Malaysia: Penang & the Cameron Highlands

We flew from Lombok to Jakarta, then onwards to Kuala Lumpur. When we arrived we asked the advice of the customs official on how to get to Penang. He insisted the train was best (cheaper, shorter, more comfortable), so we took his advice. It was not cheaper or shorter, and the train tracks were very rough, but we arrived only a couple hours later than planned to Butterworth (on the northwest coast of peninsular Malaysia). From there it was just a quick walk across the highway to the ferry terminal, followed by a 20-minute ferry across to Georgetown, the major city on the east coast of Penang Island. It was already nearly midnight so we took a cab into town rather than walking and discovered first that the hostel we had in mind didn’t exist, and our second choice was full. We followed the advice of Jim (an interesting Rastafarian character at one guesthouse) and went to Pin Seng Hotel on Love Lane nearby. The room was rock-bottom in terms of comfort (Dewey figured that a cat could probably crawl in through the gap between our bedroom wall and the hallway) but the price was right (about $4 a person) and an eager, shirtless Chinese fellow convinced us to stay. We figured we’d stay the night then switch to a better hostel, but we actually grew fond of Pin Seng and its character and ended up staying 3 nights.

After checking into our room we headed out for a late-night bite to eat. After realizing that if you stand by a hawker stall for very long they just start serving you we had Koay Teow soup at a Chinese hawker stall on the main drag for a little over $1, where we shared a tiny little table and it's 3 stools with another Chinese fellow. 

The next morning we discovered the simple joy of Indian style breakfast.

At “Jaya”, for about $1 or $2 you could enjoy fresh roti canai, chapati or thosai (dosa) (fresh Indian flatbreads) with dal, or it’s many variations (stuffed with cheese, egg, spinach & chicken) or accompanied by other curry side dishes. Fresh Masala tea ("chai" tea made with fresh spices and served with condensed milk) and “White Coffee” (the coffee beans are roasted with palm-oil margarine, and the resulting coffee is served with condensed milk) were our beverages of choice.



Men playing boardgames on the street across from Jaya



After breakfast we set off to explore Georgetown, with the ultimate goal of finding a famous “duck rice” hawker stall in time for lunch. We strolled though the market where we saw lots of interesting things, including these unidentifyable creatures hanging at stall in the meat section. Are they rats?



A man selling freshly roasted chestnuts at a street stall



We also visited a chinese temple where a friendly Chinese tourist explained the intricate carvings on the roof to us.

After a long time walking around we ended up back at the mosque where we started (somehow we had walked in a giant circle), so gave up and went “Kapitan” (highly recommended Indian restaurant) where Dewey had Tandoori chicken and I had a lentil & spinach curry with Naan. We wandered around the city and picked up a copy of the fantastic "Penang Food Trail" map (a folding map describing many of the foods that Penang is famous for, and where to find them) from the Penang Heritage Trust.

That night we went to Red Dragon food court market for dinner. Dozens of stalls advertizing various types of “Penang Famous” foods surrounded a central area with many tables and a stage. You would go up to a stall, order a dish and indicate the area where you were going to sit. Someone would bring the dish out to you when you were ready. You could order dishes from a variety of places and there were boys running around from table to table offering to fetch you drinks. We tried fried Char Koay Teow (fat rice noodles with garlic, prawns, soy, bean sprouts, egg, chives and cockles), duck rice, fried spicy clams, and Assam Laksa soup. We made friends with a fun Swedish/English couple and enjoyed a few beers. At the stage in the center of the food court there was an entertaining scantily-clad pop music group who were preforming in celebration of the start of Oktoberfest (which has little, if anything, to do with the Bavarian counterpart).

The next day we walked around fort Cornwallis. The self-guided walking tour involved a lot of reading, and not much else. Maybe not the most riveting thing we’ve done but it was interesting from a historical perspective. We searched through Little India for lunch but realized the inner parts of Little India didn’t have any restaurants for some strange reason. We sat down for a cold drink at Jim’s guesthouse while we tried to come up with a plan for the next few days. We decided to stay one more day in Penang rather than cram everything we wanted to do into that evening. We spent a lazy evening wandering around the city, finding many interesting things.



Making rice noodles at a street stand

On our third and final day on Penang we set off on a mission to see the Tropical Fruit Farm (on the other side of Penang Island, claiming to have over 200 varieties of tropical fruit!), the Tropical Spice Garden (on the north part of the island) and the Botanical gardens (near the city). We tried to get a map at a very terrible tourist information center, but ended up taking a picture of the one they had on the counter because he claimed he didn’t have maps and didn’t know where we could get any. From this map it seemed obvious that we’d take one bus to the north part of the island then switch to a second bus that would take us right to the tropical fruit farm. We took the first bus to where its route finished but then discovered that the next bus only ran every two hours and that a cab to the tropical fruit farm would cost about $20. We tried to find something to do to kill the time but we were in the middle of nowhere so we gave up on the Tropical Fruit Farm and backtracked a bit to the Tropical Spice Garden instead. The Tropical Spice Garden ended up being very interesting and we spent quite a lot of time there wandering through the gardens. All the plants were labelled with informative placards about each plant.

