The Pearl of the Orient

Penang has certainly lived up to its nickname, The Pearl of the Orient. It's a city like no other I've ever been to. People like us come here because of the food. I must say that for me, this place equals or surpasses the other great food destinations I've been to; Oaxaca, Tuscany, Thailand and South India. Here in Penang you have so many cultures in one place, you can have great food from many parts of the world; Chinese, Indian, Thai and of course Malay. You can have a delicious dish of Mutton Chettinad on one block in Little India, listening to the latest Bollywood soundtrack, and walk over a couple of blocks and you will be in a giant hawker mall with stalls selling Fish Head Curry, Chicken Claypot Rice and Assam Laksa to the sound of Chinese pop music. Many of these hawker stalls have been around for 20, 30, 40 years and more; families handing down their recipes from one generation to the next. Talk about perfecting a dish! The food here wakes up tastebuds you never knew you had and goes rights to the nether regions of your palate. I guarantee you will experience favors here you didn't know existed

But Penang is much more than the food. Certainly that's a big part and the local people are very proud of their culinary tradition. It's also home to some of the kindest people we have met on our journeys. Many times Amy and I would be sitting somewhere enjoying a meal and the person next to us would strike up a conversation. Where are you from? What brings you to Penang? How do you like it? Are you enjoying our food? Pretty soon we would be learning about their lives, what it's like living here, what kind of travels they've been on themselves, etc. Several times they insisted on buying a dish for us and on one of those occasions the people were not rich, but they just wanted to welcome us to their country.

The highlight of the entire trip was staying with the Chew Family at Chew Jetty Homestay (www.mychewjetty.com). And the best time to be with them was for Chinese New Year when the entire Jetty decorates their homes and celebrates for two weeks. Firecrackers, fireworks, lion dances, you name it, it was happening on the Jetty. Siew Pheng, our lovely host, was so generous with her knowledge of life in Penang and on the Jetty and she was always right on when she suggested a restaurant or a certain Hawker stall. Sitting on their little balcony, over the outgoing tide at sunrise, was a magical experience and one I will treasure always.

The city of Georgetown is also home to some of the most beautiful buildings you'll see anywhere. While the east side of the island, from the airport to very near downtown, the island is chockablock with high rise apartments and office buildings and is not all that beautiful. But downtown has been declared a Unesco World Heritage Site. This will protect this amazing place from developers that would destroy it. Wandering down the alleyways is a marvel, with the old shophouses, many of them 100 years old and more and occupied by the same families for decades. Some have been restored into boutique hotels and nice restaurants. Many of the old mansions have fallen into disrepair, but many others have been restored to their original glory. One we saw today, the Cheong Fatt Tze mansion, is amazing and they brought in special artisans from China that know how to do very unusual sculpture.

It's not a perfect place, for sure. At certain times each day, the traffic is just awful. It's getting way too crowded (like most of Asia) and many places, especially the north coast beach area, have been mostly ruined by overdevelopment. The ocean is pretty dirty and I wouldn't swim in it. And in one of the most horrible faux pas, in the land of Hokkien Mee and Char Koay Tao, the airport's restaurants are a McDonald's and a KFC!!! But these are minor complaints as long as you just know what parts of the island to avoid.

As we sit here in the Singapore airport, waiting for our long flight home, I'm already dreaming of coming back someday in the not to distant future. I can only stay away from a good bowl of Assam Laksa so long!

Headed for the windward side

Today, our next to last day in Penang, we took the local bus, Rapidbus route 401E, around the lower rim of the island to Balik Pulau, literally meaning The Far Side. Trip was kinda long, because Penang has a lot of traffic using its old traditional streets, and a lot of shopping mall complexes and apartment towers and auto mall equivalents, but the trip was worth it, once you get past the airport the hills are lush and green. Not only was it wonderful to get out to birds singing and little streams and bamboo and all that, the food was great. We had two distinct versions of Laksa, the dark fish soup with long generous Almost spaghetti like round pudgy noodles and a little pork. The standard one we've already been having, every three days or so, has tamarind in the curry fish stock base. Today we had, side by side with this, Siam Loksa, "Thai style Loksa". this has no tamarind instead there is coconut cream and lemon grass inthe broth. With chillies and ? Fish sauce and undoubtedly garlic and who knows maybe galangal. Yumm. We had this, with a tangy drink of fresh squeezed lime and mandarin orange juice with fresh nutmegs in it. Over ice. Odd and powerful, flavor combination.

