Thursday, December 29, 2005
Had a wonderful and memorable trip to Penang.. Although this is my 3rd trip to penang, only this trip left me with a deeper impression as im too young to know whats going on during the previous two trips. Here's a update on what i did for the 4 days 5 nights in Malaysia.
23rd December 2005Boarded the grassland coach at 8.30pm and our bus left the old boon lay shopping centre terminal at 9pm. Reached the Singapore 2nd link custom at 9.30pm. Clearing custom is quick as there's no one. (its so deserted till u can see condensation forming on the customs glass entrance doors) By 9.40pm, we have cleared both Singapore and Malaysia customs. i was overfilled with excitement but at the same time i was also worried. Yep the whole journey to penang takes about 11 hours with only 2 stops in between. As u knoe i m kinda "straight pipe" person, i'm jus worried that i'll need a toilet break urgently.. So i took ya ching's advice to try not to drink too much water, okie that helped a little.
Reached Yong Peng at 11.30pm, the bus stopped for 25 minutes for us to take a toilet break and also to grab a bite in case u need some supper. It surprised me that the place has undegone renovation. Its no longer as dirty as last time i visted. This time round there is air con and the toilet isn't as dirty as before. Bought some blueberry waffle and fried carrot cake. The blueberry waffle is nice but the carrot cake sucks, it smells nice but the cake taste plastic. Okie after the 25 minutes break, we boarded the bus again..
i was trying very hard to sleep but i jus cant sleep. Perhaps its the excitement that kept me awake or it was the road lights. (i was sitting at the very first seat of the bus, its juz adjacent to the bus driver so im facing the windscreen, wonderful view) Since i can't sleep, i might as well kept my eyes wide open to view the "scenery" ahead (actually there is nothing interesting to see except occasional police road blocks and toll station). Hours later, we reached KL, wow u can jus see the difference between KL and other states. Cos its the capital, u can see all the high rise buildings and condos, but what a pity.. our bus didnt pass by the twin tower.
Reached the 2nd stop at 3.10 a.m in a place quite ulu (don knoe whats the place but it looks very kampong..) the toilet is sooooo filthy and u need to pay RM 20sen. Oh my goodness. Jus imagine my dad told me the smell of the toilet wakes him up and mind u the smell is so pungnent till his cigarette cant even musk it. After a couple of hours, finally we reached Butterworth Bridge (Penang bridge) at 7.15am. Wow the view is magnificient. U can see the sun rising, the deep blue sea and the hills. Perfect picture! Yes we have finally reached Penang and we were ushered to Sunway hotel to check in.. From here our vacation officially started...
24th December 2005Completed all checking in paper works at 8.20a.m. but check in time is 1pm. so all we have to do is wait for our relative (Auntie Lay Kim) to come and fetch us for breakfast. While waiting, i went to the lobby toilet to brush my teeth and to wash up. Kinda refresh myself a little, think i do look like a ghost without a night of proper sleep.
Had breakfast at a restaurant called wang zhao jun. haha sounds very cina rite. but the food taste fantastic. Unlike singapore Hor Fun which is fried then topped up with thick gravy, theirs is steamed then the gravy is poured over the hor fun. The gravy taste like those used to steam fish and its light but quite salty. Next come the Fish Head beehoon, unlike our fish head beehoon, theirs is the spicer version. Besides milk and all the typical stuff, they added lots of lemon grass and chilli padi. Mind u the chilli padi is the green colour ones. i ate one as i mistaken it as the garnishing pasley.. Oh my god that got me jumping for water.
After that Aunt Lay Kim and Uncle San brought us to the sleeping buddha temple. As i mentioned above, the Buddha is in sleeping position and the status is gigantic. Behind the statue there are also rows and rows of Buddha statue each representing a a birth month( jan to dec) and the 12 chinese zodiac animals. There is also a four faced Buddha of which each face represent education, wealth, health and peace. we got to pray in clockwise direction. Afterwhich we proceeded to the other temple opposite and on our way, we grabbed an ice cream. Wow i can say the ice cream taste fantastic. It is made from coconut juice and is topped up with sweet corns, peanuts and atap seeds. Its not so sweet and it taste light and refreshing. Think its like their local gelato icecream.
