Penang Trip - Day 2

Continuation from the previous post...

We are on holiday but were forced to get up as early as 6.30am. Matt and Minch came to pick us up at 7.15am. We had agreed to meet Minch's friend at 7.45am for dim sum at a restaurant in Gurney Drive.

Minch friend called to say that he would be late, so we had a drink (for Mctc's benefit, because we heard that they don't serve coffee at the dim sum restaurant) at a local coffee shop. At 8.00am, there were hardly any coffee shops opened for business. In fact, we were the first customers in this coffee shop. We spent like 40 minutes searching for coffee shops!!

Still waiting for Minch friend to call, Mctc and I checked out from the hotel and went to Him Hiang to collect the biscuits we ordered yesterday. We headed down to Gurney Drive after that.

This is the restaurant we went to for dim sum. At 9.30am, the place was packed with people. I'm not much of a dim sum fan, mainly because in Seremban, we were served by waiters and waitresses who were busy pushing the food carts from one table to another. Sometimes the cart that came along didn't have what I wanted, and I would have to wait for the next one to come along.. which may take ages.

Over here in the Bali Hai restaurant, it's self-service. So many types of dim sum... wow! We took what we wanted to eat and carry them to our table. Hmm.... Seremban's dim sum restaurants should implement this system.

This was what we had.

The place is huge. It wasn't an air-cond restauant, but it was cooling. Probably because we were there at the right time. It rained for a few hours just before we arrived here. Oh.. and the toilets had air-conds. Ha! Toilets with air-cond and eating area without, this is just to weird.

Lots of live sea creatures as promised by what was written on their signboard "if it swims, we have it". My guess is, they serve dim sum in the morning and seafood dishes at night.

Lobsters, crabs, prawns, fish... whatever.....

We were at the restaurant for over an hour. Carzy isn't it, to spend so much time on breakfast. This restaurant is one of the many food shops along the gurney drive. The beach is just opposite these shops. For some reason, it is not safe to swim here.

We bought "apong" just before we left the island. They basically taste the same like the ones they sell at the Blossom Heghts pasar malam, just that these have added ingredients - a couple of sliced bananas and corn.

11.30am. We left the island via the Penang bridge which is one of the longest bridge in the world.

It took us about 7 minutes to reach the mainland. We stopped at the Juru rest stop to have our "apong".

Then we headed straight to Ipoh for lunch. I didn't know North of Ipoh was so beautiful. So many hills formed a beautiful picture of Ipoh.

We reached Ipoh at about 1.45pm and started looking for a few famous biscuit shops. We took many wrong turnings before we arrived at the correct street.

2.45am -Then we started looking for the famous "hor fun" in Ipoh. Yup, we found it. The rice noodles were so soft and slippery. We also ordered the "lobak". Should have eaten "lobak" (another famous food) in Penang, but we forgot all about it.

Right after lunch, we went to look for the Ipoh's famous white coffee. Thank God Ipoh was not a very big town. We managed to find the shop quite easily. I had my usual "teh" but this time with ice, Mctc had hot white coffee and both Minch and Matt had iced white coffee. I would have ordered the hot white coffee if it weren't for my persistent sore throat.

Minch ordered "chee cheong fun". I was surprised when she ordered this because we just had lunch. Oh, I have to say this too, Mctc and I shared a toast. At that time I was thinking.. how could I sit at a coffee shop drinking tea/coffee and not have a toast to go along with it? So we ordered only a piece and shared.

At 4pm, we left Ipoh and headed straight for Seremban. We reached our hometown at 7.08pm. Wow.. it took us about 3 hours to reach home. Matt must have kept to the speed limit. :)