A Software Developer's Vacation in Penang

His Teochewness goes on vacation again!

This time, instead of the bustling Malaysian city of Kuala Lumpur, I visited some Clubhouse friends in the little city of George Town, Penang. How did this come to pass?

Street mural
in George Town.

Well, it all began when my sister-in-law came over to stay for the month of April. She shared the bed with my wife, while I crashed on the couch. On many levels, this was inconvenient. Even if you take away the fact that it was one of the hottest spells in Singapore weather, I work from home the majority of the time, and my work area just happens to be right beside the couch - which results in removing that one last (albeit artificial) barrier between personal and work life.

That's when I figured - hey, if I'm going to be sleeping on a couch, I might as well be sleeping in a hotel room. In another country. That's when I made the arrangements, bought the ticket and booked the hotel room. It happened to be a pretty busy time at work, but my boss was OK with it as long as I brought my MacBook along and remained contactable.

I would be going to George Town, a historic site in Penang. I envisioned myself taking long walks in the day and venturing into multiple museums and art galleries. Mrs TeochewThunder would probably hate this shit, but whatevs, she wasn't coming along. I could concentrate entirely on what I found fun, for a change.

April 14th, 2024

The day started off pretty well. I made it to Changi Airport early, had a nice breakfast and even found time to write some code I'd been tinkering with while waiting for my flight. The weather was blazing like Singapore's, just the way I like it.

I arrived at Penang International Airport ahead of schedule and soon after, I was picked up by a sweaty but dazzling young lady (she was pretty hot, in all senses of the word) in her car, and we greeted each other like friends who had only known each other online for the past couple years.

First meal at a
roadside coffeeshop.

Astonishingly fancy coffee.

After checking in to the run-down dodgy-looking hotel I'd picked out for my stay (the less said about this, the better), we headed off for some street food, where I got my mind blown by the Ice Yuen Yeung (coffee and tea, mixed) that turned out to be an ultra-fancy deconstruction of what I expected, served with a spiral glass stirrer. Holy shit.

Trust me, the other
stuff was weirder.

She then took me to George Town's Hin Bus Depot to attend what had to be the most macabre art exhibition I ever laid eyes on. The paintings looked like entries in some serial killer's fantasy. 

Bizarre.

At the same venue was a sculpture exhibition which was a nightmarish hellscape of squished body parts rendered in clay. Was I disturbed? That's an understatement. Was I fascinated? Also an understatement.

Something relatively normal.

We capped this off by attending a third exhibition which looked somewhat normal, and also easier on the eyes.

Nyonya dinner.

Dinner was at a Nyonya Restaurant where her mother joined us and we absolutely demolished a whole bunch of stuff. Her mom was excellent company, by the way. I took great pleasure in showing off the pictures of my papier-mache tree to her.

The night went well. The hotel itself wasn't much to shout about, but for the first time in weeks, I got to sleep in a proper bed!

April 15th, 2024

Got up bright and early. George Town exploration awaited! The sun was blazing overhead like it had something against humanity. No worse than the Singapore heat I'd left behind yesterday. In other words, business as usual for me. It was easy to tell that I was a tourist, despite my skin color fitting right in with the demographic - I was grinning like an idiot in the oppressive heat and obviously happy to be here.

Interior was
great, though.

I got some  breakfast at this place called English Hainan. Name sounded promising, but the Full English Breakfast I got was a bit of a disappointment. After breakfast, I wandered around, looking at various street art and the architecture of the buildings. It was like a replica of Singapore's Chinatown and Bugis Street, expanded by ten times to an entire district. Shophouses and temples abounded. I was getting a sense of how my grandparents lived in Singapore.

Food museum.

Pretty soon, I came upon this building, and decided that this was too good to pass up. A Food Museum! I've always loved miniature art, and this museum had it in spades. The amount of detail was incredible.

Great detail.

This was so interesting.

I could have spent another hour in here, but it was the first full day in George Town and there was plenty more to see. Further down the street was another tourist attraction advertised on Google Maps - Fort Cornwallis.

Gunpowder chamber.