After having visited the other temple, we went to our Aunt Lay Kim's house. Initially, I was quite surprised at the outlook of her apartment cos unlike our condo, theirs look very old and dirty (worst than our HDB flats) but inside of the apartment is quite nice and cosy especially the view from the balcony. Wow the scenery is great. U can see the sea and the buildings from jus 10 storey high. Uncle San also shared with us his tsunami experience. That day he was fishing at the tsunami site and he saw this kind of funny wave. Cos the wave drew back revealing the seabed, normally the wave is suppose to come back but this time round it kept going back. Suddenly this huge wave juz came crushing in, everyone started to panic and ran for their lives. Many people could be seen deserting their cars and running towards the hill. Without much hesitation, he also ran for his life and luckily he survived. But its a huge trauma to him as he can see with his own eyes people being swept away into the sea and blackened bodies floating on the surface with all the debris.
Its 12.50pm. Ye finally we can check in so they drove us back to the hotel for us to take a shower and also to rest. Later we had our lunch at the so called hawker centre, its quite dirty but the food is very nice. As i'm doing my final year project on food pathogens that will cause food poisoning. im kind of scared of eating the food but i juz throw all my worries away and induge myself in the delicacies. yummy there are Assam laksa, popiah, char kuay teow, kueh kuehs, fried mee siam, xian hu, chendol. Yep all the mouth watering foods! I particularly like the xian hu, its so special and u cant find it in singapore. Actually its like rojak with fried fish, bean sprouts, cucumber topped up with a special gravy. The gravy is orange in colour, kinda thick and a bit spicy.
After lunch, we went to another temple to pray to a Aunt Lay Kim and Uncle San's mother's tablet. the temple was very serene and windy. Nice place to be laid to rest huh.. Uncle San next brought us to another temple located on the hill. Its a very very big statue of godness of mercy. Standing next to the statue will make u look like a tiny ant. Anyway we prayed and donated a tile for the construction of the roof of the pavillion that will house the statue. They allowed u to write ur name on the tile and next time u may see ur name on the roof top. As the temple is on the hill, u can see the whole penang and even the sea. Took a couple of pictures there.
Actually there is a story behhind the godness of mercy. it is said that many years ago, the penang bridge collasped and many people died. However, its a surprise that the bridge only collasped halfway if not even more people could have died. The next day, the statue's arm broke off and the people believed that the godness of mercy sacrificed her arm to hold the bridge thus saving many people's life. Therefore, they decided to construct a new statue to replace the old one with the broken arm.
Okie after that we went downhill where there is a market selling all sorts of things but more are targetted towards the tourists. Nope the things don seem attractive to me perhaps to the angmohs. As all the stores are located on the slope, it can be quite tiring to climb up and down. But good cardiovascular workout.
After that we went to gurney plaza. Its a high class shopping centres and all the shops are selling branded goods e.g Gucci, Esprit, Nike... Converting the price to sing dollars didnt really save much. Bought a wedding bear handphone chain for 9.90 RM. Didnt buy many things as the things are not cheap. Later we went back to the hotel to rest. At around 7pm, our relative came to fetch us for dinner. Its seafood dinner. We ordered lots of dishes that comprises of many kinds of shellfish, fried fish, bbq crabs and prawns, fried noodles. But this is not for the health conscious.. the dinner must have been loaded with lots and lots of calories, cholesterol and perhaps hepatitis C. haha.
