Y’all. I fell in love with Penang.

A few weeks ago my friend Audrey and I were talking about taking one last adventure before she heads home forever in a few weeks. After a few moments of deliberation, we settled on Penang, Malaysia.

I’d been to Malaysia a few times, but I had been young and remembered little so besides the barrage of amazing food I knew I’d find, I was unsure of what to expect.

Friday –

We flew from Chiang Mai early that morning and landing in Penang International Airport around 1530. At the advice of a friend living there we Uber’d ourselves a taxi to Georgetown and were on our way!

As we were driving north up the island, our driver was giving us all the best advice as to where to eat and where the best places to get what were. A mere 40 minutes and 17 MYR ($4.16) later, we were dropped off Angmoh Hostel! (36 MYR a night)

Note: We found out later that Angmoh literally means red-haired and is mainly used to describe white people… perfect

After a quick change of clothes, we walked down to Prangin Mall, where we were meeting our guide for a food tour we had booked! We had heard amazing things about Food Tour Penang and knew we had to splurge a little for the experience.

We met our guide at 5pm and were quickly off on our food journey.

The first stop was Chendul and Asam Laksa

The second stop was “savory fried food”. Aka fritters and sausage

The third stop was “sweet fried food”. It’s a fried dough with yam and sweet custard in the middle. It’s just oozed perfection

We had our main meal of Char Kway Theow, Curry Mee, BBQ Chicken Wings (Malay style), Pork Satay, and something I can’t spell but can only describe as a spring roll. and Nutmeg Juice at our fourth stop.

The fifth and final stop was Indian curry dips and roti something.

As we drove from place to place our guide was great at giving us little tips about the city and telling us the best places to go and site see. All in all the whole entire thing took a whopping FOUR hours. Once we were dropped off at our hotel, we took showers and quickly passed out from our long day of travel and eating.

Saturday – 

We had come to Penang with no other real plan than to eat, explore, and then eat more and as we had driven around the night before we slowly started developing a list of things we had to see before we left.

Our first stop was to Mugshot Cafe for THE best bagels I’ve had on this side of the ocean. If you’re in Penang, GO! They also have amazing coffee and to DIE for yogurt cups.

After breakfast, we got some bikes and followed my friend Erin first to a lookout over the city of Penang and then to the impressive temple of Kek Lok Si. It was absolutely gorgeous. There are really no words. We spent a few hours at both the lookout and the temple. If you have the time to go see the temple, I would definitely reccommend it. The lookout is at the very top of the hill and it is truly marvelous. I mean, look at this.

This is the view from the top!

Kek Lok See was a STUNNER.

When we couldn’t handle the sweat anymore we drove down to get some amazing Laksa and Roti. The Laksa place was so full that we had to share a table with this sweet couple. During the conversation, they started loudly arguing and instantly, the three of us knew that they were arguing about me. Something about the way I look and my American accent is just SO confusing to locals in Asia. It just cracks me up. This is definitely not the first time this has happened and it for sure will not be the last.

I was still up for a bit more adventure so I grabbed Erin and we headed off to the Jetty’s to see if we could see the sunset. We first went to the Chew Jetty because we heard that it was the best. However, once we realized that we wouldn’t be able to see anything we headed to the lone dock on the Tan Jetty. The sunset turned out to not be totally amazing, but the shadows and the light reflected off the other side of the water was UNREAL. My jaw was practically open for the 90 minutes straight. We realized that the sunrise would be even better from the jetty, so we made plans to come back the next morning.

Sunday – 

I got my butt up hella early to see the sunrise and oh my lanta was it worth it. The sun rose like a giant ball of fire above the water and it was ah-mazing.

We ended the morning with authentic dimsum from cute little old ladies at a place near the hostel. After a quick nap, Audrey and I hit the streets for some last minute exploring. We found some of the coolest street art and just roamed Armenian street and Love street and all around Little India just in awe of how charming and picturesque the city is.

Spending our last afternoon wandering the city was the perfect end to this weekend adventure. We made it back to the hostel in time for one more Wonton mee and a second dose on Chendul.

Penang is seriously such a picturesque city. It was seriously hard not taking pictures of everything. I can’t wait to come back for more!

WEEKEND. WELL. SPENT.