Scott Barronton (00:00)
There are some places in the world where food isn't just something you eat, it's actually something that you inherit. On our Asia and Australia cruise, one of the ports we were most excited about was Penang, Malaysia. And that excitement actually started before we ever arrived. Friends of ours, Colin and Meg, who know Malaysia well,
told us that if there was one place on this journey where we would truly experience the culture through food, it was going to be Penang. Not just because the food is incredible, but because in Penang, food is the culture. So when we arrived, we knew we didn't want to skim the surface. Instead of wandering on our own,
We booked a small food and culture tour through Viator
with a local guide named Paul, someone who didn't just know where to eat, but understood why these foods matter and what's at risk of being lost. What we discovered in Penang was a story told through hawker stalls, sacred spaces, historic neighborhoods, and even the streets themselves, sometimes from the seat of a trishaw.
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Scott Barronton (01:40)
So one of the things that we asked Paul as we were starting the tour, we asked her about some of the Michelin rated hawker stalls that we had heard about. And one in particular that we had seen on Instagram. Now I knew that we were gonna have more than enough food, but I was just kind of curious. And so here was what was so interesting about what she told us. So she explained that the people that come to issue the Michelin stars, they may visit places because of
things that they had heard from other people like we had heard from this one. And then they choose the stars
based on things that they like or are familiar to them based on other things that they've had. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it reflects the taste and the preferences of the local people. it also doesn't mean that it is the best that a place like Penang in general has to offer.
And so Penang's hawker food scene isn't about the menus or the trends, it's about the specialist as we are gonna come to learn. So I think that no matter where you go or we go, like they're gonna be fantastic places whether or not they have a Michelin star. So most of the stalls she told us focus on
just one or two dishes, often recipes that have been handed down through generations. And these are perfected over decades, cooked the same way every single day by people who have spent a lifetime mastering them. And so as we describe a few of these things, we're also gonna put a link to the specific tour that we booked, ended up being a private tour. We booked it through Viator.
But she told us that you can also find her on tours by locals. You can customize the tour. She can also to make it to where you can do it for several days and go to other places and stuff like that as well. So I'm going to put those links in the show notes and how to find her. And one of the things that she actually specializes in is durian fruit tours. Now, if any of you were on Instagram and you saw
the reel that Melissa posted where we tried the durian ice cream. I don't know why anybody would go on one of these tours, but there's a lot of people who really love durian.
But as Paul took us from stall to stall, we kept thinking back to what Colin and Meg had told us, that Penang would be one of those places where you don't just taste the food. You learn the story of the people behind it. And so that was one of the things about having Paul with us is that she knew the people inside these stalls, that she worked with them on a daily basis, that she knew that they were the ones who
were the experts on the various dishes that she wanted to bring us to try.
And so we tried dishes that you're going to see mentioned again and again, when people talk about Penang, things like char kway teow, which is a flat rice noodle stir, stir fried over incredibly high heat with prawns, egg, Chinese sausage, and bean sprouts, giving it that kind of smoky, wok char flavor, if you will. and we also saw stalls serving
Hokkien Mee, a rich noodle soup layered with prawns, pork broth, and chili paste. And then one of my favorites is the Roti Kanai, which is a flaky flatbread cooked right in front of you and then served with like a curry for dipping.
And so what really stayed with us through all of this was the conversation about the future of these stalls. So many of the people cooking today are in their 60s and 70s and maybe even older. And so their children and especially their grandchildren often don't want to take over. So it's long hours, it's physical work, and it's not always much financial reward.
And so Paul compared it to the trade industries back home, like electricians and plumbing, where fewer young people are stepping in to learn that craft, even though it's essential to our way of life. And so when a hawker retires, someone needs to continue that tradition or that dish to that exact version of it that has been handed down or it's going to disappear forever, which is really sad.
And there's a few things that we want to share that we also learn. Many of these places open early in the morning and then close by early to mid afternoon. And if they run out of something, it's gone for the day. For example, the first place we stopped was closed by the time we passed by it again, earlier in the afternoon. And Paul brought, while we were there at that restaurant and she had gone to collect the various dishes.
from the different vendors. She brought us some utensils, but said, try to eat this with your hands. And she showed us how to, well, first she mixed the food all together for us. And Paul was the one who taught us about mixing the different flavors together instead of, you know, eating from the corners of the plate and trying a little bit of this and a little bit of that.
