Known as a regional food paradise and famous for its pristine beaches and UNESCO World Heritage site as George Town, Penang is a holiday destination that many people know of and visit. As of writing this, we were there two days ago with some friends for a stay spanning 5 days, which is quite long compared to our other holidays. Let’s get into it
Just to mention, this is the first instance of me going overseas with my new DSLR, so I was particularly excited to (hopefully) see the increase in quality of photos. That being said, some photos may be blurrier or unlighted due to failure to adjust settings. I am learning how to operate my camera consistently so do pardon me
Day 1 – Travelling to Penang
Although driving there is a valid option, we decided to save ourselves 10-12 hours of driving by flying over by plane. Our plane leaves at 3pm, so we made our way over to the airport to have lunch first before departing Singapore.
After narrowly catching the flight due to people needing to shit, we got onto the plane to a surprising amount of mist. Apparently this was oxygen being pumped into the plane but to me it seems like I was caught in the rain at Genting. After taking off, I went straight to sleep despite the flight being an hour and before we knew it, we reached Penang.
We took a taxi to our hotel because we were on the other side of the island at this point, in which we got to see the sights of Penang. However, I did not capture any photos due to 1. Tiredness and 2. Loud clicky sounds on my camera.
I do not have a drone so I’m unable to capture a photo of the entire hotel, but this is what is looks like from afar
Surrounding our hotel was an abundance of streetside shops, a convenience mart, and some hawkers and restaurants around us. These amenities would be pretty important and will be touched upon later. But first, the hotel!
After lying down a bit due to being tired from the trip over, we went over to the minimart opposite of our hotel to grab some snacks and drinks.
When all our friends arrived, and we were done lounging in the room enjoying the bed and the TV, we decided on going to a place down the road to the right called The Ship. The thing with this place is that it is plopped straight out of Spongebob Squarepants. It is literally a huge ship docked on the ground, inside it being a restaurant that allegedly serves “The Best Steak in Town”.
It’s what I said, a literal ship. They were selling it pretty well too. The interior was decorated great with flags on the walls and bars selling drinks. The staff were dressed in ship attire too!
Before we end off this segment, I’m gonna be a bit of the Gordon Ramsey here and judge the food. If you’re coming here, order the steak. The salmon has a whole pile of bones in it, but the food was great though!
ANOTHER THING. So on the day we arrived, it happened to be the day of the Champions League final. Slight problem with that, it happened to be 3AM in our timezone. Of course, like any sensible person would, I stayed up to watch it. Good news, City won!
Day 2 – Pool Chilling
Today, our plan was just to chill in the pool and kinda do nothing. Enjoy the hotel and explore the place too, there were even watersports too which we would indulge in too. Nothing too crazy for our second day…
Like all resorts have, we went for the breakfast buffet first! Good food tbf, sausages, omelets, the usual.
After the breakfast buffet, we just chilled at the pool for a while. It’s a decently big pool, with a 3m pool and a 1.3-1.5m pool too. They even had a children’s pool and a mini waterpark. Not sure who would go in a 3m pool but I digress.
Lunchtime it is. In Penang, there are more than enough places to choose to eat. There’s KFC and Mcdonald’s at the gas station opposite our hotel, There are multiple hawkers to the right of our hotel, and to the left-front, there was a line of restaurants selling Asian food. Coming to Penang there was 1 thing and 1 thing only that we had to eat. Penang Char Koay Teow. Apparently a staple in Penang, CKT was a thing we were looking forward to eating and that we got straight away.
Food was insane tbh, chicken was very fragrant and I enjoyed it quite a bit, we got Goreng Pisang after also.
As I said, after we eat lunch, we just spent the entire day swimming and “Watersports.” I even went jetskiing. Didn’t bring my camera out jetskiing though for, obvious reasons.
As for dinner, we went the same route, to the right of the hotel, but stopped slightly earlier to eat at a certain Long Beach Kopitiam. Ordered some CKT, oysters etc
Moving on from the relatively uneventful day to the very eventful day.
The Jerseyman
Just before we move on, I would like to intersect with an advertisement. For a while, me and my dad have been looking for Football Jerseys to buy to wear around on weekends. Official jerseys are extremely expensive so we wanted to buy ones that weren’t super expensive.
