We actually visited Kuala Lumpur next on our trip through South-east Asia, but I feel more inclined to talk about Penang right now.
We dropped our bags off at our hotel- the Chulia Heritage. We were excited to stay here as it looked stunning on the photos and was our first private room (and what we thought was a bargain at £10 per person per night). No such luck. It was in a good location but it was having a lot of renovations- they were painting the floorboards and there was only a narrow walkway for us to walk through. Strangely, there were also coke bottles placed all around the corridors like traffic cones. The bathrooms were shared, but the shower head was over the toilet, so every time you needed to use the toilet you had to wipe away someone else’s shower water with toilet roll. No thank you.
We promptly left in search of food. I had such high hopes for the island- I’m a big foodie and couldn’t wait to try the street food that I had read so much about.
Well, I was very disappointed. I don’t know whether we’d picked a bad day to arrive in Georgetown, but nothing was open. Not a street stall to be found. We tried several hawker centres and eateries- Red Garden Food Paradise and Restoran Sup Hameed included.
We eventually found ourselves at Esplanade Food Centre, which could have been quite a romantic setting by the sea were it not cold and windy that day! It was open, and busy too, but I have to admit: we were disappointed. Maybe we’d been spoilt by the street food of Singapore and Kuala Lumpur, but it was dirty, windy and we were being oggled by the locals.
Despite being very hungry, we walked around Georgetown to see the sights and culture and were even more disappointed. Everywhere we saw felt run down and (despite all the people) empty. And I hate to say it, but it smelled…
After a few hours we had made up our minds: we were leaving. I will readily admit that we probably didn’t give the place a good chance- we didn’t leave Georgetown at all- but with so little time on our trip we wanted to spend it as well as we could. We booked our ferry tickets to Langkawi for 7am the next morning and went back to the hotel for a very early night.
Did we find any food? Yes, a Subway!!
Cats and Backpacks 