Hello boys and girls!
Work has been a bitch so I could only find time to post this now, like 5 months after the trip. š Well even though it’s like super outdated, I still have to write about it because.. basically.. not only was it my virgin trip to this part of Malaysia, it’s also my (okay, are you ready? But don’t laugh at my misfortune) first time taking the plane. Yes bloody first time. At the age of 20. If you hate me this is the best time to rejoice, yay!
So I managed to crawl out of my cave on 5 March, boarded the plane at about 2pm-ish with Baby and our usual travel friends – Wendy & Wesley. Took about 1 hour to reach our destination and were greeted with an airport which looked like our Terminal 1 when it first started. Ā Then we waited for what seemed to be another hour for Wesley’s rented car to be ready. We finally arrived at our hotel room at Paradise Beach Resort in the late evening š The staff were uber friendly there – I likeeee!
Because it was a free & easy trip, there wasn’t any itinerary. We went to the reception counter with our growling stomach to enquire about the nearest seafood eating place to dine at. Then we were chauffeured (paid ok!) to this place because there weren’t any parking spaces left on a weekend:
East Hokkaido
I wouldn’t say the food there is fantastic.Ā They came with quite smallĀ portions and they are not cheap either. Standard and prices areĀ quite comparable to the seafood here in Singapore. But the service there was fantastic because the waitress assigned to our table were so attentive to us that we tipped her before we left. ButĀ being so honest she surrendered the money to the management because she felt weird being tipped for doing her job. Haha! Anyway, pictures.
Ā 
After eating, our chauffeur drove us to the biggest night market in Penang which is called:
Ferringhi’s Night Market
The night market stretches along the street just like our very own pasar malam, just way longer. You definitely would not be able to explore the entire place in just one day. But in my opinion scouring the entire night market isn’t necessary since the stuff sold in every store are rather repetitive. And the shopkeepers are really NOT flexible when it comes to price haggling. They’d give me excuses like, “It’s already the lowest you can find here” or “It’s already the cost price”. Huh like COME ON do you think I would believe that crap? That a pair of Ā (forgot which brand it’s an imitation of) boardshorts would cost 80RM??
But as much as I hate that place we went there again on the second night, NOT to find better buys there but for our foot reflexology! If my memory doesn’t fail me it should have lasted an hour, at the price of a 40-min session in Singapore or cheaper. Hehehe that was probably the highlight of the trip lor!! But unfortunately I didn’t take any pictures of that as I was too engrossed with playing mahjong on the iPod touch.
Day 2 was more of sight-seeing and visiting cultural and religious places. We went to the church (actually outside only because the place was locked up), Indian temple as well as theĀ Chinese temple which homesĀ one of the world’s largest sleeping Buddha
Penang is actually quite similiar to Singapore. If I’m not wrong they could also be of the same size? Oh and they have their very own butterfly farm too! Not much difference from the one we have at Sentosa. On top of butterflies they have snakes and other creepy crawlies as exhibits as well. But it’s definitely not worth the price of an admission ticket.
After the first 2 days in Penang, we felt a little bored so we went to the information counter at our hotel to ask if there were any programmes in place for inexperienced tourists like us. And we were enticed by
Rope fishing
5 words: Waste of Time and Money š¦ The boat we were on was so miserably small and it kept shaking because of the strong current. Across our boat was a group ofĀ Caucasians on a LARGER boat that didn’t seem that shaky.Ā All of us were feeling so nausea and the boat driver had to get us back onshore after 15 minutes at the sea! I doubt there were even fishes in the first place. For your information, this experience cost me 120RM. Ā -_-
Probably the workers already knew that we’d return empty-handed, so they brought us to this island where they could whip up a rather sumptuous lunch for us to cover up some of our losses. We had chicken chop, satay and lots of other meat and fruits. And the best (or could be the worst) part was, there were wild monkeys lingering around the area attempting to steal our food! AND THEY WERE FIERCE AND STEALTHY LOR!
They thought stealing our fruits wasn’t enough ok? They even drank our PEPSI when we left our cans unattended on the table. Ewww stupid monkeys. 
On our last day before our departure, we visited the PeranakanĀ Museum which was the setting for our Little Nyonya show. The exhibits are not as elaborated as the one we have here, but they are more original and authentic I guess? The place looked just a Peranakan home.
When I got back to Singapore I felt this indescribable ecstasy, I don’t know why. Penang wasn’t all that fun and if you realised, we didn’t manage to taste any authentic Penang food because we couldn’t find any š¦ Maybe we needed to do more research before embarking on our trip but honestly, I wished we went to Bangkok instead (which was our original plan but was changed because of someone who stood us up).
So, in conclusion, Penang is only fun if you’re not a Singaporean, or have never been to Singapore. For every attraction you see in Penang, you’d definitely see something similiar in Singapore, which was why I never felt I left home. Hahaha! (But it was still a good getaway especially after my horrible internship experience nonetheless)
Okay that’s all for now.
I’ll be blogging again to lament about my work -_- Sorry folks but this is kinda unavoidable.
X
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