She would mix everything together on the plate. And then she said, take your hands and scoop, and, just kind of press it into a ball. because this was a rice and it's kind of a little bit of a sticky rice, I guess I should say. And, you know, with the different, ingredients, press it all together and then try to eat it with your hand. And, that's something that was
probably uncomfortable. I would say it's kind of uncomfortable for us, right? Cause we don't eat with our hands like that. But while we were on this tour, we wanted to try the food and the customs. Now in each of these restaurants, there's usually sinks right there to wash your hands. And so you can go wash your hands first before you eat.
And then one thing that we learned is that they go and they wash their hands again because there were no napkins. Now she did bring us those utensils, but I think we got pretty good at, using our hands to eat and we never got used to not having napkins. That was something that I just couldn't get used to. But as we transitioned from one stall to the next, Paul also took us through the market.
again, it's only open in the mornings and we got to sample some of the handmade candy and snacks. there was something that was very much, like a boiled peanut that we grew up with in the South and they call them ground nuts and that they, they steam them instead of boiling them. But we bought a bag of them and just like home, they were served in a brown paper bag and inside of a plastic bag.
So you just take them out, you break it open, you eat the nuts out of the metal and then you throw away the shells. And so at that point, it kind of felt a little bit like home, but being so far away. of the other things that I wanted to note was that a lot of the dishes have shrimp in them, prawns or shrimp paste or something like that. And so kind of from the beginning, I mentioned something like that.
And she looked at me like, this is going to be a problem. But we kind of anticipated that, right? Based on what we had seen in Lombok and then what we had seen in Kuala Lumpur. And so I just sort of had to, cause they also use it in the, in some of the paste and stuff too. And so I just had to be careful about, you know, not having the whole shrimp or skipping on that. And I did take a little bit of allergy medicine cause mine is not, to where I have to an EpiPen or something like that.
But I would say if you are traveling to this region of the world and have a severe allergy that you should definitely have your EpiPen ready. But it wasn't an issue. And then the other thing I wanted to mention was it was also great for us to be able to try some different beverages along with the food and her kind of guiding us as to what we would have, whether we wanted them hot or cold, that kind of thing as well.
There was one drink and I'm trying to remember what it was. It was some kind of nut. It was the nutmeg, think. Nutmeg. But she was saying that they use, and I think we've mentioned this before, but they use literally every part of animals and plants.
more than we do. And so this was a part of a nutmeg that we don't use and they had steeped it, right?
So they had made it into like a concentrated.
liquid and then they would mix that with hot water or cold water, depending on what you were having. If you're having the having it hot or cold. And that was the most flavorful drink that I think I had the whole time there. what was interesting is she actually bought some of that concentrate from them that she was going to take to a chef of hers. I think in Kuala Lumpur the next time that she visited there, she actually purchased a couple of bottles of that.
Yeah, said he was going to make ice cream with it. that's right. Yeah. And so as we wrapped up part one of the food tour, Paul took us to the wet market. So this is where all the meat and the fish and the produce is purchased. Kind of like in a separate area from like these hawker stands, And where they had just like products or
things that you could buy. And so she told us that prior to COVID, the animals would be brought here alive and they would be slaughtered here as well. But as the result of the pandemic, there's more of a regulation now with inspections and nothing here is brought here alive except for some of the fish. And so even though it wasn't quite noon yet, most of the stalls were actually already finishing up for the day. We got to walk through with her and see some of what was sold. They were kind of,
trimming up some of the last of the fish and packing some things away. We visited the Spiceman and a produce stand. And I was surprised that much of what they had in the produce stand was very common to what we grow and can get in the U.S., both fruits and vegetables and herbs. We also visited a stand that specialized in some pickled food and pickled vegetables
I didn't know if I would like the pickled fruit and vegetables, but that was really good. And it was also interesting because it was a couple that I thought, I may want to try this, may want to try that. But she did say a lot of them had some food dye and stuff added. So I think she tried to pick some that didn't have as much of like maybe the process for the food dye. And so one of the things that I think we want to reiterate about this food tour is that so much of this we probably would have missed if we had tried.
to do a quote unquote food tour on our own or if we had just walked around on our own and tried to eat from different stalls from not only the best stands, the places that she took us to what to order, to how to eat it, to the history and all of this that we're sharing with you, we just wouldn't have known. We would have just tried some random foods that we may not even have known what they were called.
and we definitely wouldn't have ventured into the wet market and, understood how these things have, even changed over the last few years. Yeah. We even saw an example of that when we got to Singapore and we were on our own, we hadn't booked a tour. We decided we would go and have lunch at one of these, hawker centers. it's a very famous hawker center, but when you go in, there's just so much to choose from. And so you don't know.
where to go. You don't know which stall to go to. You don't know what to order. And you did, you just kind of ended up ordering something.