After dinner, we went back to hotel. But to our surprise, the alley in front of our hotel has a stretch of hawkers selling all sorts of food. my father's eyes is like wide open and he's like later i must come down to have supper. Yep although its juz after dinner, we went for our round of supper. Ordered dessert (dried longan soup and almond soup), fried oyster ommelette and prawn noodles. All the food taste good except for the oyster ommelette, its a bit disgusting as there is lots of flour and the oyster is raw or half cooked. It taste funny, think its worst than singapore. Anyway, i felt very very guilty after eating supper... there goes my months of dieting..haha
25th December 2005As expected i cant sleep for the whole night or maybe a few hours of sleep only, becoming a panda soon.... Went for buffet breakfast at 8.30am. Thank god, the buffet didnt have a great varieties of food, so i didnt eat as much. After that we went for a walk outside our hotel, hopping to find a place to shop but its sunday so most of the shops are closed. Sian* anyway jus treated it as an exercise. Been walking for few hours, so we decided to have a drink in the coffeeshop. Ordered ice tea, yep that taste very nice but its kinda sweet. The tea is very thick and smooth and i can say its even better than our bubble tea that is so much more expensive. Ordered some small dishes like fried kuay teow, mee sua, assam laksa from the roadside stalls and my mum was attracted by the fried fish that goes with fried bee hoon. there lots of people eating that. But there is a long queue and we don have the time to wait so got to give it a miss.
At 12 pm, Uncle San came to fetch us and he brought us to another temple again. This time round the temple house a buddha that will grant people's wish. I kind of find is very interesting. Cos u are suppose to concentrate and make a wish at the small buddha statue. Afterwhich, u will lift the statue up but u do not require any strength at all. Then the 2nd time, u make the wish again.. this time round u should not be able to lift the statue up then u may consider ur wish is granted.If u can't lift the statue up for the very first time, you should not try anymore as this means that ur wish will not be fullfilled. Think this normally happens to gamblers that pray for lots and lots of money.
Behind the statue is a life sized statue of a monk. It served as a guard to the statue. But it really look very real and kind of errie cos when i looked into the eyes of the statue, it kind of look back at you and it don give me a feeling of a statue. Errie.. Anyway later then i found out that the statue is actually human body, it is the body of a late monk and surprisingly, the monk's body didnt decompose. Thus the people sticked gold foil over his body and he is stituated there to protect the statue. My goodness. no wonder he looked sooo real.
After praying, we went to eat the infamous oyster ommelette (haha my aunt kept complaining about the yucky oyster ommelete that we ate last night, so uncle san decided to bring us to eat the REAL oyster ommelette)Hahaha, as usual the coffee shop is very dirty and dark. If we were to pass by the coffeeshop, don think we will even give it a second look but who knoes there is a stall famous for oyster ommelette down there. The oyster ommelette is really special, there is little flour but lots of egg, the egg is crispy and the oyster is huge and fresh. Yummy! After woffing down the ommelette, we proceeded to penang road. Its a stretch of road that sells all kinds of dried food like salted food, preservatives and others. Bought lots of cuttlefish and nutmegs and dried goods. Think the people there are quite generous, they juz let u try and try till u decided to buy. Anyway we bought $120 worth of dried products. As the weather is quite hot, we went for the infamous teochew chendol which they called yendiu in penang. As it is a road side stall, the customers juz stand by the roadside to eat and they serve in small bowls each costing 1.20RM. The chendol is not so sweet, and the gula melaka is fragrant. there is lots of red beans and chendol jelly too. Yummy. Ye another kg gain for me.
After that we proceeded to a huge shopping centre( i ve forgotten the name). As its christmas day, the shopping centre is crowded with lots of people and its kind of stuffy. There's lots of shops but unfortunately we have no time to finish shopping the whole building. Perhaps next time if we go penang again, we can go there to shop! At around 6pm, we went back to our hotel to rest. Uncle San came to fetch us for dinner at around 8pm. the restaurant is known as seaside cafe. There is a lot of stalls in it but we only ate from a zi char stall. Ordered a lot of dishes and it is cheap and nice. The bill is only 140RM for 10 persons.
Afterthat we went to a open air cafe whereby u can drink and listen to people singing on the stage. Yep its quite boring, cos they are singing all the hokkien oldies so i juz sat there, sipping my orange juice and staring into the blank. Luckily, we left soon after and we went to the seaside for a stroll. Yep thats the place where the tsunami came. Thoughts of the floating bodies and the wave sent shivers down my spine and what a coincidence that day is also tsunami 1st aniversary. But the people there are as normal, u can see lovely dovely couples hugging and strolling, people sipping red wine. Quite relaxing to stroll and enjoy the sea breeze. Its 11.30pm... time to go back to hotel.
