Fly In For Penang Food Trail

A day-long fly-drive package from KL to Penang has its heritage and food draws, writes Andrew Drummond Law

USUALLY I just drive to Penang. From central Kuala Lumpur, it’s a relaxing four to five-hour drive along the 350- kilometre section of the North-South Expressway, a couple of food and toilet stops along the way included. With heavy rain or during a public holiday, it can take longer as the increased traffic levels jam up at both ends of the busy route.

This time around, I decided to try a fly-drive from Subang Airport in Kuala Lumpur to Penang.

It’s a great opportunity for an action-packed day of heritage exploration, fuelling up along the way with some of Penang’s delicious food. It can get very tiring and hectic, but still fun.

EARLY BIRDS

We wake up at 6.30am, have coffee, shower and wait for our 7am taxi pick-up from Bangsar. Forty minutes later we are already checking in at Firefly’s counter.

The last time I used Subang Airport was nearly eight years ago, when I flew to Koh Samui in Thailand. Then it was a huge and half empty terminal and you wondered if there were enough passengers to fill up one plane. And there were very limited food and drink options. This time I am met with a shiny, bustling international airport used by three airlines.

There are loads of places to eat and drink for every budget, serving fast food, local and international dishes.

Subang is more KLIA than LCCT, and relatively stress-free for an airport. Check-in is quick, friendly and efficient. And we are very pleased we don’t have to check in our four-month-old daughter’s stroller, until actually boarding the aircraft. That means we could walk around, have a cup of coffee, eat some curry puffs, and she could sleep a little longer in her comfortable baby seat.

At 8.30am we are called to the waiting lounge and we start boarding 15 minutes later. There are no sky bridges, so we have a short uncovered walk across the tarmac to the parked aircraft. Luckily there are bright orange Firefly umbrellas for when it rains.

Firefly’s ATR turboprop aircraft is single-aisle, with two seats on either side. The very front row has the most legroom, but as we have a young infant we couldn’t sit there for flight safety reasons. Although the seating is cosy, there’s just enough space for my 1.83-m, 105kg frame. It’s only an hour-long flight, so no major worries.

We take off at 9.06am, four minutes ahead of our scheduled departure time.

Once we reach cruising altitude and unbuckle our seatbelts, the flight crew serve beverages and a light snack of biscuits and muffins.

ARRIVAL IN PENANG

Forty-five minutes later we land in Penang. After a quick baggage pickup and nappy change, we are at the yellow Hertz counter by 10.15am.

When signing for the car, make sure you pay the RM25 extra for better insurance coverage. Otherwise you will be stuck with a very high RM2,000 insurance deductible. It’s a high excess, given the probability of a minor scrape when driving or parking anywhere in Georgetown. The double-parked cars and Penang’s narrow streets can be challenging at the best of times.

After checking the vehicle all over for existing minor marks and scratches, it is time to... change another nappy!

AND SHE’S OFF!

Finally at 10.52am we pull out of the airport terminal and head north towards Georgetown. The 17-km drive to Jalan Magazine takes only 28 minutes.

If you’ve ever driven around Georgetown before, you’ll know that the one-way system combined with poorly signposted roads makes finding some of the smaller side roads quite difficult. Luckily I have a secret weapon in the car — a Penangite for a wife. Her patience, lightning-fast reactions, eagle eyes and defensive driving skills are fit for purpose. She leaves other drivers in her wake, ...no mercy shown.

We switch seats, she belts up (the seat belt) and revs the engine. We are in safe hands. She knows the terrain like the back of her hand, and off we go.

Our first stop is to have our second, albeit a very late breakfast, of the day. We head towards Jalan Transfer to find the Famous Roti Canai stall. It’s a no-frills outdoor food stall, and it is already beginning to get very hot and steamy on a beautiful, blue, and cloudless day.

My wife stays in the car looking after our daughter with the aircon up high, while I chat to the cooks. I sample some delicious chicken curry with roti telur and roti canai — my favourites. All washed down with a mug of milo ais.

Sitting on the bench chowing down, I notice that directly opposite is my next destination. The Roti Benggali Maliia Bakery. I order another roti canai with chicken curry for my wife, and settle my bill.

