Kek Lok Si temple 
Hard Rock Hotel Penang
Street along Pulau Tikus 
Penang Botanical GardenMy previous trip to Penang was in Jan 08 with a few ex-colleagues. I have long wanted to visit Penang after George Town obtained the status as one of the world heritage site from UNESCO, together with Melaka last year. For the locals, Penang has long established its brand as our food heaven in Malaysia.
Three of us (Wong, Keong & myself) made a tour to Penang recently from 26-28th Nov with the objectives of revisiting this old city as long as “food-searching”. Wong was our driver while I sponsored the fuel with my fuel card. We departed from Puchong on 8:00am and we stopped by in Ipoh for a late breakfast. Both Wong and Keong are from Ipoh and it is usual to detour from the highway to their hometown for food.
Due to the late booking, we have only managed to get a room in D'Feringghi Hotel which actually sucks. We attempted to check around for better hotel rooms but it was not successful due to the public holiday on the following day. Finally we settled with the upgraded Deluxe suite for RM260.00 per night after a couple of attempts. We were quite surprised to see that majority of the guests for this hotel was from the middle-east countries.
Without further delay we went to our first destination at Kek Lok Si Temple (极乐寺) located in Air Itam. The temple is well maintained despite its long history of more than 100 years. The latest construction seen in the temple is the octagon pavilion to shelter the statue for the Goddess of Mercy (Kuan Yin). We noticed that the workers were busy in the final touch-up stage to get ready for the consecration ceremony on the 6th Dec 2009. After the temple visit, we had the Asam Laksa noodle at the hawker stall nearby and it was indeed fantastic.
We missed the curry fish head in our previous trip as we could not locate the restaurant. In this around, we managed to locate the famous Restoran 77 in the Gurney Drive. We ordered a big plate of curry fish head and some other dishes. We love the food there and as usual nothing was left in our plates.
Three of us (Wong, Keong & myself) made a tour to Penang recently from 26-28th Nov with the objectives of revisiting this old city as long as “food-searching”. Wong was our driver while I sponsored the fuel with my fuel card. We departed from Puchong on 8:00am and we stopped by in Ipoh for a late breakfast. Both Wong and Keong are from Ipoh and it is usual to detour from the highway to their hometown for food.
Due to the late booking, we have only managed to get a room in D'Feringghi Hotel which actually sucks. We attempted to check around for better hotel rooms but it was not successful due to the public holiday on the following day. Finally we settled with the upgraded Deluxe suite for RM260.00 per night after a couple of attempts. We were quite surprised to see that majority of the guests for this hotel was from the middle-east countries.
Without further delay we went to our first destination at Kek Lok Si Temple (极乐寺) located in Air Itam. The temple is well maintained despite its long history of more than 100 years. The latest construction seen in the temple is the octagon pavilion to shelter the statue for the Goddess of Mercy (Kuan Yin). We noticed that the workers were busy in the final touch-up stage to get ready for the consecration ceremony on the 6th Dec 2009. After the temple visit, we had the Asam Laksa noodle at the hawker stall nearby and it was indeed fantastic.
We missed the curry fish head in our previous trip as we could not locate the restaurant. In this around, we managed to locate the famous Restoran 77 in the Gurney Drive. We ordered a big plate of curry fish head and some other dishes. We love the food there and as usual nothing was left in our plates.
Restoran 77 in the Gurney DriveThe next morning we had our breakfast at the hawker stalls in Pulau Tikus. Prawn Mee or more popularly known as Hokkien Mee, Fried Kuey Teow, Curry Laksa were definitely in our order. We were quite unfortunate that the Fort Cornwallis was closed due to the public holiday. I had similar bad experiences in my visit to Kuching two years ago when most of the tourist destinations were closed on Hari Raya Puasa. I am sure this is the area we can improve our customer services in the tourism industry by allowing visits to the tourist destinations during public holiday.
Penang Botanical Garden was our next visit. This public park still shines now with lots of visitors despite being century old. We walked around for about 45 minutes and rested for a while.
We checked-out on the Saturday morning and headed towards the Wat Chaiya Thai Temple and Dharmikarama Burmese Temple. We had a short prayer in the temple and the monk also sprinkled some water on us, hopefully to bring us some good luck. We also bought some tambun biscuits from the popular Him Heang outlet in Jalan Burma. Of course we also did not miss the fresh seafood in Bukit Tambun on our way back.
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