There was also a bamboo garden, a cooking school and a cafe on site. We decided to have lunch at the cafe (not our cheapest lunch, but it was in a beautiful setting, and after all today was the 1-year mark for when we met in Bolivia so why not!). We ordered spiced tea & coffee and Malaysian Tapas (stuffed crab shells, “Money bags” (chicken in a wonton wrapper), curried chicken in banana leaf parcels, and shrimp wrapped with fried noodles). It was quite delicious and good value for what we got.

We headed back to Georgetown, where we wandered around some more. We checked out the mall for some great people watching and even tried some sushi (not the greatest).

We wandered around some more and came across a giant modern pet store which turned out to be a lot of fun. It was massive and had all sorts of strange animals (including sharks and gophers). There was even a fish spa! We bought some steamed peanuts from a street stand (peanuts steamed in their shells, which taste quite like creamy peanut butter) and ran into our Swedish/English friends from the night before. We headed back to Kapitan for dinner where Dewey tried the Vindaloo (not as spicy as anticipated) and I had a mutton curry with chapatti. Penang is all about the food!

We tried to arrange for a bus the next morning to the Cameron Highlands but a couple different booking offices in town told us all the buses were full. We didn’t quite believe this, so we went to talk to the ever-useful Jim at Jim’s Guesthouse and he told us to go back to the mainland and catch a bus from the main terminal. So the next morning (after our regular Indian breakfast, of course) we walked down to the pier, took the ferry (free on the return trip!) back to Butterworth, and walked to the terminal. Like most bus terminals here this one consisted of about 30 different agencies all trying to sell you tickets for the same 10 destinations. The first few people we asked said the next bus to Tanah Rata (the main town in the Cameron Highlands) was at 2:00pm. They insisted there was no bus earlier and that we should book their bus that afternoon. Well, there was actually a direct bus at 8:30am, which we found after coming across the right person, so we booked that.

Along the windy road up into the highlands the scenery began to look more and more agricultural, with hundreds and hundreds of greenhouses terraced across the hillsides and fields of vegetables too. We saw all we needed to see of some of the more touristy attractions, like the ever-popular “Strawberry Farm” where the main focus is on the collection of strawberry souvenirs (pillows, stuffed animals, magnets and literally everything else strawberry-related). Interestingly though, from what we could see from the bus it looked like entirely local tourists (or at least, Asian tourists).

We found a hostel (Kang’s Lodge) and quickly tracked down adventurous another couple (from Tennessee and Alaska) who were interested in splitting the cab ride to BOH tea plantation. We were cutting in close for time so we had a quick bite to eat (strangely enough Venison Kway Teow and Duck Vermicelli) at the popular and cheap Rosedale Bistro then hailed a taxi and split the fare four ways. The road into the plantation was definitely only wide enough for one vehicle which made the trip interesting as BOH tea plantation is very popular. We arrived too late to catch a real free tour, so we did a self-guided version. It was interesting, but more commercialized that we had hoped for. The cafe mass produced tea-bag tea. We had a cup anyways, then headed back into town. 

We checked out the local produce market (Multicrops Central Market), and enjoyed sampling various fried snacks at one stand (the experimentation was great fun until we came across a gag-worthy sardine flavoured pastry).

By popular recommendation we went for dinner at an Indian place where I was introduced to the banana leaf thali set meals. They lay a banana leaf in front of you, then pile various condiments, salads, pickles, and rice on top and finish it off with a dish of curry of your choice (mine was mutton/lamb) and a bowl of dal. If you finish something off they will quickly replenish the pile. The whole affair costs less than $3. That evening we enjoyed the relaxing and social atmosphere at the hostel.

The next morning we booked a bus ticket to Kuala Lumpur then checked out the Lonely Planet “Our Pick” recommendation for lunch (restaurant Bunga Suria). It was alright, but they didn’t have at least half of what was on the menu... and not just seasonal things, but non-perishable staples too. We caught the bus the Kuala Lumpur and arrived in the early evening. We weren’t too picky about where we stayed since we’d be here only about 18 hours, so we picked a cheap hippy type guesthouse that had seen better days in the 80’s. We were housed in a windowless closet sized room up four steep flights of stairs, with a mattress on the floor and absolutely nothing else. The toilets didn’t flush either, but I guess it did the trick. This happened to be Canadian Thanksgiving. There is no such thing as hostels with a kitchen here so making Thanksgiving dinner was out of the question. We set out to find something but were unfamiliar with the big city and ended up settling for a street-side cafe where you pick skewers of meat and then they grill them for you. It was pretty good but was going to get expensive quickly, so we stopped after a few skewers and went in search of dessert. We found a coffee house and had high hopes, but it was so-so.



A popular windshield sticker in Malaysia



The next morning we had a few chores to do, including exchanging all of our accumulated Malaysian Ringet for US dollars in preparation for our trip to Myanmar. We shopped around for the best rate, and picked a trustworthy looking place on the main drag. Because there are no ATM’s in Myanmar, and you can’t use credit or debit cards, you have to bring in all the money you will need (and extra in case of emergency), in the form of pristine, new US dollar bills, preferably $100 notes. We then finished our last blog post and took the express train to the Kuala Lumpur low-cost carrier terminal (Air Asia’s headquarters) and set off to Yangon.