We also later today back in town finally got to have Cendol, the local noodles dessert. How awesome is that. There are noodles colored green from fragrant pandanus leaf, with a slush of caramelly coconut something, and some Chinese sweet red beans. The slush melts and its really awesome. Sort of like a root beer float only not.

We had another new meal choice today, some name like pahadum. In this, you choose from a whole lot of precooked seafood, then this gets quickly batter fried, served with slivered squash, and topped with a sweet sauce. The seafood was good, overall it sat a little heavy in the tummy. Our fellow diners laughed heartily and good naturedly at us non Muslim farangs trying to choose something new at the food stall.

The other adventure of the day was the Snake Temple. I'll let Craig talk about that one! Missable, except for the tiny green leaf snakes which are harmless beautiful and sweet and don't seem to mind being manhandled by the masses.

Finally we had another great chance conversation with another Penang born visitor, a stockbroker up for business. outside maxims, the Italian gelateria, we sat watching the bicycle taxis and talked about the world. It was fun he was courteous welcoming and insightful. A partly Turkish Malaysian Muslim married to a half Chinese woman, telling us about all the nationalities who've moved here recently e.g. Iranian and Filipino and all who've started vacationing here including all he Arabian countries since 9-2011. Very fun exchange.

Awesome Assam and The Bishop's Nose

So the last couple of days we've hiked in a jungle, a bit of it way up high in a canopy walk, we've gone to some amazing temples, taken a funicular 3,000 feet above Georgetown, seen women in FULL black burkas with only a tiny slit for the eyes (while their stupid-ass husbands who force them into these bulls**t costumes run around in modern clothes), heard loud Indian music in one block and the Muslim call to prayer in the next block, and have been to a GINORMOUS temple to Quan Yin that I think was actually dedicated to the Goddess of Souvenir Stands, as there were literally hundreds of them on the approach to the temple and actually IN the temple!! But this blog isn't about those things...it's about FOOD!! I mean that's why we're here in the first place.

Last night we decided to take a little break from Penang hawker food and go to Little India for some authentic Indian food. Siew Pheng, our lovely host at Chew Jetty Homestay, told us about Ananda, a restaurant serving food from both north and south India. The menu had many things, but the dish that stood out was fish with Chettinad sauce. This is a rich, reddish brown sauce that we had over fish. Nice and rich and spicy! We also had mutton (what they call goat here) in a curry sauce. A couple types of nan and dosa and we were good to go.

Today we had our usual four meals. For breakfast we went back to Ananda and had this delicious roti bread that was stuffed with egg and onions. Also, we had dosa served with some different sauces and a potato dish. For drink we had Indian coffee with lots of milk and sugar. But the truly amazing meal we had was lunch and a fish head curry. There are several good places for folks to enjoy a fish head curry meal in Penang and the one we went to, thanks to an online article, was Chee Wah. Nestled amidst a row of small shops in Lebuh Melayu (Malay Street), it is a popular place among locals during lunch hour, as it is only open from 11am to 3pm. When it comes to fish head curry, Chee Wah has a fine version, with the fish head cooked in an Indian-style curry sauce with a generous dose of spiciness without the use of coconut milk. What's also different is they plop in a couple of prawns and some small squids into the clay pot the fish head is cooking in.

The fish head curry came piping hot in a big clay pot. Its steamy aroma wafted around the place when the lid was lifted. The medium size fish head had a good portion of flesh, although its a bit of an art to poke around the inner sanctum of the fish head and dig out all the fish bits. The semi-thick curry was garnished with toppings of fragrant mint leaves and raw pieces of onions which enhanced the flavor of the curry. There was plenty of rice to pour the sauce over and we sopped up every drop!

After we got to our new hotel, called the Coffee Atelier and located in a Heritage Building that was an old coffee roasting shop back in the 1920s, with the best rooms we've had so far, we headed up to the giant Koh Lok Si temple, a sprawling and gigantic temple to Quan Yin. The temple had more souvenir stands then I've ever seen in one place (and hope fully Quan Yin is getting a cut of the action). But at the base of the temple are hawker stands and one of them has what some people say is the best assam laksa in Penang. Laksa is a spicy and sour noodle soup with shredded bits of fish and various vegetables (mint, cucumber, red chilies, onion) in a fish broth that is reminiscent of soupe de poisson in France. This one is very popular, as there was a big crowd. But the owner seated us at a round table with three other people, a student from China and an older couple from Penang. The man from Penang, who spoke not a word of English, was drinking some kind of ice tea and he then went over to the drink stand and bought us two glasses! Not only that, but when the laksas came for us he bought us ours and the student's! Talk about a random act of kindness. The laksa was all it was cracked up to be and lived up to its reputation as one of the best in Penang

