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Chulia Street is one of the old street around in Penang. Located at Georgetown, it’s a pretty long road with pre-war houses at the both sides of the road. In the early days, the road was not that busy. Most of the houses along the road engaged in some form of small scale businesses.

Nowadays, Chulia Street is more like a Backpackers’ paradise. There are now a lot of pubs and also shops that provide backpacker type accommodation along this busy road. The price should be relatively cheap and very affordable. Dorm bed can probably be about lesser than RM40 a night or probably lesser which made this place popular among backpackers. You can always see a lot of back packers especially those from the western countries walking along this area. There are also slightly more upmarket accommodation as opposed the just dorms available.

There are also a lot of cheap cafes, travel agencies, cyber cafe and etc. It’s a very typical backpacker area in all respects.

After dark, Chulia Street will come alive with hawkers and also eating places. Hawkers will be selling local dishes after dark. It’s relatively very convenient for backpackers because food and other needed stuff are easily available.

Penang, Holiday in Penang, Cheap Accomodation, Backpacker

The New World Amusement Park in Penang will be getting a face-lift after being deserted and forgotten for years.

For those of you not familiar with the New World Amusement Park, here is a bit of historical facts I managed to gather. More fondly known to the older generations as ‘Sin Sei Kai’ in Hokkien or ‘San Sai Kai’ in Cantonese. Located near the Swatow Lane area, the New World Amusement Park was built sometime during the era of the Japanese occupation. It used to have 2 cinemas, children’s park with merry-go-rounds, small game outlets and so on. This place was one of the popular amusement spots for folks of the yesteryears. It lost its glitters some time in the early 1970s and the place was abandoned with grass growing all over.

Recently, there’s a project initiated to build a food court/hawker center on the area of the old New World Amusement Park. All the current hawkers along Swatow Lane are expected to move into the hawker center when the building is ready.

The two-hectare complex is being redeveloped at a cost of RM17 million into an all-in-one location for food and entertainment. It comprises of a 28-stalls hawker center, a covered performance stage and several blocks of shop houses.

I think this new place will be a new popular hawker center among the young generations as well as tourists. It will also bring back some fond memories of yesteryears for the older generations who used to hang out there some long time ago.

Penang, Holiday in Penang, Food Court, New World

A simple and yet delicious meal, the Hainan chicken rice is a popular dish among Penangites & tourists.

Introduced by the Hainan Chinese folks of Penang, the uniqueness of chicken rice is the rice is specially cooked using chicken soup together with some ginger, garlic & pandan leave (screwpine). It is also sometimes added with chicken stock. All those will give the rice a soften and smooth texture. And the taste is simply good. The rice will normally have a nice fragrance. Therefore, it is delicious even if you were to eat the rice alone.

Normally chicken rice is served with either boiled chicken (yes, the chicken is boiled in the water) or roast chicken. Both boiled chicken & roast chicken have their own unique tastes. So, if you have not try this before, be sure to give both varieties a try. The dish will normally come with a clear chicken soup and some specially prepared chilli sauce. The chilli sauce is not made to be spicy. It’s made to blend in with the taste of the chicken rice so that both will compliment one another.

Be sure to give this unique Hainan dish a try when you are in Penang.

Penang, Holiday in Penang, Chicken Rice, Penang Food, Hainan

This is the first post of the year and of course and most important thing of all, Happy New Year 2007 to all readers. Well, we haven’t come up with a New Year resolutions list yet … hehehe.

But… we think most importantly must be to continuosly post more good contents to the blog. Next, errmmm, since this year is Visit Malaysia Year 2007, we think we also want to make this a Visit TravelPenang.Com Year 2007 and of course many more years to come. Hahahaha. Next … and the list go on and on and on …

So, keep yourself subscribed to our site. Many more new posts to come. Cheers.

Dave & Mike.

Penang, Holiday in Penang, Happy New Year, Visit Malaysia 2007

Wantan noodles or more popularly known among locals as Wantan Mee. The ‘Wantan’ word sounds something like ‘one tonne’. Wantan means chinese dumpling. You can also refer this as Dumplings Noodles.

This local favourite can be easily found in most places in Penang. Wantan Mee is originated from the local Cantonese folks. This Cantonese egg noodles is usually served dry together with some sauce made from soya sauce and also thick dark sauce. It is also sometimes served in soup. It’s very much dependent on individual’s preferences. The dish is usually garnished with vegetables, char siew (sweet grilled pork meat), wantan (dumplings which is usually shrimp or pork balls wrapped in a thin dough) and some stalls add mushrooms for variety.

Some stalls served fried wantan as opposed to the boiled ones. Variations of wantan mee is in the sauce with which it is served. This simple dish is also a favourite among kids as it isn’t spicy. For those who prefer a touch of spiciness, try eating the noodles with green preserved chillies :-).

