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,
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| Hokkien Mee |
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| Char Kuey Teow |
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| Chee Cheong Fun |
eating,
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| Kaya on toast with soft boiled eggs |
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| Dim Sum |
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| More Dim Sum |
some more eating,
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| Kuey Teow Th'ng |
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| Char Kuey Teow |
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| Rojak |
a bit more eating,
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| Assam (Penang style) Laksa |
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| Pig Brain Porridge |
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| Braised Chicken Feet and Kuey Teow Th'ng |
a little bit more eating
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| Hokkien Mee with Mantis Prawns |
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| Curry Mee |
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| Hainanese Chicken Rice |
and then some more eating.
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| Ais Kacang |
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| Lor Mee |
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| 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.