When we finally got back into town a few hours later, it was time for meal #4. We went to the Red Garden night market, which is a unique place. When you walk in you are blasted by a wall of sound, as rather lame singers are singing very loudly to canned music. We walked around the edge, checking out the stalls and finally landed on one making Curry Mee, a spicy noodle soup with curry as the broth. I also ordered what I though were fried chicken gizzards but turned out to be "Fried Bishop's Nose", which of course are chicken tails. The couple sitting next to us were eating fried tofu and just handed us the plate as they ordered another for themselves. Two acts of kindness in such a short time! Of course it was all washed down with Malaysia's fine Tiger beer, which is delicious.

All in all this will go down as one of the greatest food days in our lives.

Magic carpet ride

Tonight I am tucked in a four poster bed in an old restored coffee merchant's workshop in the heart of historical George Town/Penang trying to rest my little achy legs from two very busy days. Yesterday we spent the morning up on the northeast corner of the island, in a National Park, hiking up and over jungle clad hills from a bay to a small strip of beach, where turtles used to nest. Some of this was very fun scrambling as well as a small bit that was up in one of those suspended "canopy walks". We shared the trail, which was beautiful, many ferns and palm fronds and liana vines and small rushing streams and constant cicada noises, with teenagers in Muslim clothes -- boys in school jackets and girls in hijab head coverings and sweatshirts- and a lot of other interesting tourists, a mainland Chinese guy backpacking to camp on the beach, and a nice Chinese family from Singapore. We also got time to ourselves which was great, the quiet forest was wonderful.

We were not very Impressed with the northern beaches otherwise... The shoreline is pretty where you can see it between buildings, but the seawater is murky and stinky, and things are too developed in a standard tourist hotel way to be so interesting to us. There are a lot of australian and some arabic tourists there. we did meet a family of South Indian background who were very welcoming, they had a nice lunch stand with great coffee and some nice pure veg potatoes with black mustard seed and dal. And a mother kitty with four baby kittens in a cardboard box.

We were so happy to be back in Georgetown to eat and explore some more. We did a repeat of "dried chilli frog" and then some battered fried frog, for "late lunch", and enjoyed a rainstorm down at Chew Jetty during the afternoon. We walked several times in the Armenian street neighborhood which is a great mix of Chinese clan houses (amazing temples and shrines), and Malay Muslim businesses, a few art stores. late at night we went to have delicious South Indian food, dosa and fish curry chettinad, then went around "shopping" for fake gold South Indian jewelry like I saw in Tanjore, south India, a year or so ago. At ten or eleven at night, "Little India" is by far the most entertaining place to be for people watching, its jewelry and sari and bollywood video store never seem to close and the local people are very good looking.

Today has been another full rich day. We were very happy at Chew Jetty but we had only reserved 3 nights. So we had to leave! but, Now we are in a beautifully restored building in an entire suite of rooms with polished dark wood floors, oriental carpets, fabulous Chinese antiques, a giant bathroom with views and one of those showers that is suspended high overhead and comes down on you like rain. Our bedroom is king sized and all our junky clothes are in their own little room.

Below us is a coffee store owned by the hotel, that also serves very fine French wines. We think, because we are still too wedded to eating out in our food courts and drinking Tiger beer.

Today we had South Indian breakfast of pooris, roti with egg and onion, chai tea and South Indian coffee, then we had an amazing restaurant meal of fish head curry with iced chrysanthem tea, later for a third meal we had Assam laksa fish stock noodles with lychee tea out at a huge temple east of here and for our fourth meal we had tofu puffs with sweet and sour sauce, chicken "pope's nose" nuggets, curry mee noodles, and Tiger beer.

Finally today we got to see just two of the many small museums and famous houses of George Town.we saw doctor Sun Yat Sens home, a traditional home with exquisite screens of dark carved wood dividing high ceilinged rooms filled with painted Chinese chests and curio display cabinets. We also finally saw the fabulous Khoo Kongsi which was a clan house, think football field sized courtyard with temples that are easily three stories in height, with carved stone pillars, giant gilded staircases, gleaming painted beams, high tiled roofs that soar, lots of ceramic tile dragons and mythical creatures seeming to fly right out of the rooflines, interiors filled with dark shining altars filled with Chinese gods or ancestor plaques,, and huge murals of classic Chinese themes and myths which I don't know well enough to describe and do justice to, but a true student of Chinese cultural history would be in heaven here.

