Vandilicious: Penang Nov 2015

Thursday, December 3, 2015

Penang Nov 2015

Our breakfast on Day 2 was horrible! We went down at 8.30pm to their Garden Cafe but it was full. And direct us to SIGI restaurant which we had lunch yesterday. Some of the food was served uncovered, you can see files flying around! Hashbrown was hard as stone and non crunch cornflakes! After my unhappy breakfast, we went for our tour which starts at 10am.

First stop - Famous Kek Lok Si Temple: Kek Lok Si
Our tour guide brought us around and intro us our to this temple. There is a small tram that could bring you up to the big Guanyin statue. We spend close to an hour here. If you want to tried the famous Penang Laksa, it is just at the bottom of this temple. Air Itam Penang Laksa resource from:Daniel Food Diary. I didn't went to try as I am afraid there is no other food choice which suit my kids.

On the way up to the temple

Fare for the tram

Second stop - We went to try the Loh Bak at Kheng Pin Cafe. It is actually a deep fried Five-Spice Roll and not braised pork meat. The boss of this stall is a nice hokkien spoken uncle, I do not know how should I go about to order it so he asked me how many pax and I told him 2, he suggested to get the 7RM (set) will do. To me, there is nothing really to shout about (individual preferences, no offence). Is a little dried but very crisp and fragrant. I still prefer our local version.

Address: Kheng Pin Café, 80 Penang Road
Opening hours: 7am – 3pm. Closed on Mondays
Resource from: Miss Tam Chiak

Loh Bak

Wanton mee

Chicken Fish Porridge - Silky smooth and crunchy

Third Stop: Famous Mural Street

It was burning hot, sweaty and tired after carrying my '12kg' around. We didn't stay too long as I wanted to go to Gurney Plaza to enjoy some aircon Laughing

The jetty across

Fourth & Fifth stop: Gurney Plaza and Ghee Hiang Tar Sau Piah

Gurney Plaza is quite a huge mall with an atas cold storage supermart below lol... There is a Gurney Paragon beside with most high end shop. We didn't went there, we just walked around and left to get the Tar Sau Piah. It is their local famous pastry (green bean biscuits) which I heard they have over 150 years of history. I was so embarrassed when I was inside the shop. I was expecting a huge shop which I usually goes to like in Malacca, where you could taste their pastry and had other products which you could shop around. But not here! You basically queue up, there is a 'menu', you just ordered what you want and that it! So I brought 10 boxes which they have been nicely packed in individual wrapper back for my families and friends.

Last stop: Penang Hill

Regret not doing enough research and regretted going too! Our tour guide told us the expected waiting time to queue to reach the top of the hill during peak period can be up to 2 hours! But when we saw that there isn't much queue and only took us 20 minutes so we went ahead with it. They are very disorganize, nobody is there to manage the queue so people start pushing around when the tram comes. Each tram took about 7 minutes to go up but waiting time is close to 15 minutes to get into it. Upon reaching, we shook our head because the queue going back is much much longer than the one we came up. It was windy, cooling and we got the buddy to bring us for a mini tour. It cost us $30RM. Bad weather again and the time we decided to head back was close to dinner time and so the queue was even worst! It really took us 1 hour and 40 minutes to return. Super tired! One experience and never again!

Nice view

Seems copycat of Korea lol

Dinner: Tsunami Village

Tour guide suggested us this place for dinner. It's a chinese seafood restaurant, a kampong style restaurant where you could have sea view while having your dinner. Wrong move again, because is quite hard to get a cab back to resort. Since our tour has ended we got to find our own ways back. This place is situated at the bottom of where we stayed. Food were pretty good, cheap but with some 'irritating files' as accompany Confused

They renamed it to Tsunami Village after the incident back in 2004. It wasn't crowded when we reached there on a Sunday at 7pm. We ordered, Prawn Paste Chicken, Claypot Beancurd, small Steamed Pomfret Fish, Vegetable, Fish Maw Herbal Soup and Stired Fried Lala. Total damage: $90plus RM, pretty affordable right?

Address: 543-A Tanjung Bungah, 11200

Contact: 019-447 2718

Closed on Monday