George Town’s food was also a plus, kind of. Majority of the food is fusion where you can walk to Little India and have a Malay-based Indian Curry dish and hop a block over and be in China Town eating delish dumplings and herbal teas. Unfortunately for us, many of the dishes were not vegetarian we were a bit limited until we discovered Yun Shui Ge, which offered vegetarian versions of Malay and Chinese staples. Their laksa (Malay rice noodles with curry sauce) alone was worth the visit. Rachael continues to take Dan’s taste buds on adventures with all the unusual foods she orders. Cendol is one of those. It is a street food desert that involves shredded ice, coconut milk, red beans, weird green jelly noodles, and palm sugar. We can say we did it, but it wouldn’t be our first choice on the menu.
We stayed in the old town, continuing our city explorations, but we did find our nature fix out of the city. We took the hour long local bus ride for less than $1 to Penang National Park and trekked to Monkey Beach for a day where we spotted half a dozen ‘dragons’ ( we later found out they were Asian Monitor Lizards). Although it was sweltering hot and just sitting on a bench would induce us to leave massive sweat stains, the beach was a quiet escape worth the day visit. On the trek back at the end of the day, we ran into a local man under a concrete gazebo serenading some monkeys in the adjacent tree with his ukulele while they ate the jar of black garlic they stole from him.
We didn’t leave enough sweat on the trail so we also decided to hike Penang Hill. A hike that apparently only crazy foreigners do. It was equally, if not hotter that day and we were the only people on the trail due to the funicular that goes from the bottom to the top. It was a funny experience arriving at the top while all the other tourists are taking selfies in their high heels and nice clothes while we could have wrung the sweat out from our shirts. Moving around in this type of heat gives us even more respect for the Muslim women who are covered from head to toe. They are used to it, but it still must be so hot!
Inevitably, we discovered other places in Malaysia we wish we had the time to go. After meeting locals and other travelers, we quickly learned Borneo was our prime destination. With jungle treks and epic diving, we realized we didn’t have enough time to visit. With only 8 days in Malaysia, and a diminished desire for the speed travel we had been engaging in recently, we spent majority of it in George Town and a few days in Kuala Lumpur.
