Hi all,
Georgetown,the oldest British settlement in Malaysia ,is a fascinating
place and we wish that we had been able to dedicate more time and
energy to it and Penang. The temperature generally hovers around the mid 30s and the humidity is an energy depleting range of between 70-80% .Whilst Georgetown didn´t prove to be a
great cultural event in terms of intellectual input it did prove to
be a culinary adventure.Sure we walked around the old colonial district,visited Cornwallis fort and spent hours walking around the
streets looking at the colonial architecture, the Penang museum and we climbed the pagoda at Kek Lok Si temple, the biggest
Buddhist shrine in Malaysia, but the activity that occupied a big
portion of our time was sourcing and eating the huge variety of
good food that was on offer. oink oink oink .
Numerous publications, including Time magazine, have recognized Penang
as having some of the world’s best street food. This claim is backed up
by Malaysians, who, it seems, vacation in Penang specifically to eat
the street food.
Many local restaurants and cafes produce above average cuisine while charging below average prices.
As
with other food stalls in Asia, most stalls specialize in one dish.
There is generally no menu available. The name of a cook’s product is usually
marked somewhere on the stall and the food is on display.Usually this would or at least could present a problem but we were armed with a brochure called ´Penang Food Trail´which guided as around the city.
Penang’s food is influenced by Chinese, Indian, and local cuisine called Nyonya.Whilst we didn´t manage to consume all 27 items on the food trail we did our best to sample a large number of them including nasi kandar,hokkien mee, Char Koay kak, fried koay Teow,roti canai,wan thani mee and last but not least cendol.I pretty sure that we consumed far more fat and salt than the heart foundation recommends and I´m sure that our joints are groaning about the excess kiliograms that are starting to pile on but our motto is eat as much
as we can now in preparation for the famine which will undoubtedly
occur when we see the price of food in Australia.Food is cheap and good and our arteries will hopefully recover.
Bye for now,
David and Vanessa