There’s nothing quite like the smell of freshly baked bread in the morning. I pack half a dozen butter and kaya sandwiches to keep us going for the rest of the morning. But it smells so good, we wolf it down within minutes back in the car.

Now feeling very full and anxious to explore some local heritage sites, we head towards The Blue Mansion.

LOCAL HERITAGE

The close-by Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion was the recipient of the year 2000 Unesco Heritage Conservation award. It’s less than a kilometre’s drive away, and parking spots are at a premium during the lunchtime rush hour.

So if you already have a good parking spot, keep it, and walk 15 minutes to the northern end of Leith Street. You can’t miss the indigo-blue outer wall of the main building from the roadside. Built at the end of the 19th century by Cheong Fatt Tze, a very famous local merchant, it has 38 rooms, five courtyards and seven staircases.

Currently it’s being used as a boutique guesthouse with 16 themed bedrooms, although you may go on a guided tour of the parts not used by the guests.

Your guide will regularly remind you that you are prohibited from taking any photographs inside of the house — only the exterior. Mark an hour in your itinerary for a trip here.

The building’s distinctive bright blue colour is from mixing lime with natural blue indigo dye. The dye was imported by the British during colonial times from India.

The building itself is a masterful mix of feng shui-friendly Southern Chinese architectural styles and materials imported from the UK. It’s a great opportunity for some photographs of the unique exterior.

The next stop is to cool down somewhere quiet and shaded, so off I head to Western Cemetery, a strange and somewhat spooky place to cool down, you may think, but one with a difference. En route I leave my wife and daughter at the Eastern & Oriental Hotel to do a nappy pit stop and freshen up. Overlooking the water off Farquhar Street, the hotel is a very pleasant place for a soothing cup of tea.

Back in the cemetery, off Jalan Sultam Ahmad Shah, with the help of the cemetery’s map you’ll eventually come across the burial place of Captain Francis Light. He was the founder of Penang as the British settlement, known then as the Pearl of the Orient. His tomb stands tall and well maintained.

If you have the time, head eastward to Fort Cornwallis, where Captain Light first landed on August 11, 1786. When exploring the star-shaped fort you’ll find its magazine houses, small chapel building and old cannons.

We’re all starving by now, so we head off to Bangkok Lane in search of the famous spicy mee goreng found at the Seng Lee mamak coffee shop. We’ve heard great things about it, and also wanted to try its mee rebus dish. But from there it all starts to go seriously pear-shaped.

A crying, hungry and overheated baby in the back, two already very tired and hungry adults in the front, and no parking spots to be found anywhere. And the traffic.

POTLUCK AT PLAN B

So we drive up to Fettes Park in Tanjong Bungah to explore other food options there. It’s a good 4-km drive away, and it takes us 15-minutes to get to. We try potluck, and get lucky.

Delicious Hokkien mee, mee goreng, Penang laksa and of course, char koay teow. Even the selection of economy rice dishes was delicious.

We’ve missed Pulau Tikus for lunch, where so many tasty local dishes can be found, but we’ve found another place to park, relax and eat a very late lunch, and away from the scorching midday heat.

Our final stop is the Pinang Peranakan Mansion, also known as the Green Mansion. It may not be a Unesco heritage site, but we can take photos inside and explore all of its different furnished rooms.

A huge dining room with stained glass window, extravagant staircases, a kitchen and a huge and very eclectic medicine cabinet. But it’s the odds-and-ends that I enjoy looking at the most. My favourites are the huge antique camera, and the old metal ice-shaving machine. An hour is long enough to enjoy this museum.

By now it’s late afternoon and we have a choice. Either avoid the jam and head for the airport. Or wait and head back later in the evening.

Get your timing wrong and it can be as long as a 90-minute journey, especially when raining, and you hit that traffic bottleneck by the bridge.

Luckily I have cheated. Rather than return to KL after a very long and tiring day, I’m spending the next three days in Penang. It seems a shame to visit Penang just for a day when you can spend the whole weekend enjoying its food and heritage.

Most importantly, no visit to Penang is complete without having nasi kandar for a late dinner. A visit to Butterworth to Malaysia’s first Nasi Kandar Pelita outlet in Taman Chai Leng is next.

But as always, be prepared for the traffic jam crossing the bridge. Is it worth the jam? Too right.

- NST