3 Ginger Snaps

All the travel writing on Penang is about the food. There is other interesting stuff in the city. Nice gardens. Spacious public parks. Good walking and shopping. (shopping malls are massive in Malaysia. And very popular. I think because of the heat.) The funicular. But really – this place seems to be all about the food. There are many street food style food courts all around the city. In my limited walking around, I didn’t go more than about 500m without passing some version of one. Some are better know than others and tonight we went to New Lane – which is pretty spectacular. There aren’t to many places where I could hand my kids 15RM (about $5CDN) and let them roam about to find their own meal. But the food stalls are a pretty perfect set up for this. We took turns leaving the table and coming back with delicacies. 

Satay with peanut sauce

Fried oyster omelet

Spicey veggie dumplings

BBQ chicken wings

Fried noodles with bean sprouts and prawns & veggie fried rice

Crepes and tapioca coconut banana pancakes

Melon, mango, pineapple, pear, and dragon fruit to top it off. 

It was an incredible feast and, by the end of the night, we all agreed that we had really enjoyed ourselves. 

The thing that we can’t quite figure out, is that every time we try something like this, and this certainly isn’t the first time we’ve tried novel foods for dinner, we have a devil of a time getting the kids into the experience. We aren’t sure if they are overwhelmed, overstimulated, hangry, all of the above or none of the above – we just know that getting them into these types of environments typically ends well and starts out really choppy. Not just “I can’t Decide what to eat” choppy. More along the lines of “why do we bother… next time we are leaving them at the apartment to eat crackers so That we can enjoy this on our own” choppy. 

Here’s hoping that, over the long run, this kind of experience sticks with them for all the right reasons.