Penang, Where Cuisines Are Delicacies

A car ride, three planes, eighteen hours in airports and a bus finally deposited us in Penang.

Penang is the street food capital of the region and quite feasibly the world. The general concept in Penang (these days) is that you have a bunch of carts pumping out various Malay and Penang specialities and they cluster around one of the many coffeeshops dotted all around the city. 

You order what you'd like from a cart, take a seat and order a drink, and then within five minutes you have a streaming hot plate of noodles/soup/chicken rice in front of you with a nutmeg juice/Milo/tar-like Hainanese coffee to go with it. What this meant for us was five nights of eating,

Hokkien Mee

Char Kuey Teow

Chee Cheong Fun

eating,

Kaya on toast with soft boiled eggs

Dim Sum

More Dim Sum

some more eating,

Kuey Teow Th'ng

Char Kuey Teow

Rojak

a bit more eating,

Assam (Penang style) Laksa

Pig Brain Porridge

Braised Chicken Feet and Kuey Teow Th'ng

a little bit more eating

Hokkien Mee with Mantis Prawns

Curry Mee

Hainanese Chicken Rice

and then some more eating.

Ais Kacang

Lor Mee

Chicken Porridge

It was the perfect way to reacclimatise to Southeast Asia. Within 24 hours of arriving in Penang, Nicola had thrown up our first dinner into the street, thrown up her kopi ais into a different lucky street the next morning and I was pooing black. However these obstacles didn't deter us from the eating marathon. Here's hoping all Asian related stomach issues are now behind us and it's smooth movements from here on out.

Significant Insight from the Significant Other - Even more travel tidbits...

Street food is always the best...

I live by the above statement. Morocco proved me very wrong. I find it very hard to walk past any street stall selling some kind of treat, especially when I have no idea what it is. From our rooftop in Fez I had been watching a constant flow of customers for 15 minutes buying what ever was being sold from a large silver dish on top of a small trolley. I quickly convinced Brim to run downstairs and procure us a piece. What returned was some sort of yellow, flan-ish looking thing that had been doused in cumin and chilli - looking good so far. The taste however was revolting. It was some sort of chickpea custard stuff that had a very bland, cardboard flavour and the texture was of smooth spew. Fez officially rained on my parade.

Cheapskate Travel Tip #521

On entering a shared bathroom where we were staying in Tallinn, I was annoyed to see that the hand soap had been moved from the sink to the shower, meaning I had to enter the wet area so I could wash my hands. I was ready to return to our room and have a vent to Brim about this cheap bastard who couldn't use his own soap and made my life difficult, when I noticed a familiar face wash still in the shower. Brim looked at me sheepishly when I returned with the indisputable evidence. Of course it was my husband who was the cheap bastard!

Don't try to ask for eyebrow dye in Croatia...

You look like a dick when you try to communicate this with sign language and then they look at you like a crazy because why would any Croatian woman ever need that!

Icelandic Full Moon

Our preferred method of bathing in Iceland was thermal pools. Well, given we were wild camping it was our only method of bathing! Nearing the end of our time our bathers weren't drying, inhibitions were at an all time low given the lack of actual toilets, we'd been in the same clothes for a week, we were continuously cold.... This all leads to the decision of going into a small thermal pool nude for Brim and me in my nickers (because then I can wash them at the same time - this is what travelling does to you). At the time we were the only ones there and really in the middle of nowhere (read directions here!). Brim's job was to look out over the hill in case anyone started to walk over so that we could quickly cover up. It goes without saying that of course Brim saw nothing and before long two groups of people rocked up. I think the Americans that joined us were a little shocked when it was time for us to leave and we had to climb up the rocks next to them to get out!

A First for Everything!

