outstanding. I hope they offer it again

Final tally for penang - I still have 7.5 ringot left as a momento or souvenir from our starting 40. That's about $2 usd from our $10 usd. All that food cost $8. My kind of place !!! I'm glad I didn't spend that last bit. It's actually very pretty $$$, each denomination is a different color, unlike usd.

We're going to skip the show and hit the hay early as we have another port tomorrow....phuket, Thailand. Hasta manana.