Introducing the Jerseyman, nearby our hotel to the right again, there was a shop set up which sells bags, shoes, shirts, and, as the name suggests, jerseys. These ones were quite cheap so we bought 2 for 95 ringgit instead of 100 due to the discount. We bought quite a few more after, AKA the away kits, third kits, special kits etc.
I’m very happy with my purchase
Day 3 – Exploring Penang
A lot of people state that “You haven’t been to Penang if you haven’t been to Penang Hill” and “Art Street is very cool” along with “Gurney Drive good food.” Therefore, we made the decision to go to these 3 places today. Expect a lot of pictures.
After our breakfast buffet, we ordered a taxi/grab to Penang Hill lower station to take the tram up.
The tram goes straight up 45 degrees up a hill to get to the very top. Pictures were basically impossible on a crammed-moving vehicle going extremely fast. Therefore, I waited to get to the top before taking some pictures
On top of the hill, attractions were aplenty, but we don’t have enough time for all of them if we wanna go elsewhere too so here are some pictures and good views.
After having some drinks and fries at the hawker on the top of the hill, we went down to head to our next location, AKA Art Street.
The art of Art Street is sometimes referred to as some of the best street art in the world, with the one piece (Wealth, fame, power) of art basically being world-famous. It’s basically a spread-out graffiti area.
Another cool part of Penang’s art street is Umbrella Street. It is totally what it sounds like, it is a street sheltered in umbrellas.
+ a lot of street art
On to the world-famous piece of art, its people on a bicycle. Many people have posed next to this bicycle and posted it on the Instagrams and the Timtoksm. Its very popular, and I’m here to take a photo of it
However, I want to make something else world-famous
After walking and seeing different pieces of art, just like this one, we visited a jetty. Along the coast of this place, there were many jetties named after family names. My hypothesis says this means each family has a very flimsy jetty which feels like it could fall apart.
Promptly after this, we went to go eat lunch at 2pm, midday. Throughout this holiday our meal times were pretty messed up, so I was always left wondering if I was hungry or not. Worry not, after we ate lunch, we just left. OFF TO GURNEY DRIVE.
Not necessarily Gurney Drive yet, we went shopping first, then we went to Gurney Drive!
Gurney Drive is basically a night market with food stalls. A lot of the food here is on Youtube and commonly referred as some of the best in Penang (I think). So this place was a must visit. It was a pretty big line of food, so I just recorded a video, have a look
We just ordered some small dishes and ate stuff. If I could recommend stuff, which mind me I am bad at, I would say the octopus/sotong (or something) and the satay was very good, we ordered CKT and other food too, all being quite good. Mission accomplished, run around Penang and look at the best of it all
Also as we were leaving, there seemed to be some sky phenomenon of some sort that made it look like NYC was happening.
If you’re wondering what we do every night, its pretty simple. Either we lie down on our beds and watch some U23 football matches/ PL Highlights, or we go to our friends room to play FIFA and chill. Nothing much but a fun night never the less.
Day 4 – Chillin as Depression Hittin
Depression started hitting come day 4, but despite that we tredged on. After our eventful day yesterday, we just chilled in the resort, swam and chilled in the rooms, some of us even went for massages. Nothing much to show here or talk about other than lunch/dinner/ other things we did
As for lunch, we ate at a restaurant near to the hotel called Power Up
The food there was genuinely pretty good. We just ordered pure Zhi-Char, some fish, Kang Kong (Severe lack of vegetables this holiday btw) and meat. Good stuff.
Other than that, we didn’t really do much that day other than swim. I have pictures of the sunset etc too.
Nighttime we just watched EPL best goals on the TV, it was absolutely sick looking at the rockets lmao
Day 5 – Going home
Yep, straight up depression this day. I’ve got nothing to say, no photos, no stories anything. One cool thing that happened this day is that the Malaysian Immigration Officer stopped me, noticed my Man City third kit and dapped me up, what a legend.
Conclusion
Yep, that’s about it for today. This holiday was absolutely sick tbh, I had quite a bit of fun eating and jumping around with my DSLR around my neck. Loved it. On some blog related news, I’m back to posting and shit again, so if I go anywhere, expect some posts ig. For now, Im signing out to go eat dinner, cya.
Yours Truly – Koh Yong Hong