Georgetown, Pulau Pinang, through the lens of food

by Holly

One thing that was really great about Penang was the food. I will tell you about some of the delicious things we had while we had while we were in Georgetown and where we ate them. We were only there for a few days, but we tried to jam in as many meals and snacks as possible.

Le Petit Four Patisserie
First thing Saturday morning we had taken a Grab to Chew Jetty on the advice of our guidebook. We were nearly killed by tour busses getting across the busy street to the jetty itself. The jetty was absolutely packed with tourists in the main narrow walkway that went out onto the wood structure over the sea, and the air was still and broiling hot. It was interesting to see how people built piers up from the bottom to support structures over the water. I understand all the wood used in these lasts 10 years max and the concrete piers don't last long either. These piers for a porch look to be built from 20 liter pails filled with concrete cast in place over wood posts.

When we finally got to the end we got a view of the bay.

The tide was out and the exposed soggy expanse was fragrant and steamy. By the time we fought our way back to shore through the throng of tourists, everyone was tired and sweaty and wilting in the sun. We attempted to walk past some street art on the way to a museum. Penang is known for street art and it was cool to check out the murals as we explored the town.

But after a couple blocks in full sun at around 11am, people were starting to lose it (see facial expressions on kids in above pic). So we ducked into a cafe we saw along the way to enjoy some AC and cold drinks. It was tastefully decorated, full of natural light, and blissfully cool. As we sat sipping our cold drinks, we watched the bakers preparing pastries for the day through a picture window in back.

These desserts looked so incredible we had to sit around waiting for them to be put out for sale around noon, rather than continuing our sweaty walk to the museum. We spent a shocking sum at this cafe and took a collection of world class pastries home to our airbnb for lunch. They were worth every ringgit; I wish this shop had a branch in Somerville!

Rayyan's Gourmet

While Becky and the kids waited for the pastries at Le Petit Four, I walked up a few more blocks of Lebuah Armenian looking for some take out food to pave the way for our pastries. I stepped at random into little place called Rayyan's Gourmet. I ordered char kauy tiao (stir fried thick rice noodles), nasi goreng cina (chinese syle malaysian fried rice), and mee goreng (stir fried malaysian noodles). We took these home with our pastries and ate them at our place for lunch. 

My mind was blown with how good all three of these dishes were! This place only has 3 stars on google and it seemed like nothing special, but the food was truly outstanding. This was my first taste of char kwey teow (炒粿條 - Chǎo guǒ tiáo). I just kept being astounded with every bite at how wonderfully delicious and packed with flavor this dish was. The chewy rice noodles, green onions, prawns, bean sprouts, and powerful sauce combined to make every morsel a pleasure. The mee goreng and nasi goreng were also especially good. I've had all these dishes elsewhere in Malaysia and this place was certainly the best. Maybe we just got lucky with who was cooking that day.

Coffee and Chocolate Museum

After lunch and a rest, we went out again in the afternoon to see the Blue Mansion, Cheong Fatt Tze.

Afterwards, we tried once more to walk to a museum, but it didn't work out. We did stop in at a little "museum" of coffee and chocolate around the corner from the Blue Mansion. Mostly this is an outlet to sell the products of this company, but the little museum was neat.

They had a few cacao trees in pots out front with fruit on them. It was the first time I've seen this plant in person.

In the shop, we got some chocolate for the kids and some instant coffee for ourselves. Instant coffee is popular in Malaysia - at the grocery store about twice the shelf space is given to instant products as to whole bean or ground coffee. I have never liked instant coffee at all, and only used it as a last resort. In Malaysia, nearly every drink is extremely sweet, including the packs of instant coffee. We bought some coffee at this shop because they had a sugar free white coffee mix and our airbnb had no drip machine or nearby coffee shop.

This sugar free white coffee mix from Koon Kee soon grew on us though, and now we actually really enjoy it, particularly as an after lunch cup of coffee. We have not found a source in Cyberjaya, so we bought out the stock at the airport shop when we were traveling to Singapore recently. You can buy it on Lazada (no Amazon in Malaysia...), but so far I have not succeeded in completing almost any online purchase here.

