Part 1: Penang Trip 4D3N (Day 1)

Planning itinerary is quite fun for me especially because I love to be able to know what is going on when I go to unfamiliar places for a vacation, and looking up for various food to try and places to explore. I am a terrible navigator outside, so I much rather plan an itinerary and let others follow and lead. And that’s what I did for Penang trip with le bf’s family few weeks back 🙂 The itinerary is kind of planned in consideration for le bf’s parents so it will be more of a relaxing trip for them without any rush so that all of us can enjoy ourselves.

Brief Itinerary (Split into 3 parts in my blog posts)

Day 1:
1635-1700: Arrival at Penang International Airport
1700-1900: Check-in at The Northam Hotel
1900-2100: Dinner at Gurney Drive
2100-2200: Shopping at Gurney Plaza

Day 2 :
0730-0900: Breakfast at the hotel (The Coffee House)
0900-1300: Free and Easy Tour by Ocean Pacific
1200-1300: Wai Thai Lim (Buy foods)
1300-1400: Lunch at Restoran Pinang Peranakan
1400-1430: Famous Teochew Chendul @ Lebuh Keng Kwee
1430-1800: Free and Easy Tour (Continued)
1800-2000: Dinner at Gurney Plaza
2000-2200: Shopping at Paragon Mall

Day 3:
0830-0930: Breakfast at The Coffee House
0930-1100: Walking around
1100-1300: Cheng Fatt Tze Mansion (Guided tour)
1300-1400: Love Lane (Cat cafe)
1400-1500: Temple
1500-1600: Penang Perankan Mansion
1600-1700: Tea break at Famous Teochew Chendul
1700-1900: Rest at Hotel
1900-2200: Dinner at Northam Beach Cafe

Day 4:
1000-1100: Breakfast at Zhong Hua Restaurant
1130-1230: Checking out Hotel
1230-1330: Ghee Hiang
1330-1500: Lunch at hawker near The Northam Hotel
1530-1600: Check in Airport
1730-1930: Home sweet Home

 

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Day 1

Arriving at Penang International Airport, we went to ask for cab (10 seater) to fetch us to The Northam Hotel which was about 30 minutes ride. The Northam Hotel is a 5-star hotel which was located at Gurney Drive. Initially, I was thinking of booking G hotel because of its convenient location near the mall but it was too expensive for my liking so le bf and I sourced for the next suitable hotel which can still give us the comfort and luxury without over stretching our budget. In the end, we decided on The Northam Hotel because it has easy access to the historical and cultural landmarks. The downside is that there is a mixture of good and bad reviews but we still went along with it.

Once we reached the hotel, it was really quiet with only the bell boys and receptionists around so we reckoned that we might be late check-in since there was not a single soul. We booked studio suite for two rooms and requested for both to be on same level, however, they upgraded one room to junior suite (I think) as they have lack of studio suite on same floor. The junior suite room doesn’t have sea view and there are partition which we didn’t like it so we called the receptionist and ask for a studio room which different level.So in the end, we got two studio suite rooms with sea view and the rooms were fantastic!

It was very spacious, and I love the toilet! There are two toilets in a room. I am a kind of person who is very particular about toilets so I was really very satisfied with the toilets because the interior was lovely and refined with homely earth tone finishing (the kind of color tone I love). Not to mention, there is a water message Jacuzzi tub!

We headed out of hotel and walked down Gurney Drive as we wanted to try the hawker at Gurney Drive which was considered famous in Penang, And boy…it’s 20 minutes walk!

We happened to pass by a seafood restuarant so we went in to take a look around as there were quite a number of people inside. From what I read in reviews of other blogs, you can choose the seafood yourselves for your own meal.

We reached the hawker when we also passed by an artist who drew animals on tote bags! Pretty talented!

 

The food at Gurney Drive Hawker:

Claypot chicken rice served in a plate. And as I recalled, it was not fantastic at all. I still prefer the claypot chicken rice located at Bukit Batok. The best claypot rice I ever tasted! But let’s skip this for now.

Surprisingly, I felt that the non-spicy Char kway teow tasted much more better than the spicy one. The spicy char kway teow tasted rather bland, I can only taste the spiciness. But for the non spicy dish, you can feel the enticing sweet and smoky fragrant flavour in your mouth.

It was expensive and not worth the price. I do not how to describe the taste, but it simply tasted very bland and I just don’t feel all that impressed by it.

I am a sotong lover but I just doesn’t like this dish because it also tasted so bland! I wish they should have marinated the sotong or something because it felt like eating tasteless meat.

I am not a fan of malaysian prawn noodle (soup based) because I prefer the dry version like the one we had in Singapore. But nevertheless, le bf’s family enjoy the dish, especially the soup.

Not at all fantastic either. It was also a bit tasteless. Goodness…I read good reviews about the hawker but somehow, most dishes we tried seem too bland for my liking.

I find the dish decent with generous amount of oysters. Not as bad as the other dishes.

 

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After the dinner, Le bf and I wasn’t sure if we went to the correct hawker where it garnered lots of good reviews because we didn’t walk down further. So I can’t say if its the hawker that is famously raved about. We went Gurney Plaza to shop around before going back to hotel as we were too full!

Food coma.