I suck at directions... I could get lost in a bathroom, struggle finding my bearings on maps and generally don't know which way is north. Brim can often be heard saying something along the lines of 'just leave the directions to me Nix!'. In Ohrid in Macedonia however I had a small (read GIANT) win. Wanting to make our way down to the water, Brim directed us to a busy main road instead. I explained that we had to have walked in the wrong direction because we were staying pretty much exactly between the two. A short response of 'no offence but I'm not taking directions from you' quickly put me in my place. Brim kept wandering us around, ignoring my factual evidence explaining why, in this one specific case, I was correct. Eventually he grew tired of listening to me and yelled in a huff that I could take over the directions then. I had us at the water in a few minutes. Needless to say poor Brim's ego was badly bruised and conversation at dinner did not flow!!!

Wilderness and Whisky - Islay Left us Ardbegging for More

Mull was great however it lacked something. Namely, a high concentration of the world's greatest whisky distilleries. Enter the Isle of Islay.

Eight distilleries for a population of about three thousand people. By my calculations that's one distillery per 15 people. Brilliant!!

Whisky is an acquired taste. Whisky from Islay is sometimes a leap too far for even the most discerning of whisky drinkers. The reason being is that most single malts produced on Islay incorporate malt that has been kilned by burning peat cut from the peat bogs of Islay which results in a very distinct, extremely smokey style of whisky. Notes on the nose and palate from these whiskies regularly include iodine, medicine, band aids, like chowing down on the wrong end of a cigarette. Mmm...

This is one of those circumstances in life where once you take that first step and fall for the intensely smokey whiskies of Islay there is no going back. Any future single malt without at least a hint of smoke will feel boring and bland, will lack guts and will basically taste inferior.

At times during these travels I've felt like we were cheating life and that surely we weren't awake. This was one of those times and the four nights on Islay were seriously dreamlike.

At this point it was time for me to relinquish the driving duties. I drove on Mull, Nix drives on Islay. Seemed fair to me. It also meant that the quality of conversation coming from the passenger's side went up a notch.

The best way to take in all Islay has to offer is tagging along on a few different tours.

First up was the Laphroaig Water to Whisky tour where we had lunch and a dram next to the water source,

cut our own peat (rewarded with a dram of course),

viewed the germinating grain

go from smoked malt

to a sloshy beer-like mixture

to the new spirit

ready for maturation,

tasted the finished product 9, 12 and 15 years down the track and walked away with a flask of our preferred dram self-filled from the barrel using the traditional valinch. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon.

We also claimed our square foot of land at Laphroaig and then slept on the grounds of the distillery as driving was no longer an option.

The next day we toured Ardbeg's facilities learning that not all whisky on Islay is made the same and subtle variations throughout the process result in key distinctions in the end products. The tour finished with a tasting, naturally.

It was on the final day that Islay really hit it out if the park though.

On the previous day we'd walked in to Lagavulin hoping to do a tasting when a Kiwi stopped me and said something along the lines of, "Shet bru, we've just done the Warehouse Tasting and we had like sex wheskies and it was bloody tops". Not ones to look a gift horse in the mouth, we rocked up the following morning and the Kiwi had come good for us.

Over about an hour and a half the head distiller, a man that's been at Lagavulin for over forty years, took us through six whiskies, all sucked straight from the barrel, that went from strength to strength to strength.

We finished on a 1966, the age of which I'm still trying to get my head around, but it was the 21 and 32 year olds that were truly something else, something beyond any whisky that I've tried before. They both slipped out of the glass and over your tongue like velvet and had a room of about 25, mostly men, scanning the room for a pillow to cover up their whisky induced shame. This was whisky porn at its absolute finest.

All in all, we hit up seven of the eight distilleries, imbibed innumerable drams and capped off an immense year in Europe in some serious style.

Now for a change of scenery...

Wilderness and Whisky - Otterly Magnificent Mull

It became apparent very quickly that we'd touched down in Scotland as we watched a bloke crack open a bottle of duty free whisky and take not one, not two but three swigs as he waited for his luggage to come round.

After an evening in Edinburgh that included dropping into Los Cardos for another haggis burrito and a couple at The Hanging Bat we were on the road in the loudest campervan that the isles of Scotland would ever see. We named him Puff the Magic Wagon.