Ye after taking shower, its supper time again. Cos its our last night in penang, we ordered even more food. There are desserts, bbq chicken wings, char kuay teow, fried noodles and hor fun. We were eating so happily that the drizzle didnt even chase us away. Haha. Nice feeling to eat in the open air.. no more thoughts of food poisoning for me.
26th December 2005Perhaps im too tired. its my first time sleeping thru' the night and yes i feel sooo good! Had our buffet breakfast and my mum met a interesting pair of father and son. they were at the fruits station piling their plates with lots of papaya and watermelon. My mum heard the father telling his son to eat lots of papaya so that he can shit. haha sounds like typical singaporean but kind of disgusting to say it in a cafeteria.
After breakfast, we went back to pack our baggage and ready to check out. Its our last day at Penang and im reluctant to go. At 12pm, after all the checking out paperworks, Aunt Lay Kim and Uncle San brought us to lunch at a local zhi char stall. Ya again all the dishes are delicious. After lunch we went to buy the famous penang tau sau bia. What a surprise! when we reached the store, there is no more tau sau bia left. the store is so chaotic. oh goodness its my first time seeing people snatching biscuits. haha. Anyway, Aunt Lay Kim manage to lie that she ordered 6 boxes but the log book don have her records so they only gave her 3 boxes. What a dissapointment, we took 11 hours of bus to penang for the tau sua bia and we only manage to buy 3 boxes. Sob Sob.. Anyway, Auntie Lay Kim later brought us to another shop also famous for the biscuits but it is also sold out. In the end, we went to other store whose tau sau bia is not that nice... bought a couple of boxes. Later our relative drove us to our family friend, Auntie Hua Jie's house in Parit Buntar.
Parit Buntar Reached parit buntar at 4pm. the weather is soooo hot and im kind of shocked by the surrounding. Although our Aunt Hua Jie's house is a 3 storeys shophouse with a clinic downstairs (the clinic is run by her nephew who is a pediatric specialist), the surronding is like oh my god, u wan me to stay in this place? no way ! there is really nothing except shophouses which are dark and dirty selling all sorts of dried products. There is also a former cinema that is converted to house the sparrows and u can see sparrows flying all over the place... that really worries me of bird flu! Besides a supermarket and a mini shopping mall selling clothes, there is nothing much.
Being a city girl, its kind of a culture shock to me. Worst come to worst our family friend do not knoe the place well so we cant go anywhere unless her family came to drive us around. Sian* Afterwhich, her brother and sister in law came to drove us to dinner. Its quite stressful to eat with them as her brother is a school principal and her sister in law is a teacher and they really practise strict hygiene like having a serving spoon on every dishes and he kept emphasising not to waste food. In my case, when there is leftover, he kept telling my sis and i not to waste food and he kept reminding us to clear our food. ARGH!!!!!! its not i don want to finish my food but its like the food sucks... Think my mum's cooking is even better.Ye that really makes me kind of flare up and i really wants to go home! Alright next time i may have to consider eating with principals and teachers!
Anyway, we stayed in a motel next to her house and that is really a nightmare to me. the things are soooo old, i juz cant imagine that i will stay in that place. Worst still, the people staying there are kinda weird. The pillows and the blankets are soooo smelly and the toilet is full of insects that looks like grasshoppers which bites u at night. Worst of all, my mum even saw a indian man hugging a women upstairs, the woman looks like a prostitute. My goodness don knoe whether there is HIV or not. Since the room is so small and filthy and we got no where to go but to spent most of our time in the coffeeshop downstairs. Its really really very boring and its kind of driving me crazy. Don knoe why the time is especially slow. ARGH! How i missed Singapore and my home. Luckily, we only went there for 1 and a half day and a night.
Thank god, we left on the 27th December at 9pm. haha think its the first time in my whole life to board a bus with such a happy feeling. Cos i knew im going home!!!! Yippee! Frankly speaking, i shall not go back to Parit Buntar anymore, the surroundings has scared the wits out of me. Even u were to give me 1 million dollars, i will not go back!
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