The police will be setting up roadblocks at the Penang Bridge as well as the ferry terminal at Weld Quay in order to prevent the Mat Rempits (illegal motorcyclist racers) from entering the island and create havoc on New Year Eve.

A crowd of about 10,000 people is expected to converge to Gurney Drive. Various uniformed personnel and policemen will be stationed at strategic locations to ensure all will be well for the countdown to the New Year celebration.

Roads leading to Gurney Drive will be closed from 8pm onwards on Sunday. The Gurney Drive roundabout will be closed from 4pm onwards.

Massive crowds are expected to converge to Gurney Drive for the Penang Golden 2007 New Year Countdown. Thousands of balloons will be released into the night sky at the stroke of midnight. The public can donate RM3 per balloon at specially set up kiosks which the money collected will be donated to the flood victims in the country.

Various celebration activities will start from 5pm onward. So, get ready, have fun, say Goodbye to 2006 and a BIG HELLO to 2007.

Well, I’m not sure if anyone realise this or probably everyone is just ignoring it since there isn’t much that can be done. Anyway, lately or should I say since ages ago, the ga’ment has been decorating our roads here with traffic lights !!!

Can you imagine driving on the road and braking not once in a while but pretty regularly. It is like on an average road, you’ll definitely pass if not stop at a traffic once like every 200 metres when you drive. And you’ll notice that the ga’ment is still actively decorating our roads with traffic lights nowadays. One good example is the Yeap Chor Ee Road. If you were to travel from one end (at Bukit Jambul) to the other (at Green Lane), you’ll need to pass by like 5 traffic lights. And it’s already like a norm to everyone that this road will come to a crawl during peak hours.

I’m just wondering that are we running out of plants that we can use for our roads? Frankly, we are getting lesser and lesser of greenery from day to day, you know? So Doc (you know who I’m referring to), do something about it ! We don’t pay you to enjoy yourself. Duh !!!

Fried Kuey Kak is another popular dish of food available in Penang. The main ingredient of the dish is white radish cake. The white radish cake is usually made up of a mixture of white radish and flour. The mixture is then steamed to create a piece of soft-textured white cake.

The white radish cake is then cut into smaller pieces and with added ingredients like bean sprouts, eggs and soya sauce, all of those are then fried together on a black flat frying pan.

When the dish is ready, it’s usually served on a piece of banana leaf. My tips here is to go for stalls that serve the dish with banana leaf. This will futher enhance the smell of the fried kuey kak.

You should be able to find this at most places around Penang. You can easily spot a stall selling fried kuey kak because the stall will have a large black flat frying pan.

So, give this dish a try when you are around.

Hokkien Noodles or Prawn Noodles is one of Penang classic popular dish. More popularly known to the local as Hokkien Mee.

Hokkien Mee usually consist of yellow noodles. One can also request to add vermicelli to the dish. Beside this noodles and vermicelli, most stall will put in egg slices, prawns, slices of pork, kangkung (water spinach) and deep fried onions as the side ingredients.

The main and most important ingredient of Hokkien Noodles is not any of those listed above but it’s the soup that comes with the dish. The soup is the main factor to determine whether the dish is nice or vice versa. The soup is cooked with blended prawn shells together with prawns, porks and some other special ingredients by the stall owners. The combinations of ingredients will give the soup a unique sweet taste.

The dish is usually served hot and served with some specially blended chili sauce which will give the dish the extra ooommphh & aroma. At certain stalls, you can also ask the stall owner to add in the gravy from Lor Mee.

The dish is widely available in most food court as well as coffee shops. You must remember to try Hokkien Mee when you are in Penang.

Last week we had a friend who got back from Singapore for a short holiday and we decided that a group of us would meet up somewhere for a meal and chat.

A friend suggested that we meet up at the Northam Beach Cafe & I was like whooaah … is he sure? Hey I have my reason here. This place to me is pretty much ‘historical’. This is one of the spot which was pretty much badly hit by the tsunami which hit Penang like 2 years ago. Anyway, what the heck, we just went since he said it’s there. Oh by the way, the food court is located at the beach front along Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah. There’s a small turning leading to this place which is directly opposite the Northam Hotel.

When we were there, my first impression was this place is not bad at all. They renovated the place after the disaster and worked on the deco and this place is as good as it was before the tsunami struck. It’s an open air concept food court and being at the beach front, this place is real windy and relaxing.

Lightings are litted up which gave the place a more relaxing ambience. Hey, no expensive deco here, ok ? It’s a food court, remember? Well, there’s a range of local food available here ready to keep your taste buds busy. Some not so common stalls I noticed here is that it has a seafood stall and also a japanese stall that sell sushi and sashimi.

So, pay a visit to the Northam Beach Cafe when you drop by to Penang. It’s a pretty relaxing place to enjoy some local delicacies with the wind softly blowing at your direction and accompanied by the sound of the waves from the sea . Cheers.