Beautiful house
I have the chance to visit Penang Island in Malaysia a few times this year. On my most recent visit this July, however, I went on to play the part of a full-fledged sua ku (sua ku is hokkien for people who haven’t seen the world much, similar to country bumpkin in English) tourist and boy, how I enjoyed it! You see, Penang is my first overseas trip back when I was around 17 or so (yes, I once envied those kids who get to fly by their second month in this world). So Penang always occupies a special place in my memoryland. I still remembered, on my first visit, everything was so different from where I come from, things looked better, the city of Georgetown looked cleaner, the malls were glitzier, the people were more fashionable. I was literally a sua ku back then. As I grew older, visited more places in Asia–although I could not claim to be well-traveled–Penang was pushed back as I thought there are so many other places I have not visited. I did went back many times after that first trip as a teenager, but the memories are hazy now: there was once I stayed in a heritage hotel with a friend, another visit on my way to Langkawi, and many other times I couldn’t recall the purpose of. I did not think that these times around it would be much different from the past.
I was wrong.
Road sign in Penang
I went back in February this year and got my first taste of what Penang really has to offer. It did not occur to me that Penang has the best street food in Asia, according to TIME magazine article in 2004. I have heard of the difference of their char koay teow from Singapore’s version (where it’s spelled as char kway teow – minor difference), albeit more often on how tastier it is. Another item is their Assam Laksa, recently ranked as the No. 7 tastiest food in the world, which earned some gripes from Singapore foodies. The other is the lok lok at Gurney Drive, a variety of food (fish balls, crab sticks, meat etc.) on skewers, cooked by dipping in hot water and paired with satay gravy. This is the only item that I could remember from my first few visits actually. That’s pretty much it. My knowledge is limited, and many food items in Malaysia are pretty similar to Singapore as they were, after all, used to be the same country. Penang, Melaka, Singapore, and some parts of Indonesia are where you can find the most concentration of Straits Chinese and Peranakan communities. Their presence influences the cuisine of the region and it developed into the present-day Straits Chinese cuisine through new inventions and tweaks on their traditional cuisine. You can find similar dishes anywhere in South East Asia I suppose, as the people in the region moved around with trades and influenced each other in the development of local cuisines. On this visit, I greatly appreciated their local kopi (coffee), roasted with butter and sugar, with added condensed milk. The kopi is rich, aromatic, and tantalizing to our taste buds. I couldn’t help but sing praises of it, as my travel companions would attest to as well. The experience provides the first spark of interest in getting to know more of Penang cuisine, which I discovered later, is the ground zero for foodies in Malaysia and some say Singapore.
In April, I went back again, and asked around for the best char koay teow. A local pointed us to a particular stall on Lorong Selamat, and as they say, the rest is history. I was back to this stall for 3 more times and it continued with my last visit. Aside from this stall, I’ve gone around tasting other char koay teows, curry mee, chendol, o chien, koay teow th’ng, assam laksa, ban chien kueh, nasi lemak, nyonya kueh, apom telur, mee goreng, dim sum, porridge & you tiao, teh tarik, and countless cups of kopi. And those are just only some of the dishes Penang have to offer. Penang food deserves a shrine of its own, and I decided to do just that in the coming entry.
Interior of the only Burmese temple in Malaysia
On a separate note, a slightly historical one, not many know that the Chinese communities in Medan, Indonesia share plenty of similarities with the Chinese communities in Penang. The de facto language of communication is Hokkien, a Chinese dialect, presumably because their forefathers mostly hailed from the province of Fujian, China. Singaporeans speak Hokkien too, but the Hokkien spoken in Penang and Medan are so similar that other overseas Chinese who understands the dialect wouldn’t be able to tell the difference. For two cities separated by Strait of Malacca and as far as I know, didn’t really have much trades/contacts with each other (I have only heard of the city in late 1990s where many Indonesians sent their kids overseas for fear of their safety due to the riot), how did Penang and Medan develop language and cuisine so similar to each other? One could say that the mix with Indonesian and Malay influences (they share the same history too), evidenced by the adoption of Indo/Malay words into the everyday vocabulary (eg. mana, ini, itu, macam), played a part. Ancestry, of course, is another possible reason, but why then, is Singapore Hokkien heavier than the two? I don’t know, but I’d love to find out if you can offer some perspectives. Hawker fare is another similarity, in Medan, you’d find similar coffee shops on the first floor of attached houses where hawkers set up different stalls to cater to different taste buds of their customers. Stalls plying Jalan Semarang, Selat Panjang in Medan, and Lebuh Kimberley, Jalan Penang in Penang are aplenty. Again, in Singapore we have hawker centers too. The wonder of Chinese diaspora in South East Asia!
Long story short (thanks for reading so far!), Penang is a place where you’d sure to find amazing food, different mix of cultures (Malay, Indian, Chinese, Arab, Thai, Myanmar, Japanese, English, etc.), extremely warm and sunny days (temperature can go up to 35°C daily, so please bring sunscreen and more change of clothes), many heritage sites (Georgetown city itself is a designated World Heritage Site) and buildings, beaches, temples, quiet spots, and of course, durian (it’s in season now). Enjoy!
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Tags: Asia, Food, guide, Indonesia, Malaysia, Medan, Penang, street food, Sumatra, travel, travel guide, travel journal