I also bought two servings of Civet cat coffee here, since I've always wanted to try it. I did not think it was any better than regular coffee that hasn't been pooped out by a jungle animal. It was something like 30x the price of regular coffee.

Balloon Festival food stalls
As Child 2 writes in her article, we had a nice evening at the balloon festival. All along two edges of the field harboring the festival were tents with food stalls (see some in the background below), maybe 50 in total.

At first, Child 2 and Buster were put off by this food scene, as they usually are by street food type situations. However after drinking some iced lemonades and sitting on the field for a while, they got comfortable enough to eat some treats from the stalls. We tried a few different things, but ended up going back to one satay stall to get a total of about 50 little chicken skewers over the course of a few hours. We also ate some cups of hot buttered corn and fried potato spirals on a stick.

Dim Sum
Next stop on our Penang food adventure was a dim sum place down the street from our apartment called Zim Sum. We got there about 10:30am on Sunday, so it was already getting hot outside. This restaurant was very crowded and open to outside. The food was pretty good.

This grandpa felt compelled to step in to help Child 2 with her chopsticks.

High Tea on Penang Hill
As Buster writes in his post, we had a superb afternoon tea atop Penang Hill Sunday afternoon. The elevation and mountain breeze made it cool and pleasant in the shade, the view was unmatched, and the food was great.

Char Koay Teow on Macallister
We got back late from Penang Hill, but I didn't want to pass up the chance to have another meal. Child 1 and I walked down the street from our apartment to a cluster of street vendors. I was eager to repeat my shockingly good first experience with char koay teow, so I ordered a couple to go from the stall in the pictures below. The couple running this tiny stall make just this one dish.

I couldn't tell everything they put in, but it included oil, a few slices of a cured chinese pork sausage, prawn, rice noodles, bean sprouts, egg, and some seasoning/sauce. It was tasty but not as good as the one I had from Rayyan's Gourmet.

Here is the center of the stalls, with some tables for guests to sit. You can order at one of the stalls and have the vendor bring it to your table. There were many of these clusters across Penang. Too bad we don't have this in Cyberjaya.

Historical fabric of Penang
Penang has a much different feel than Kuala Lumpur. Of course Georgetown is far smaller in an absolute sense, but it is also set up on a smaller scale. Buildings in KL tend to be new, large and not that easy to get between since the city is fairly big and developed in big chunks at one go. Georgetown has many more small buildings packed more closely together in finer grained neighborhoods. Check this view from our apartment.

Many of the buildings lining the streets are colonial era shophouses, with a commercial shopfront on the first floor and a residence on the second floor.

The second floor extends over a walkway on the first floor. You may think this would give pedestrians a nice place to walk out of the sun and traffic, but the tradition seems to be to make this outdoor covered area an extension of the shop, filled with seating or merchandise. So while some covered front areas are passable, many are not, leaving a walker bumping out into the street or weaving between parked motorbikes.

Georgetown has a sort of colonial-grandeur-fallen-into-disrepair charm. The place is bursting with character.

There are many small and interesting shops and eateries filling the shopfronts, and the older buildings give a depth to the fabric of the city.

Penang has a high percentage of chinese malaysians vs. malay and indian malaysians. This impacts the feel of the city in noticeable ways. There is no shortage of great chinese food for one! There are more subtle effects as well; for instance look at this elevator button pad in our apartment building.

You will notice there are no floors ending in 4. Four is an unlucky number in chinese culture, so while in another place we may have stayed on floor 24, in Georgetown we stayed on floor 23A.

As lovers of older buildings back home in the US, Becky and I admired many of the 19th century buildings in Georgetown. The bungalows are particularly handsome, but many seem to be neglected and in disrepair. There was one across the street from our apartment getting restored, and one next door to the that with an art gallery (and enormous tail coming out the back and to the right)

We also saw some in use as car parks.

We stopped in at a western cemetery we had seen through the window of a Grab while driving home one day. Even though we were out at mid-day, which we generally try to avoid in Malaysia, it was not unbearably hot in the shade of the magnolia trees amongst the cool stone grave markers and green grass.

A ruined school building next to the western cemetery was in use as a parking lot, but looked like it must have been lovely when it was intact. It looks too far gone to restore reasonably.

