Arriving in Penang it’s a 40 minute drive from the airport up the east coast of the island to Georgetown, with the Strait of Malacca to your right. The Malacca Straits is one of the most important shipping lanes in the world, used to carry a quarter of the worlds oil, but has recently become prone to piracy. Look out for the Penang Bridge which takes traffic from the island to the mainland, at 13.5 km one of the longest bridges in the world.
We’d opted to stay on Gurney Drive, one of the more popular seafront destinations, where a 5 star hotel can be had for as little at £40/night. Gurney Drive is also home to the most famous street food hawker stall area in Penang. The hawker area is a collection of food stalls, each specialising in a single dish, clustered around a number of communal tables.
How to order
There’s a wide selection of dishes on offer. Ordering is a bit of an art amongst the rushed stalls, but the process is roughly as follows:
- Browse the stalls – those thronged with Malays will most likely be the best.
- Find a table nearby. It may be crowded in which case it’s fine to sit with other people, and hopefully get recommendations.
- Put something on the table to mark it as taken – better to leave a tissue or magazine than your expensive camera…
- Some tables are numbered, which is useful. Some aren’t.
- Go and order your food. Either give them your table number or just point and hope.
- Drinks work the same way.
- Pay when the dish is brought to your table. If you’re sitting right next to the stall they’ll often defer payment until you get up to leave.
- You’ll be given cutlery appropriate to the dish but napkins can be in short supply – take your own.
- Enjoy!
A melting pot of Thai, Indian, Chinese, Arabic and Malay culture has created some of the most interesting recipes in the world, which combined with the availability of ingredients, makes it a great place to eat. Some of the most famous Penang specialities are:
- Assam Laksa – A fish and tamarind based broth
- Char kway teow – flat noodles fried with a combinations of meats and/or seafood
- Nasi Kandar – rice served with a number of curry side dishes
A quick dose of reality – Gurney Drive is quick, cheap, very tasty and that most overused of words on travel blogs recently, authentic, but despite what some more flowery websites will tell you it isn’t exactly a bewildering assault on the senses/an overwhelming maelstrom of flavours and textures/the best food I’ve ever had/blah etc. Maybe we were unlucky in our choices and recommendations – it was a fun experience but the food was nothing better than ok if you compare it to an exquisite (and similarly priced) restaurant like Ginger in Kuala Lumpur. It wasn’t until Kota Kinabalu a week later that we found a true food oasis in a desolate wasteland of mediocre nibbles1.
1I’m not good at flowery, as may be apparent
