PENANG

Penang is an island off the west coast of Malaysia. The bus I was on crossed the bridge to Penang as the sun was setting over the island, it was beautiful. I found a place to stay in Georgetown, the biggest town on the island, on Chulia Street, in the old Chinatown. There's a lot of old pre-war British Colonial architecture in that part of the city, the buildings are all very weathered and textured. There are also a bunch of cheap places to stay for budget travelers like myself.

If there is one thing I will never forget about Penang, it's the food. Holy shit was it delicious. My first night in Penang I found a bunch of little food carts just down the block from where I was staying. During the day that section of the road is where all the hardware stores are, but at night after the shops close down, the food vendors roll up and set up their carts. I didn't know where to begin, I wanted to try everything. In my two nights there I think I ate from at least seven of the food carts. I went to bed both nights so stuffed that it hurt. Stir fried glass noodles with shrimp, fresh squeezed mango and coconut juice, chicken satay... I didn't even know what I was ordering most of the time. One of the stands was full of skewers, a couple pots of boiling water to cook/heat the skewers, and three or four sauces to dip the skewers into. I wanted to hang out there all night, but unfortunately it was my last stop of the evening and I was already so stuffed that I could only eat like seven or eight of 'em. My god did it taste good... If I lived in Penang I would be fat. Oh, and the breakfast I had on my first morning, I will never forget it for the rest of my life. I wandered into Little India to find some roti canai, a traditional Malaysian food that's like a sweet flatbread pancake thingy. I'd had it before, they sell it from little food carts in Thailand, but I wanted to try it while I was in Malaysia. It's kind of hard to describe, but they take a little ball of dough, flatten it out and twirl it until it's basically translucent, and then throw it onto the griddle. You can put all sorts of stuff in it, sometimes I get it with banana and coconut. Then they fold it over, flip it a few times, and serve it up, sometimes with sweetened condensed milk on top. Mmmm. So I ordered it for breakfast with egg and banana, two of 'em. It was tasty. But the best part was the metal bucket full of curry that they gave me. I shared it with the other people at my table so I guess it was like a condiment or something, but man did it make the meal. It was like a yellow potato curry, I could've just eaten that alone, but on top of the roti canai... whoa! I could've stayed there and eaten that all day, but I had to go meet up with Johnny Ho.

Johnny Ho is a brother of a family friend. Through a last minute correspondence initiated by my dad, I somehow arranged to meet up with him for the afternoon while I was in Penang. Johnny picked me up at the 7 Eleven on Chulia Street in his Benzo, he was playing Peter Cetera on the stereo, The Glory Of Love, what a great song. "So, uh, you showed my dad and brother around Penang when they came here 10 years ago?", I asked. "Um... yeah, I don't remember, maybe...?", he replied. I don't think he had any idea who I was. We drove around to the northern part of the island to a beach town called Batu Ferringhi, we didn't really have much to talk about, he pointed things out to me along the way. We found a little bar on the beach and ordered some lunch and a few beers. After a few drinks we both loosened up a bit and talked about all sorts of things. Johnny loves Penang, he is very proud to live there. "Look at this", he said, "Here we are on the beach at noon drinking beers. This is the life...". I agreed. Johnny and I hung out for the afternoon, he drove me around to some other places, we stopped for some more beers and talked and laughed, it was a good day. The next day I would catch the ferry to Langkawi...