Boom!

This was a gigantic bore, to be honest. It was nice and quiet, but this only served to highlight how few people seemed to really want to spend their time here.

Should've saved
my money.

A quick lunch later, I checked out an exhibition near the hotel that promised "Trick Art". This turned out to be a waste of time, possibly a bigger one than Fort Cornwallis, which is no mean feat. You've been warned.

Ssssss!

There was a pretty cool painting of a snake in a tunnel, but it was cool only compared to the rest of the uninspiring and insipid stuff in there. If anyone from the Trick Art Museum is reading this and feels triggered, tough titty. Do better.

That's a spread.

Dinner was great, though. I bought my friend and her mom a nice quiet seafood dinner in a pretty retro restaurant and had the place almost entirely to ourselves.

More food!

After that, we adjourned to another roadside joint where my friend introduced me to Penang Hokkien Mee and their local Otak-Otak. Mmmm!

Checking my email and work notifications that night, thankfully nothing seemed amiss. Would have been nicer if I didn't need to check, but oh well.

April 16th, 2024

More walking abounded! I got up bright and early, and had breakfast at one of those little roadside food courts.

Street art.

I especially liked
this one.

Then I made my way to Armenian Street, where a lot of the street art and art installations were congregated. Here, footfall was noticeably heavier as I was sharing the space with tourists and trishaw riders.

Why did I ever
go in there?!

One good exhibit.

Somewhere along the way, against my better judgement, I paid for a ticket for an entry into the Upside Down Museum. Much like the Trick Art Museum, this turned out to be pretty much a waste of time, with only a couple exhibits worth looking at. No more gimmick museums!

TeochewThunder
waz here.

I like to think I was a good sport about it, though. I paid for coffee and a postcard, and added my (fake) complimentary review to all the other (hopefully) genuine reviews stuck on their wall. I even stuck mine upside down! (hur hur) Might as well spread the love. Why should I be the only unfortunate soul to get suckered into parting with his money?

What followed was a slow saunter westwards to meet a couple Clubhouse friends at a cafe. As it turned out, I had severely overestimated the distance on Google Maps, and got there a full hour earlier than expected.

Much better.

It was lunch-time, so I stopped at White Chapel Cafe, and ordered their Full English Breakfast... for lunch. Decadent, eh?

A couple hours later, I met my friends at the other cafe. I remember the place being nice, but at this point I'd been in so many cafes that they were all starting to look the same.

The really exciting part of the day came when one of them gave me a ride to Komtar Tower, the tallest building in Penang. There, I could get to the topmost floor and view Penang from above. There was also a whole host of attractions in the theme park.

View was amazing...
and terrifying.

Up I went to the 65th storey, paying about RM 80 for the experience. This would include a trip outside of the perimeter of the top, tethered only by a safety harness. Honestly, just looking at the view from the glass floor made my stomach lurch. But I'd already paid, so what the hell...

...except that at this very moment, the ugly side of being the only software dev in the department kicked in. People from work called to tell me that one of our sites was down. And I just happened to be 65 storeys above ground, with my laptop in my hotel room. I made some calls and got people to patch some stuff until I could get to it proper. By the time I turned my attention back to the breathtaking view, the moment was well and truly lost. I went back down, and couldn't even muster up the enthusiasm to try out the attractions. Although, after having already been taken for a ride by Trick Art and Upside Down Museum, I wasn't really up for any more overpriced gimmicks anyway.

Tan Jetty, viewed
from the side.

The sun was going down in two hours. I was heading back to the hotel on foot, but this looked like a good time to visit the Clan Jetties of George Town. The air was thick with flies, but I made it out to the rickety planks that made up the Tan Jetty.

This was surreal, yo.

There was a little hut and what looked like an incense pot midway, then the rest pf the jetty led out to sea. It was surreal. I was on a flimsy piece of wood surrounded by the waves, and the odds of any stuff I had on me falling into the water (me included) were more than decent. With the evening sea breeze howling in my ear, even.

So this was how the Tans lived, in Penang, all those decades ago. My ancestral cousins.