We also got to go up onto Penang hill, a rainforested retreat the british uses to cool off which is 2500 feet above the city. You go on cool and cheap city buses out to the suburbs (not far but takes a while due to penangs famous traffic) and then can take a very steep funicular, we went just at sundown and seeing the city lights and some hills defining the outlines of the Straits of Malacca was very, very beautiful indeed. Also we shared our funicular car with a large family group from Qatar or somewhere similar, the ladies elegant in head to toe black and several of them, actually went and redraped theirselves when they noticed Craig so we could only barely see their eyes. Nice family, darling little girls and we had fun sharing the car with them.

And before we went up Penang Hill, we saw the stunning, disneyesque Kok Loksi temple, an amazing campus of huge over the top temples up an entire hillside, with"thousand Buddha" temples, Chinese gods, an enormous quan yin.... We gave up before seeing a third of it, because it was sooooo much and so mingled with shopping options. Hilarious really. Buy this angry gods t shirt and this shiny purse and those Kleenex tissues, and feed the turtles with our special greens, and take the expensive lift, get In line here in the middle of this store, because all the proceeds will go to the building fund! Jesus would have thrown the money changers outta there, for sure!

The reason I'm titling this blog "magic carpet ride" is that 1) I feel like this trip has been one 2) my legs ache so much from all our hiking and climbing that i wish I had one and 3) this hotel suite of ours, which is all ours no other visible guests in our part of the building, seems to have several on the floor in here. So pretty!

A Cowardly Lion He's Not!

Today was a very special day. Here at Chew Jetty Homestay, where we are having one of the most marvelous times of any place we've ever stayed, was to be a special day...the day the Dancing Lion would show up at the house for a big blessing. We were told by our host Siew Pheng Chew, that the dance troupe was to arrive between 9 and 10am. So we waited around, listening to any far off indication of their presence, which would mean you usually hear the cocaphonous sounds of drums and cymbals. 10 o'clock came and went and no lion. Traffic jam somewhere, due to huge rock concert, holding them up. So we went across the street for a quick breakfast of Hokkien mee (a lighter noodle soup with pork), watching out for the truck that brings the dance troupe. No one was in sight. So back to Chew Jetty Homestay we went. Eleven o'clock came and went. Then 12, 1pm...Then there was, far away at the beginning of the jetty, the sound we were waiting for. We hurried up there and there they were, the lions dancing in front of the Jetty's temple. We figured they'd be down to our place soon, so Mr. Chew hung up the vegetables and fruits at the front door that indicated to the lion that he was to stop here. You see, the lions here are vegetarians and wouldn't hurt a flea.

But 2pm came and went and still no lion. Apparently, he went to the other side of the Jetty first. But it didn't really matter, at all, as we were just greatly enjoying ourselves, sitting around and being part of the daily life of Chew Jetty. It's very interesting talking with Siew Pheng about growing up here and what daily life is like. Actually, we can kind of understand it as we have been experiencing it. The family's really nice, and there is a constant stream of activity and people watching. Okay...3pm was upon us and then right at 4pm, the white lion and his troupe were before our door.

Soon, drums and cymbals were doing their thing and Mr. Lion was dancing and prancing at our front door. He then bowed and entered into the living room. He came to the large altar, bowed before it and made some humble wriggly prostations. He then turned and headed right to the back of the house and bowed to a small altar. All this time, the entire Chew family, mom, dad, two daughters, son in law, two grand kids and us were following him all around and I think every single person except the 5 year old and 1 year old had a camera. The lion then retraced his steps to the living room, bowed some more, fluttered his beautiful eyelashes a lot, wiggled his ears a bunch, then reared up and got some fresh lettuce, limes and an offering of lucky red money which was hung up high, and accepted a plate of offerings from the hosts. He kind chewed these for a bit and promptly spit out a huge bounty of fresh fruit and candies back out all over the living room floor. He then made his way out of the house, took a few bows and it was over. Except for one little thing, the lighting of the 8 foot high pile of firecrackers that were lit up and within about 14 seconds hundreds of firecrackers exploded, the sound reverberating around the walls of the living room...LOUD!!

