Off on our adventure...

Last summer, Amy and I were watching the travel show, "No Reservations", with Anthony Bourdain.  He was in Penang, an island on the northwest coast of Malaysia.  This was a place I'd barely heard of, but the more we watched the show, the more we were intrigued.  What really caught our eye was the food Bourdain was eating.  It was mostly street food...food bought and eaten either on the street or in hawker stalls (where there are many food stalls all in one place).  The food was some of the most beautiful I've ever seen, soups with a gorgeous dark red color, seafood cooked in a myriad of spices and herbs, and a dish called nasi kandar, which has all sorts of different curry dishes heaped on a big plate of rice.

Assam laksa...

Char kiow teow...

Fish head curry...

Nasi kandar stall.  I'm sure it's cleaner than it looks!

Nasi kandar...

What really got me was that Bourdain, who's travel shows I've watched for years, said this was the best street food in the world.  Better even then Singapore, which he previously said had the best street food anywhere.  At this point, Amy and I turned to each other and said, why not go to Penang?  Well, why not!?

We plan on staying on a jetty that juts out into the bay, in the city of George Town.  The jetties here are owned by Chinese families that have lived here for over 100 years.  We will be staying at Chew Jetty Homestay...

So we decided to go to Malaysia for a couple of weeks, but when we started to investigate, it seems like most parts of Malaysia (not Penang) would be in the middle of monsoon season when we wanted to travel in February 2013.  So right across a small sea is the Indonesian island of Sumatra.  This was another place we'd wanted to go to for awhile.  Way up off the northern tip of Banda Aceh (yes, of 2004 tsunami fame) is the island of Pulau Weh, which reportedly has some of the best diving in Southeast Asia.  And an hour flight (and 5 hour car ride) south of here is Danau Toba, a huge lake (80 x 30 kilometers or so) which is the result of the biggest volcanic explosion of the last million years.

Here is a map of the area.  Pulau Weh is at the far northern tip of Sumatra.  Lake Toba is to the southeast.  Penang is just off the northwestern Malaysian coast, south of Thailand...

Pulau Weh...

Lake Toba...

So we're off on our trip, first to Sumatra and then up to Penang.  Our plan depends on being able to get air tickets to these places once we get to Singapore (you can't buy budget Asian airline tickets from the US), but hopefully that won't be a problem.

So as always, we invite you to come on along with us on our Southeast Asia adventure, as we continue our search for the bizarre, the fun, the colorful, the tasty and the simply amazing.