Well, between food stops to give our bellies a little bit of a break, Paul took us through some different neighborhoods in Penang, explaining how history, culture, and belief systems have really shaped the city. And one of the most fascinating things that we learned came from a feng shui perspective. Traditionally, people in Penang avoided living on corners or intersections. And because in the feng shui,
The corners are believed to be places where energy moves too fast or becomes unstable. And that's why you'll often see shops and restaurants on the corners instead of homes. Those buildings act as buffers absorbing and redirecting the energy while residential spaces sit slightly inward where things feel calmer and a little more balanced. And so once you know this, you start seeing the city just a little bit differently.
the layout suddenly makes more sense. She also took us to a Taoist temple right there in town where she helped us understand a lot of the traditions that we easily would have missed on our own. Cause like on our own, we would have just walked in and said, this is beautiful. And this is peaceful.
we should also say that Paul was Chinese.
But Malaysia is a melting pot of cultures. And I think we talked about that in the episode with Colin and Meg and a couple of other episodes. So you get a whole lot of different cultures, but to help you understand what we're going to talk about next, to understand that she is Chinese or is of Chinese heritage.
The temple was absolutely stunning. Intradicate carvings, bold colors, so many layers of symbolism everywhere you look. So we spent a lot of time outside before we even went inside and she was pointing out some things. So dragons and gods and incense coils hanging from the ceiling. All of them very intentional and very meaningful. And so she explained how people come here not just to worship.
but then also to seek guidance, protection and balance in their everyday lives. So it was very, very calming, respectful, quiet and very deeply personal, not rushed or touristy at all. And we spent a good bit of time here. She explained so many different things to us from the layout of the place itself with the opening in the center.
to the different altar areas and also the process that is used to seek guidance and she also demonstrated that for us. The music that was playing and the way the wind moved through was just so calming and peaceful. I literally could have stayed there all day. Yeah, I think so and literally I think I must have taken about 2,000 pictures just inside that one temple. And the other thing I think that was like an aha moment for
me in this is she said a lot of Chinese people come to Penang now to learn about and to understand more about the religion because in the past few decades, those things have been stripped away from mainland China and people haven't been allowed to
worship in these temples, a lot of them were torn down. They haven't been able to pass down these traditions and this part of their culture and their heritage. And so now they come to Penang where these temples still exist, where this religion is still practiced and to learn about those. And I just know I had never really thought about that. And so I think that was really meaningful to me.
Well, on our final food stop, we went to a restaurant that was a little more, I would say leaning towards Indian cuisine. But by this time we were like pros. knew how to mix the flavors together before enjoying the meal. And also by this time we were ready to enjoy something cold to drink. So we took a chance on drinking an iced version of their tea. And I think there was a juice as well.
And still don't know if this is something that we truly needed to worry about in Malaysia or not, whether to have the water and the ice. But there was a few times where we had it and really didn't have any kind of consequences as a result of it. One of the things that we heard on the ship was the tour leader said that most people don't get sick from the water.
It's usually about being dehydrated. So their bodies are dehydrated. I don't know if that's true or not, but, I was willing to give it a chance, because I was looking forward to something nice and cold to drink. And then to wrap up the experience, Paul helped us to get a tri shawl, which is one of those three wheeled bicycle taxis that are iconic in Penang. And so
Melissa and I imagine we're sitting up front in this thing that's like a bench kind of laid back. and we failed to mention we had gone to a market and needed to buy a suitcase. And, I think we'll tell more about that story later, but, we had the suitcase in our lap or, at our feet. I had my crutches, and the
the guy driving us sat behind us on like a bicycle seat and he would steer, using us up front. And so it's a quite an interesting experience, doing a tour this way, but she got him arranged and what he was gonna do was take us around for about an hour.
show us some of the local sites that we hadn't seen while we were on the food tour, and then get us back to the ship in time to embark. And so he took us around and showed us some of Penang's most famous street art installations. You can find these all over Instagram. You can look them up. But they had local artists who would take things like a bicycle and they would
mount the bicycle to the wall and then they would paint pictures of like children riding the bicycle. And so there's several of these all over Penang and he took us on a tour to see the most famous ones. And I would say these murals aren't just kind of something random that they put there. They tell stories about, either childhood or some of them are kind of humorous.
Some of them tell a little bit of a story about the culture. And they also had these wrought iron.