How to Eat at a Hawker Stall in Penang

A hawker stall experience seems to look a little bewildering at first glance. it's so rare to see so much good food in so many tiny stalls and they have so many bewildering names.
Amy's primer:
1. go to the Hawker stall court or street at the right time of day - some are day some form in the evening
2. Explore the stalls around the perimeter, get an idea of what looks good. Especially, Find the stalls that your friends told you are the really good ones for that particular place.
3. Find a table, park one person there.
4. Order food and show the person where you'll be, but you don't have to pay for it till it comes.
5. Go sit and a nice lady will probably come up and ask you what you want to drink. Seems like, most hawker stalls have a central drinks place. Iced coffee always good, ice lemon tea good, Tiger beer good, the beers are large so if you want two glasses to split it, just ask. Again you just have to pay for the drinks when they arrive.
6. You don't seem to be expected to tip.
7. Even if its a street marke at night, there seems to be a nearby restaurant that has a bathroom to use, maybe for a slight fee.
8. Have a great meal for a low price.
9. Repeat six times a day.

Blessed by the God of Prosperity

It's nearly bedtime, and I'm sitting in the evening breeze on a deck with no railings seeing and hearing the evening tide rush in under my feet. Craig and I are now staying in the Chew family jetty, a village in the heart of old Georgetown that was built out here on stilts over the water about 140 years ago. The Chew Jetty Homestay is a very welcoming place, a family home with maybe four or five bedrooms and two living rooms, right literally on the water. In the kitchen if you have crumbs you can help them fall through to the ocean if you like, no need for dustpan. The family's really nice, modern yet traditional, iPads and iphones around and ms chew, Suping, is Craig's active Facebook friend, but Mrs Chew senior cooks awesome traditional food, ms chew our hostess is kind and full of excellent information about her town and traditions, and people seem very relaxed about having three rooms filled by strangers.

Actually, Chew Jetty as an entire dock is very accepting of strangers. It's hot, so all front doors and windows are open, and lots of Chinese, Malay, European and other tourists come out to walk the long, rambling dock, wide enough for a motor scooter, all day and evening long to check it out. It's a very nice place to stroll, you can be out in Chew Jetty and see New Years fireworks that other ketties have set off, rising over the roofs. To live in Chew Jetty, your last name must be Chew. Our part Is one long boardwalk alley with lots of homes off it the size of double wide mobile homes, but lots more character of course. Actually turns out there is an older, parallel boardwalk. There are apparently 83 houses, and 3,000 Chews living here, and about 60% are related.

Tonight, things seem to be calming down a little from New Year's Eve, but tomorrow we hear lion dancers will be here, to dance at any door that has hung the vegetables and other suitable offerings outside that lions like to eat. Evidently these felines are vegetarian. Huh. Thus far we have seen about four different lion dancer companies, some quite amazingly and dangerously acrobatic. They must practice together with their drummers, so much, to know what cues to give for their leaps, rearing motions, and for the way they love to tease an honored host or a nosy tourist. I love watching the way they can cock an ear, wiggle their haunches, chew red money like tickets, or even the other day chew up and spit out a snake. Today a lion (two people) jumped up on a line of about twelve sets of sturdy steel posts with flat foot sized platforms, each paid at different heights and spaced a meter apart at various heights more then two meters, and bounded across them, faked slipping off of them.... It was amazing.

At this same site the god of prosperity showed up.... Wearing an elaborate royal headdress, dressed in red and gold robes, with a waist long (Manchu style?) beard. If he touched you or you touched him, good luck for the year! He shook our hands kindly and gave us each a sweet candy. I'm treasuring mine because I'm enjoying very good luck now with my sweet husband Craig eating our way through the hawker stalls of Penang and staying with this nice family. How lucky is that!

......


Well. We got luckier. No, things havent calmed down so much yet. Tonight after writing this, we got caught up happily with the family lighting off tiny firecrackers on the back deck, with Suping, her friend, her sister and sisters kids a boy about five or six named weh cha, a little sister... Meanwhile loud, forceful fireworks are going off. We think we are going to sleep, the explosions get even better, we get up to watch again, suddenly one of their boats, one that's decked, comes along, the family puts benches and plastic chairs on, and away we chug in the darkness watching fireworks as we go, over to the very grand Floating Temple of Qwan Yin. Double decker gleaming glowing neon temple. Was a lot of fun. We all arrived barefoot so the folks there may have wondered, what's going on. Within second it seemed, Suping had us uploaded to Facebook. Oh, this modern world.