My Penang Experience

Me and my group of friends always wanted to travel somewhere further, especially with our STPM done, we just wanted to take some wings and learn to fly.. Ok nvm, thats a song I sang for choir last time.. Anyhow, we did plan to go to Singapore which was ok for me but the others were tight on budget, so I guess we have to travel locally..

We took the 11pm intercity train (RM 68 both ways) from KL Sentral, which will arrive at Butterworth at around 6.30 in the morning.. I thought it will be a good timing so that we can spend a longer day there and check in was at 2pm. No train was to arrive at that time, but after.

We arrived at Butterworth station at about 7am, watching the sunrise right above us as we stepped off the coach.. The ferry jetty was just walking distance away so it wasn't really a problem to get to the island. The ferry ride was about 15 minutes.. It costs RM1.60 to get to Georgetown but its a free ride for the opposite direction.

As we reached the island, we rushed to look for our bus that could take us to our hotel, Naza Talyya. We were not familiar with the public transportation there, even if you remember the bus numbers, you just dont know where to wait for it, but due to good transport management, the bus terminal is at the jetty and its arranged from its bus series of 100, 200 and 300.. We needed to hop on bus 101 so it wasnt difficult to find.

The driver told us that our landmark was Tesco, which meant that it was walking distance to the hotel. It was good because we needed to buy food and water. We left our luggage in the hotel till check in time came. So we spent the next 4 hours hanging around in Tesco, eating and sleeping. The train ride wasn't that comfortable, so most of us couldn't sleep.















We checked in at 2pm and being tired, we took a good shower and slept till 5pm. We were suppose to go to the beach at 5pm but right when were about to go down, we received numerous of calls about a tsunami warning. Sumatra was hit by another earthquake, and Reuben actually did feel the tremors around 4pm. He did try to wake us up but this is what happened;

Reuben: Eh YK, why is the building shaking? This hotel gonna collapse already? 
YK: Huh? What?! What scorpion?!
Reuben: Errr....


Haha, YK was dreaming I guess.. But anyway, plans to swim or go to the beach was canceled. We stayed in the room for further updates, not to mention, our hotel was right beside the sea so we were quite worried about the tsunami. News came in saying that the waves will hit at around 9pm. It was about 6 so we decided to quickly grab dinner at the food court across our hotel.










Viva Local Food Heaven, never expected the food court across our hotel had such good food. The best among them was the grilled fish (stingray). Its spices were so tasty and its chilli sauce filled with onions was not so piercing hot so it was an enjoyable meal.. This is also a list of what we ate there;
1. Fried Mee Sua
2. Apam Manis
3. Loh bak
4. Ikan bakar, stingray (The Best!)
5. Belacan Fried Chicken
6. Kwonloo koay teow with duck meat
7. Satay (Chicken, Beef and Goat)
8. Fried Koay Teow (Still not as good as the one we ate in day 2)
9. Curry Mee
10. Asam Laksa (not that good, this is not the Penang laksa you were expecting)
11. Horse Shoe Crab (total disappointment, lol)

Fried Mee Sua

Apam Manis

Loh Bak

Ikan Bakar

Belacan Fried Chicken

Duck Meat Koay Teow Kwonloo

Satay

Fried Koay Teow

Curry Mee

Asam Laksa

Horse Shoe Crab

For that one day including lunch and 2 dinners, it came up to about RM30 (some food we share among 8 people) just for food.. :)

We went back to the hotel calling ourselves Tsunami Survivors.. =.=

Anyway, I would like to thank those who were concerned about us during our trip.. :)

Stay tuned for Day 2's post.. :)

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