What would you call those things? They were art installations, but was wrought iron shaped into pictures. And then sometimes they would, make fun of themselves. Sometimes they'd make fun of all the tourists getting off the ship, but they told a little bit about the culture and the story of that area of Penang where we were visiting. Yeah. And this was really, as Scott mentioned, he had his crutches. And so he had
used as crutches, during our food tour, not having the knee scooter, to just to kind of make it a little bit easier. We didn't know what the situation as far as using that on the sidewalks and different things would be. And so this just gave us an opportunity for very inexpensively to be able to see the rest of the things that we kind of wanted to see before we got back on the ship. And our tri-shall driver also happily became our photographer. So he knew exactly where to go, where to stop.
what angles work best, and then he would wait for the street to clear. He would show us what to do, like especially on the ones with the bicycles. He'd show like, Scott, you pull this way or look like you're pulling this way and you look like you're pulling this way or sit this way. He would wait for the street to clear and then take our picture. So it was definitely less of just us riding around. It was definitely a different kind of cultural experience and a curated experience as well.
So he would tell us to hop out and I would give him my phone and then he would tell us how to pose. This is not something that you and I would have ever done without him, right? Because if people are waiting Scott's like, hurry up, hurry up. Like people are waiting, and feeling uncomfortable but he would, he would just tell us what to do and take our picture. So it's a fun memory for us to, have these different pictures and, feel like, okay, I'm supposed to be posing this way as well. So.
Between laughs, we enjoyed the opportunity to see more of Georgetown, which is what this area of the town is called, just purely as tourists and just having fun. So at one point he dropped us off at the end of one street. And that's probably the most famous mural street. There was tons of people, lots of trendy shops. And then he said, walk down, take some pictures, and then I'll meet you on the other end of the street.
So as Scott mentioned, we had that large suitcase that we had just purchased and he took that with him. Paul had also helped us negotiate. Okay, here's what we're gonna do. Here's the price, that kind of thing. But of course we were gonna pay him at the end. So we didn't worry about him, like,
taking off with the suitcase or, even when I would hand him the phone, we didn't worry about any of that. Like it was fine as well too, because we were going to pay him at the end, He wasn't going to run off because he wasn't going get paid, you know, until the end. But also I felt like it was, this area is completely safe too, She also mentioned there was a couple of alleyways that they have turned into Instagram spots.
as well. look like alleys, but they've painted them and added photograph spots. And so she said that's really deterred people from just like hanging out there or staying there or anything like that because they've become this photographed place. I thought that was a really good idea that maybe other places in other cities should like take notes of.
So he also took us after we kind of did our photograph tour and we also didn't mention another one, cats are a big thing too. So lots of them have cats. He took us in this cat shop where they have some of them too. So he also took us to the floating Chinese temple. There he walked around with us. He left the Trishaw park. We left that suitcase and then we rode through little India as well.
We also asked him to take us to an ATM that we needed to stop because I accidentally had spent the rest of the cash that Scott was counting on to pay him. This was our last stop for needing Malaysian currency. So we were like, we need to stop at an ATM real quick and then get us back to the ship.
on time. our very last stop, he said he wanted Scott to get in the back. Like he had been driving me the whole time. So that was our very last photo op. So that was, that was a lot of fun. So I feel like we almost got like two very different tours in one. Matter of fact, even with Paul, I didn't realize that we were going to do the cultural part of it too. So we literally spent how many hours would you say? I don't know, five or six hours, five hours at least with her. I don't even know.
She kept having to call and explained to her boss that we were taking a little bit longer, but, I think she was actually enjoying the tour as well. but yeah, we, it was longer than I think it was scheduled for. Yeah, but it was fantastic. And then we got this bonus tour. of course there's so much more to see and do and Penang, that we would go back for places that we could eat. If we come back, we didn't even scratch the surface.
But even so, I do feel like we saw and did a lot. And then, like I said, almost had two tours in one. Yeah. And I want to say that that tri-shawl tour that we got, it was like 20 bucks for the whole hour and him hopping off and taking all the pictures and stuff like that. came out to around 20 bucks.
Well, Penang surprised us not because it was flashy or grand, but because we connected with locals and they made us feel welcome. From hawker stalls where recipes are at risk of being lost to neighborhoods shaped by century old beliefs to art that lives right on the walls of the city. Penang tells its story quietly if you're willing to listen. And looking back, and Meg were absolutely right.
If you want to understand Penang, you start with food, not just what's on the plate, but look who's cooking it and why they're still doing it and what happens if those traditions disappear. If you're visiting Penang on a cruise or planning a longer stay, we can't recommend a local food and culture tour enough. It gives context to what you're seeing and meaning to what you're tasting. Because in Penang, every dish
Every street and every pedal stroke on a tri-shawl carries a story. And we're really glad we took the time to hear it.
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