We were just in Singapore recently, and were struck with the many similarities between Penang and Singapore. Of course both were British Straits Chinese settlements and share much history, but it is interesting to see how they have diverged since that time.


High Tea at Suffolk House
Walking back to the apartment from Dim Sum on Sunday, we had stopped in at the Penang Museum. Housed in a colonial era school building, the museum was uncrowded, cheap, and had some interesting small exhibits.

We learned about a mansion built on the land of Sir Francis Light in 1804 called Suffolk House. This building had many roles over 200 years, but had most recently fallen into neglect and ruin. An impressive restoration was undertaken and the building is now a restaurant and function space. We wanted to check it out so we went for high tea on Monday just before heading to the airport to come back to KL.

The building itself is nicely designed and restored, and has placards you can read while walking around the premises.

The tea service was more expensive and not as delicious as the one we had on Penang Hill.

There was one majestic old tree on the grounds that really catches the eye.

In fact there are many of these trees around Penang. I'd like to find out what kind of tree they are, but so far none of our Grab drivers have known.

The Balloon Festival!!! 🎈🍦

by Child 2

While we were in Penang this weekend (see Child 1 and Buster's articles this week), we went to a huge air balloon festival. There were bouncy houses, lemonade, fireworks, and more!!! To learn about this life-changing-funnest-ever event, read on!!

Me, posing for a picture in front of the balloons.

Well, we were having a day full of exploring Penang, and so we decided maybe we should come check out this Balloon festival. And boy, am I glad we did! I think first I'll tell you about the hot air balloons.

First, a little bit about the history of the hot air balloon:

In 1783 a scientist named Pilatre De Rozier launched the first hot air balloon. No people rode in it, only a duck, a sheep, and a rooster, but the balloon stayed in the air for roughly fifteen minutes before falling. After a long 216 years of work, in 1999 Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones succeeded in an around the world flight. They flew for about 20 days. Find more about the history of hot air balloons here.

Next, a little bit about how the hot air balloon works:

As you may know, hot air rises. If you put a burner under a hot air balloon, the air inside the balloon will rise and push the balloon up with it. You could think of it like an air bubble in water, rising to the surface, but with hot air balloons, there is no surface. If you keep the burner going, the hot air balloon will climb higher and higher into the sky. However, if you stop the burner, the air will become cold and the balloon will slowly fall. Find more about how a hot air balloon works here.

There were a lot of hot air balloons in the sky that day. Some were just colored, others were in bizarre shapes- a house, a clown, an octopus... Here are some pictures:

Balloons. Big.

More big balloons.

    I'm not sure how many balloons there were, but there were a lot!!!

Next, I'll tell you something about the food we got there.

All around the borders of the field, there were a bunch of big tents and trucks selling food and beverages. Mom and I got hot cups of buttery corn, potato sticks, and iced lemonades. Child 1, Buster, and Dad got meat sticks and salad and iced lemonades.

FOOD 😋

Next I'll tell you about the balloon houses and toys.

There were a bunch of balloon houses there, which I'm afraid I can't tell you much about because we didn't go on them, but I can tell you about the balloon toys.

Most of them were in water. The first one was a beachball that you get zipped into and pushed out on water.

Human beachballs

The second was a sort of tube, with openings on either side to get out of and you could run forward and roll forwards on the water. The third one, the one Buster, Dad, and I went into, was a big ball with small holes on each side to get out of it. This one was on land, and if you ran in the ball it would roll the ball forwards, sort of like a hamster ball!

Human hamsters

Next, and lastly, I'll tell you about the amazing nighttime experience.

What I haven't told you so far is that there's a huge dance floor in the middle of the field with colored disco searchlights going crazy from it, which helped liven the night up.

It all started when Buster, Dad, and I were walking back from the port-a-potties on the edge of the field. Suddenly, the ground shook with a BOOM and the sky lit up from fireworks.

Craziness

Light sprayed across the sky, and the music from the dance floor blared. Fire shot up from the ground from the burners of the balloons to the music and it was awesome.

I hope you enjoyed reading this article! The experience certainly was fun for us. To find more about the hot air balloon festival, click here.

