Eating through Penang
Gelugor, Malaysia
We spent our last day exploring the small city of Georgetown. It is the capital of Penang and Penang is an island right off the coast of Malaysia in the Straits of Mallaca attached to the Andaman Sea. It is known as one of the best places to eat in the world. The fusion of the Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures and its location along the Spice Trade route made its food legendary. As you can tell by the pictures, it is amazing. We stopped at a famous pastry shop and tried a few local delicacies. I was lucky enough to have a Chinese man help me and describe what everything was and what they tasted like. I was afraid of the salted egg pastry but it actually wasn’t bad, salty and sweet. But the best was the Trishaw Egg Custard! Very light and flaky pastry with what seemed like hundreds of layers all holding a warm gooey egg custard that was dreamy! I wish we could have spent some more time here because I don’t feel like I experienced enough of their food!
Grants 12th Birthday – Siem Reap & Penang
Prasat Bakong, Cambodia
Grant had a whirlwind 12th birthday this year! On his birthday we were traveling most of the day so we decided to celebrate on the day before. As you know from the previous post, we spent the day exiting the temples at Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia. Then Grant wanted to go back to the hotel and go swimming and relax. As we opened the hotel door there were balloons all over and on the bed it spelled out “Happy Birth Day Grant” beautifully displayed in hand cut pieces of green bamboo. His face lit up when he saw it, I was so happy to see him excited! He spent the rest of the day swimming and relaxing, just what a kid wants to do! Then the wind picked up so fast that it knocked stuff over at the pool! We went in and enjoyed a great thunderstorm with lots of lightning! At dinner that night we had champagne and a beautiful dinner, the boys were very happy and in a great mood! Rowan was even hugging Grant 🙂 Then they came out singing with a cake. They weren’t that good at singing Happy Birthday and the tune was something totally different but we didn’t mind. Then at breakfast the next day he got happy face pancakes! The day of travel was long but Grant loves flying so he thought it was special to be taking a few flights on his actual birthday! We arrived in Penang in the afternoon and we’re ready to eat! Penang is one of the greatest food destinations in the world. It is a small island off the coast of the Malaysian peninsula. So food is a fusion of Chinese, Indian, Malay and more! We went to the Red Garden food hawker-food paradise in the middle of town. It was AMAZING, probably 50 stalls of all different kinds of food, you order from a bunch of different ones tell them your table number, you sit in the middle at a table and they bring them to you as they are ready while your waiter brings your drinks. There was so much to choose from it was so hard but we managed to pick a few and all share. There was also live entertainment, some singers and music on the stage. It was a lot of fun and very popular there were tables of people just drinking and talking and having a good time. We certainly did! What we ate is shown in the pictures and descriptions are here: Hokkien Hae Mee- flash fried noodles with a flavorful broth, prawns, chicken, squid, fish cakes, hard boiled egg and hot chili paste. It’s a very popular dish here. Char Kway Teow – total comfort food, big, fat, flat and sloppy noodles with prawns, cockles, bean sprouts, Chinese chives, egg, soy sauce chili, belachan and all fried in pork lard-not for the health conscious! Assam Laksa – one of the most famous Penang dishes and ranked 7th of the best 100 foods in the world! The broth is made by poaching mackerel with tamarind, lemongrass, chilies and shrimp paste and spooned over rice vermicelli. We got back to the hotel and there were even more birthday surprises for Grant! They decorated his bed with candy and balloons and had a nice piece of birthday cake waiting for him. I think he had a really nice 12th birthday 🙂
