Malaysia, Penang, Day 7, 8: Fast Women, Slow Horses

Day 7

That picture is of a sweet drink made with flowers and it tastes a bit like yellow Chatreuse. GF says the flowers are Chrysanthemum and she says Chrysanthemum should be spelled Chrysanthenum; but who cares, the drink was num num as opposed to nom nom. I digress.

In addition to ‘yellow drink’ we had some fruits (pineapple, cucumber, apple, guava) covered with a rich molasses-style sauce:

This was nice and quite savoury; the sauce was quite like terryaki and carried a slight amount of chili heat. Cost including drink: 1 pound 30 pence.

For lunch we headed off to a Nepalese restaurant somewhere in the middle of George Town.

This is mutton massala, rice, popadom, yoghurt, cucumber salad.

I will say this: the mutton massala was really good; full of flavour – especially cinnamon – and the mutton was leaner than lamb and ridiculously tender. The cucumber and yoghurt acted as nice counterpoints to the richness of the curry and GF says the popadoms were better than in the UK because they were thicker. The only drawback was the price, which for Malaysia was incredibly expensive at just under 16 pounds, including 3 drinks.

For dinner we had mostly nothing but we did watch this band play in the hotel bar:

Which was …different.

Day 8

We’re staying at the Royale Bintang Hotel in Georgetown, Penang, which is a modern and very well appointed 4* hotel. We are paying 26 pounds each per night and this includes a ridiculous breakfast:

Ready? OK: Coffee, waffles, roti canai, nasi lemak, bread pudding, Chinese fried rice, coconut curry, fried chicken. One could also have had omelette, fruits, cereals, English breakfast, pastries, cakes, potato wedges, the outer rings of Saturn, gold, incense.

During the early afternoon we headed off to a Chinese mansion for a tour and on the way we stopped off at a coffee shop for some…coffee:

This is white coffee and it’s made from beans which are roasted with caramel; it is absolutely amazing and I had about 4 glasses. I think. I’m high right now.

Along with my million glasses of white coffee I decided to order a plate of ice cream and toast, as you do:

I have no idea why folks back in the UK have never tried this. It is incredible! It’s like seeing a new colour for the first time, man! The slightly salty buttery brown bread mixed with sweet, melting ice cream is my new favourite breakfast thing. I say forget corn flakes! Bust out your Haagen Dasz and granary loaf and have yourself a sugary carbohydrate party for breakfast! Christ, that coffee was strong.

Down the road we stopped into a shop and GF bought some Durian ice cream:

It’s pretty weird: not unlikeable, nor likeable. Imagine you were served ice cream but someone had put cheese and garlic in it. That is durian ice cream.

For dinner we headed off to the Red Garden market near the Blue Mansion:

There were many options including sushi, fish head curry, ladyboy (11pm) and beer!

I opted for some frog dish or other which was ridiculously hot on account of the 12 billion chilies that it was cooked with. It was really nice though! And tastes a bit like *alligator or emu. Erm.

GF had pork ‘Chinese style’ soup (Bak Kut Teh) with rice and some kind of savoury choux pastry balls. The pork broth came with pork belly, sausage and intestine; the latter of which sounds majorly scary but was actually pretty benign and carried only the most subtle meat flavour.

Cost for both meals: 4 pounds.

And that was the end of days 7 and 8! We’re in transit to Langkawi today and no doubt there will be some interesting food adventures waiting for us there. But if you’re bored, maybe hook in with me on Twitter or maybe tell me what *frog tastes like because I think it tastes like a cross between chicken and cod, and I’ve never even tried alligator or emu. Like, duh!