-Ice Cream Rain

Habitat at Penang Hill

by Child 1

From February 8th to 11th, we went to Penang for Chinese New Year. Penang is an island in Malaysia with a lot of ethnic Chinese people living there. Among the many things we did, we went to Penang Hill, which is a high hill in Penang overlooking Georgetown. We took a funicular railway up the hill. It was much cooler up there than on the ground.

One of the things we did on Penang Hill was the Habitat at Penang Hill. We took a walk through the tropical rainforest (on a path). Here are some of the things we saw:

Part of the walk was a big bridge high above the ground below. The view was amazing, and you could see trees towering from the ground for miles.

The next part was the Treetop Walk, a big round walk high above the ground that was supposed to make you feel like you were walking on the treetops. Up there, the view was even more amazing and you could see all of Georgetown. Next to the Treetop walk you could see an old building, and a placard said that it had been built in the 1800s as a sanatorium by the British for the British who were suffering from tropical diseases and couldn't afford the long, expensive journey home. It later became a popular honeymoon destination around the 1920s, and then became unused during the World Wars. After that it became a boarding school, and around the '70s it was abandoned.

We watched the sunset, and then lanterns were handed out and we were given a tour back. There were two tours, one in Chinese and one in English. There was one other family who went on the English tour with us. Along the way back, the tour guide pointed out geckoes and other animals. She even pointed out two tarantula nests, little holes covered in spider webs. In one of them, we could see tarantula legs sticking out for a second before it crawled back in.

That was our exciting trip to Habitat on Penang Hill. We had lots of fun, and we hope you had fun reading this!

High Tea on Penang Hill

by Buster

I took these pictures myself and it was a very good view - just sayin' !!!  

This is me and Daddy at high tea!  We are overlooking Georgetown and we are on Penang Hill!

This is me, Mommy, Child 1, and Child 2 on a lookout over Georgetown on Penang Hill! The view was very, very, very good.  We took a funicular train to the top of Penang Hill !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 This is me eating one of the best scones in the world! :)

This is the high tea house.  It had a really pretty pond with a lot of lily pads and lilies and birdhouses.

This is me and mommy eating more scones that are very tasty.  This was a very good place to start walking along a very, very, very, very, very long path!

This is the pond!

And that is the end of my high tea article!

Learning Rubber Tapping on a Permaculture Orchard in Sepang

by Holly

I saw a listing in AirBnB Experiences which looked pretty neat and was not far from us: learn how to tap rubber trees, walk around a small tropical orchard, and eat local food with the hosts. The listed times were either right in the middle of the day or at night and too late for us. We've found our sweet spot for doing things outdoors in Malaysia to be about 4-8pm; not so hot and bright as in the middle of the day. So I arranged with Khairul (the listing host) to hold a session starting at 5pm.



The day we went was Thaipusam, a holiday for Malaysians of Indian descent to celebrate Murugan. We had heard it was insanely crowded in KL and near Batu Caves, so we opted to do something different. I went to work (attendance was light) but left a bit early to meet with my family and get to PUDGi, the small plantation down towards the airport and not far from Cyberjaya.

We arrived at the place about 5pm and met with the hosts Khairul and Nani. We sat out on their porch and drank some tea and ate a sweet snack. Their current volunteer, Amanda, also joined us. She is one of the only American people I have run into here, and it was fun to talk to her about her experience in Malaysia. The nutty things to the left of the tea are rubber tree seeds.

They even butchered some very fresh Durian for us.

The kids were pretty astounded at the olefactory impact of durian in close quarters!

I'm not the biggest fan of durian, but there must be something to is since people in this part of the word call it the King of Fruits and sincerely treasure it. It certainly has a lot going on; when I eat it I feel like there is a vast symphony of powerful molecules filling my mouth and sinuses. It is a bit much for me though, so I only ate two pieces. Becky had quite a few and Child 1 tried some. I did appreciate the opportunity to try this fruit ultra fresh.

Next, we ventured out into the rubber grove with Nani.

We wore permethrin treated clothes and sprayed down with insect repellant, so the bugs were not a problem. There was also a very heavy but brief rain just before we arrived, which our hosts speculated had suppressed the mosquitos a bit.