Delicious, but
almost couldn't
finish it.

I didn't bother with the Chew or Lee Jetties. It was more of the same, and I had least shared a family name with the Tans. Instead, I headed back to the hotel and had a nice (and extremely filling) dinner at the Peranakan fusion restaurant nearby.

Cozy.

And that was it for the day. Somewhere before midnight, I got restless and took a little stroll around Little India and ended up at this cafe where the ultra-friendly staff served me cake and juice.

April 17th, 2024

The day started off with breakfast at a humble cofeeshop where I ordered a standard breakfast set - two soft-boiled eggs, kaya toast and coffee. To my pleasant and everlasting surprise, they not only broke the eggs for me and put them in a nice shallow cup, they even brought everything to my table! Well, damn.

Straits & Oriental Museum.

A trip to Penang Chinatown brought me to a Porcelain Museum. In contrast to the last two, this one was actually pretty educational.

Interesting pictures.

I totally didn't get
this one.

Just across the street was a small art gallery which seemed to be beckoning me. Not being one to resist a siren call like that, I ventured in and took some pictures.

Now, I'd been constantly walking all around George Town for the last few days, and the inner linings of my bootleg Converse shoes were worn out,. I thought it was time for a massage, so off I popped into this place called Revive Reflexology. I opted for the Thai package, hoping that these were "serious" masseurs. Unfortunately for me, the one I got turned out to be entirely too serious. I had underestimated the strain all that walking had put on my aging legs, and when she grasped hold of the ligament in my inner thigh near the left knee, I'm not ashamed to admit I screamed like a little bitch. And then she started on the right leg.

Suffice to say, I had walked in, and now I was crawling out. I took a lunch break at a nearby bar restaurant because I just didn't feel up to walking around to find something more interesting.

An elaborate
gateway.

My next stop was at the Pinang Peranakan Mansion which was nearby the hotel. I had passed by a couple times along with a whole host of big-ass Chinese temples. Through the past few days, I had come to realize that there were a lot of temples in George Town and I would need more than a couple days to cover them all, if I were even so inclined. But... there was only one Peranakan Mansion.

Check this out...

What followed was a feast for the eyes. Did I say feast? It was more I was pigging out on a visual buffet. It was a visual overload. There was so much detail in everything - elaborate carvings, designs, architectural features, old furniture and so on. Everything had a historical explanation.

My second favorite place was probably the kitchen, where I could pretty much imagine how a meal was cooked back in the day. But my absolute favorite was their Ancestral Hall. There was just so much going on there I can;t even begin to describe it. Check out the pictures!

Not quite a mansion, but
still interesting.

My next stop was, again, right next to the hotel where I visited The House of Yeap Chor Ee. Yeap was a Chinese immigrant who plied his trade in Penang as a barber (there were samples of his tools in the museum, quite a visual treat) and ended up being a very wealthy man despite not knowing how to read or write. Even his signature was written wrongly.

I was the only visitor in the place, and the guide obligingly took me on a tour of all three floors, explaining the history behind each exhibit. The tour cost RM 20. She didn't have change for my RM 50 bill, but I told her to keep it. It sounds like a sizeable tip, but honestly, after wasting time and money on Trick Art and Upside Down Museum, this was more than worth it.

The Last Supper... in Penang.

Later in the evening, I met up with a couple friends for a supper of some chicken wings, oyster omelette, fried dumplings and milo. And that was a wrap for my final night in Penang.

April 18th, 2024

Bittergourd with duck egg.

It was my final day here in George Town. I had some breakfast, wandered around, and checked out early. One of my friends from last night bought me lunch, and then dropped me off at the airport, where I headed home to Singapore... and back to the couch.

So long, Penang!

My little vacation there went pretty much as expected. A lot of walking in the hot weather, museums and art galleries. And food. And having to respond to work emergencies at the most awkward times possible. But hey, at least I got to sleep in a proper bed. And work on Python at night, along with some of my other little pet projects.

I suspect I've barely scratched the surface, though. At some point, I'll be back.

Your travelling dev,
T___T