Penang Again
We returned to Penang after spending a week in Kuala Lumpur to do some soul searching. Do we move forward with our plans to acquire an MM2H visa and live the expat life of golfing and watercoloring every day? Or do we abandon the expat life in exchange for the nomad life, wandering from country to country and living in luxurious hotels while spending our free time on activities like golfing and watercoloring?
It’s Diwali here in Malaysia. Let’s celebrate!
Colored sand art welcomed Diwali (Deepavali) throughout the city. This masterpiece was handcrafted in the lobby of the Jazz hotel where we spent a few weeks
After returning to Penang from Kuala Lumpur, we had planned to spend time in Tojung Tokung, more of an expat area. I hadn’t done much to connect with American expats, but this would be the area to do so.
View of Tojung Tokung from our 28th floor window of the Jazz Hotel
The landscape of getting the MM2H visa had shifted on us. We stayed almost 2 weeks at the Jazz Hotel near Straits Quay Mall and discovered an excellent medical clinic and our favorite Mexican restaurant. It was an expat area so had high end supermarkets and shops.
Our plan was to get our immunizations abroad as the same immunizations in the USA were not covered by health insurance and would cost nearly ten grand. Here in Malaysia, they cost only a few hundred dollars. We got our Japanese Encephalitis vaccine and our Dengue Fever shots, not yet available in the USA, at the Osel Clinic in Straits Quay Mall.
Much of the time at the Jazz Hotel also included eating at a fine Japanese restaurant where we learned about Japanese tasting menus called Omakase.
Entrance to the Straits Quay mall, a short walk from the Jazz Hotel, where one could enjoy outdoor Zumba classes twice a week
On the day we decided to visit Penang Hills, supposedly a very interesting attraction in nature and beauty, we wound up going at the beginning of Diwali, a huge holiday, so everyone and their mother went to the Penang Hills and the wait to take the funicular up was 90 minutes and probably as long to return. Hard pass.
Instead, we discovered a local restoran (malay for restaurant) called Ayer Itam in Kempang Melayu Flat that specializes in Nasi Kandar fare, a meal where you select a protein and then they add rice and several sauces simmering for hours. Delicious! We had to wait in line with locals for quite a while before being served and we were the only obvious foreigners there.
Hot Pot lunch before switching hotels
We had time to kill before heading to the beaches of Batu Ferringhi so we finally ate at the Chinese restaurant next to the hotel. When we entered the server was kind to inform us that he only had chicken soup. We thought that would be okay for lunch and sat down. The chicken soup was only the base for the hot pot that came with plates of prawns and fishes and vegetables and other foods to cook in the chicken broth. What an experience and a delicious delight and highly unexpected.
Gitty’s got the rhythm after a few drinks at the Jazz Hotel bar
Shangri-La Rasa Sayang has excellent pools, beach and spa
We received welcome drinks upon arrival at our next location, the Shangri-la Rasa Sayang resort. The property has two wings, the Garden wing and the Rasa wing. We decided to stay in both and move halfway, a process made infinitely easier by the hotel staff. The Rasa wing included afternoon tea service and evening cocktails with small bites and exclusive access to an adults only pool.
The Chi spa at the resort had excellent massages. Howler leaf monkeys roamed the pitch and putt, and a large iguana liked traversing the swimming pools, so paradise!
The main dining facility was called Spice Market and they had chefs for every culture from Western and Indian to Malay and Chinese. The breakfast buffet covered a lot of counters with breakfast foods from India and China to pancakes and omelette and sushi. It had everything and holding back from eating too much was difficult.
Gitty and I took every opportunity to play a few games of billiards at FIP.
The FIP Bar prepared the best cocktails, offered live music on the weekends (mostly 70s and 80s songs), and had a pool table!
They had a bistro out by the main pool area under a tiki hut next to the beach where you could enjoy live music every evening.
Gitty has the adult only pool all to herself
We took an excursion to a rainforest one morning where a knowledgeable guide led us through some of the trails identifying the plants and the occasional birdsong. We didn’t see many birds, but heard a lot of nature and really enjoyed the walk. It was hot and grueling and we looked forward to the shower and the pool afterwards, but it was a rewarding experience all the same.
Another trip into nature was a visit to the botanical garden in Penang. Other than locals and joggers, there wasn’t many visitors to this natural habitat. Several of the exhibits behind enclosures were unavailable and in repair. The paths were well maintained, though, and there was plenty of nature to experience.
We enjoyed the pitch and putt, a 9 hole 3-par course on the property, on a number of occasions.
One of the local restaurants outside of the resort that we recommend is Ferringhi Gardens, where we ate delicious Char Keay Teow. We also ate at Andrew’s Kampung, a short walk from our resort and the food there was also very tasty and dining was an overall interesting experience.
Prosit
We had booked Oktoberfest Penang early and it fell on that Saturday so we took a Grab to the German Malaysian Society in George Town where a huge Oktoberfest tent was erected. The set up was a lot more chaotic than the Oktoberfest in KL and we found it more difficult to connect with local expats. We ate some German food, drank some German beer, had a pretzel and listened a bit to the German Oktoberfest music. It was outdoors under a tent and rather warm, and it didn’t compare favorably to the Oktoberfest experience in KL which was geared more towards businesses. This one was definitely geared towards families and the music reflected as much. Where we danced the night away in KL, there was no dancing on the stage filled with little rugrats and their rugractivities. So we buggered out early and Grabbed it back to our resort where we could catch some live 70s music in our favorite lounge.
We scoured through our suitcases desperate to reduce our load. We are waffling between the life of an expat and the life of a nomad but decided traveling with 7 suitcases were way too many. We hatched a plan to discard the unnecessaries, squeeze everything we don’t need or want into two suitcases and ship them to our daughter for later retrieval.
Hi to all of our dear friends from Ferringhi Gardens Restaurant. Know that we are missing you, think of you often, and wish you were sitting at this table with us. Until we meet again
I never connected with the local American expat community, which was more difficult once we left Tojung Tokong for Batu Ferrenghi, but by then we had already started seeing the writing on the wall. We reluctantly left Shangri-La Rasa Sayang but look excitedly forward to our next destination.