This grove is extremely small by modern standards, but they do produce commercial rubber. The sap is collected after tapping in small buckets hung on the tree. The rubber coagulates into a cake about the size of an orange in the bucket. They sell these cakes to a local processing plant.

Seeds of rubber trees come in a three seed pod. These were abundant on the ground throughout the grove.

We caught up with a rubber expert they had engaged to give us our lesson. He was sharpening our tools using some specialized waterstones.

The tools seemed to be made from not especially hard steel. I'd guess tool steel edges might chip badly when cutting rough tree bark with various inclusions. But with lower carbon, you have to sharpen more frequently.

The tins in the picture hold burning mosquito coils. We tied them to our belts or wore them around our necks while out in the trees.

The tapping tools were set up to cut on the pull stroke and were about 40cm long. The cutting edge resembled a radiused grooving tool.

Rubber trees in Malaysia are tapped every two days. Tapping consists of cutting fresh cambium off the tree, whereupon raw latex flows out in surprising abundance.

Eventually the sap coagulates and stops flowing out of the cut area. But if you cut it down 1-2 mm, it will flow again. It is amazing the trees don't die from this treatment, but apparently they can produce for 20-30 years before they need to be replaced. The existing cuts were all set up to not girdle the tree, obviously.

The cuts on the bark are configured as a spiral ramp. This allows easy collection of the sap, since it flows down the spiral, and also makes it easy to renew the flow by cutting a slice off the side of the spiral nearer the ground. So most tapping consists of renewing the open cut to allow another flush of sap to come out and get collected.

Normally tapping happens at 4am. Nani says the sap flows best then. The sap itself looks like cream, and if you rub it between your fingers and let it dry out you can roll up little bits of rubber.

Rubber trees are not native to SE Asia. They were brought to Malaya from Brazil by the British. For a long time rubber was the biggest export of Malaysia, but this has been supplanted by palm oil. Oil is a crop that doesn't take as much labor to produce and generates more cash per hectare of cultivated land. Oil palms require a lot of inputs, but since world agriculture now runs on Haber-Bosch process ammonia from fossil fuels, fixed nitrogen is cheap. Rubber production has migrated to lower cost countries like Thailand and Indonesia. Malaysia is now third in rubber production, behind those two countries.

After having fun in the rubber grove for a while, we went on a walk around the property with Nani and the rubber tapper.

The land consists of three adjacent plots (for three sons) purchased by Khairul's parents in the 70s. Khairul grew up in a village not far away, but had never come to these plots until the 2000s. At the time they were bought, there was no road access at all, just a trail that could be navigated on foot or bike. Now there is a busy road close by, with a smaller side road running right past the property. They have put up a few buildings, including a Cabin in the Woods which you can rent on AirBnB.

In addition to the rubber groves, they have a small oil palm planting, to which they lease out the harvest rights. Kahirul's father worked managing palm oil plantations, and spent some time working on the plantation that used to cover the land we are living on now in Cyberjaya.

I think this small pond behind Child 1 is probably for drainage.

They have a small garden and a number of fruit trees including rambutan, mangosteen, durian, and a few others. Mangosteen is in season and we got to eat a couple right off the tree!

I'm really loving mangosteen and rambutan in Malaysia - never had them before coming here but they are excellent. The other week at work they had a few crates at the cafeteria and were selling them 2 for a ringgit. I bought about 60 over a couple days and we ate them same day.

We also ate some young leaves from an asam keping tree (Garcinia atroviridis). These were pretty tasty - almost lemony tart and crunchy. Reminded me of Sorrel, but crunchier. These trees make a fruit used in cooking, but the tree was not fruiting when we visited.

There were some cool ~50cm tall termite mounds in the woods as well, but my hands were full of mangosteen juice so I didn't want to dig out my phone to take a picture.

Near the porch they had a variety of starfruit tree which made little fruits used in cooking.

Finally we came back to the house and enjoyed some Malay food from local restaurants. They were not allowed to cook on premises for AirBnB guests because they don't have a commercial kitchen, but they heated up some dishes from nearby restaurants over a rubber tree wood fire stove.

It was neat to be able to sample these dishes picked out by our hosts, and to sit and talk to them as the sun set.

For dessert we had these dollops of sweetened and slightly fermented rice wrapped in leaves.