The first day was spent looping around the top of the world's most famous Loch and saying hello to Nessie. She looked happy to see us.

We set up shop at a campsite at the bottom of Loch Ness. Over the last year we've heard a lot about how great the "vibe" is at particular places we've stayed. Maybe we're just getting old but the vibe at this campsite was more up our alley. People actually look at you and say hello, they're not glued to their phones and they don't stare you down and judge you based on the number of patches stuck on your pack or the lushness of your flowing locks.

After freezing the proverbials off overnight in a van without any bedding we set off for the ferry across to the Isle of Mull.

Mull is spectacularly dramatic, has you reaching for your camera at every turn and put into real life the images of Scotland that previously only existed in our heads. Here is a selection of said amazing scenery.

And of our set ups each night.

As you can see, single malts played a fairly big part in keeping us warm.

The highlight of Mull was Arthur's expertly run Discover Mull tour where, surprisingly, we weren't the youngest people on it. We learnt all manner of things about Mull's history and the wildlife that we were there to hopefully view, and managed to spot White Tailed Eagles, Buzzards, a super rare Kingfisher (that got a group of about ten adults more excited about a bird than I had ever seen), Red Deer, seals and a heap of other creatures. 

HOWEVER, the crowning glory of the wildlife on Mull is the possible sighting of an otter. We were fortunate enough to have not just one but two separate sightings and one we observed was from less than a hundred metres away as we watched him swim in with a fish, nom it down and then proceed to rub his scent all over the seaweed, in between power naps. It was one of those wildlife experiences where other than him coming over for a belly scratch, you could not have asked for anything more.

And that was Mull. Next stop, the Isle of Islay - a whisky lover's paradise.

A big shout out to Sarah and Andy Wood whose camera was able to capture what ours could not and the incredible hospitality shown by Arthur and his wife Pam who allowed us to park on their property overnight and even let us into their home for a welcome shower - obviously a few days without one was beginning to show!

The Recap - Turkey

Turkey promised. Turkey delivered.

What We'll Miss

• Learning to play backgammon after being inspired by the Turkish men wiling away the hours over cups of çay
• Istanbul cats. So many of the little furry bastads. "Big boof heads" and "little meepers" make our day
• The people of Gaziantep are the best! The cheapest place we stayed in and also the best staff by far was at a cheapo hotel in Gaziantep. We even tipped!!
• The efficiency, logic and interconnectedness of transport is mental. Turkey is a massive country but with a combination of dolmus, busses and shuttles you can get to just about any corner of it. V impressive!
• Twisters. Nix's ice-cream of choice in Turkey. One a day makes your cavities go cray
• Pistachios are in everything! Woo!!

What We Won't Miss

• Turkey is the land of guidebooks and box tickers. Lonely Planet props itself up on the sale of its guidebooks for Turkey alone. Put the guidebook away, the only way to really find yourself sometimes is to get lost, you know?
• 4am starts and overnight bus rides. We have never seen so many sunrises in our lives
• You can't drink our water so we're going to inflate the shit out of the price of bottled water for you suckers
• A thirty minute walk is no longer "just a thirty minute walk" in thrifty five degree heat
• Breakfast with cucumber and tomato was novel at first. After a month straight of it I never want to see cucumber or tomato on my breakfast table
• I'd like to say the little sweaty hot boxes that we slept in in Olympos and Kaş but given we're heading to Asia soon we haven't seen the last of them... 
• Watermelon. Please, no more watermelon ever again

The Food

It goes without saying that there was a heap of good food and a heap of flavours and aromas that will forever transport us back to Turkey but it was the apricots and figs in Malatya that pulled us out of the depths of car hire horror and stand out as the best food memory. 

The Drink

Çay is ubiquitous and it can be nothing else however open ayran does give it a run for its money.

A dishonourable mention goes to the strange, black herbal thing that we bought on the streets of Antep. It had no flavour up front, a strange herbal sweetness as it went down and then just went about numbing your entire mouth.