Penang, Malaysia.

MMMMM! Penang Beef. Ahllllllllll.


Penang, Malaysia. Where’s the beef? For those that do not understand, Penang Beef is one of the favorite dishes, for some of us, at Thai restaurants.

The name Penang is used for the Island as well as a state. We docked at the island. It is a also the city of Georgetown and the state capital. It is mostly Muslim and is visited as a resort area.

The dock is nothing but warehouses and does not look too friendly for cruise ships. There are no modern bumpers, just tires that mark Up the hull. Once off the ship it is just a short walk through a warehouse to cabs and buses. We docked at about 1:00 PM and took a tour that started at 2:15 PM. It was labeled Penang and its snake temples. It is very hot here also but these buses had very good air. The downtown area had many interesting buildings. Many modern high-rises and houses. Many of the houses were designed the same. These large houses were almost all white and square with double bays on the front. Simple but laid back elegant. All were well kept and had nice landscaping. The majority of nicer housing was mostly high rise, however. No evidence of poor in this area.

Traffic was pretty heavy in the down town area but very light once out of town. We saw a lot of the countryside on the way thru Batu Ferringhi. This was the area of luxury beach hotels. If there are any Star Trek fans out there, you will remember the Ferringhi. This might be where they got the name. It does not mean ugly people nor does it mean dishonest money grubbing people, as they were on Star Trek. It means stranger.

Next we went to a handicraft factory where they made batik. We had seen better elsewhere and had already bought enough. Now it was on thru fruit and spice orchards. We stopped at a farmers stand to see the various fruits. We then continued on to the snake temple. The roads were very well paved but narrow and winding so badly that the bus could not fit on most of the curves without using both lanes and the dirt shoulders. There were also one lane bridges and we were going up hill. The snake temple was smoky and smelly from burning incense and not very clean. The big deal was three little snakes they picked up and let people touch. They claimed that at one time hundreds of snakes would crawl all over this temple and most of them were poisonous. Wagler Pit Vipers.

The trip back to the ship went by their longest bridge in SE Asia, the Panang bridge. It is about seven miles long. We went through some slum areas but they were not nearly as bad as the outer slums we had seen in other places. The Chinese section was the only area where they had stores below and apartments above. All these areas were separate from other ethnic areas like the Indian’s, etc.

I looked everywhere I could think of but still no Penang Beef. The best I could find was the lamb curry on the ship that evening. It’s pretty good but not Penang Beef with the sweet, sticky, coconut flavored Thai rice.

Beefing Sherm Out

(Posted on behalf of Sherman Rootberg)