Batu Ferringhi

When I first heard I was going to Penang I thought it was a city in Malaysia. However, it is an island made up of numerous little towns and one major city (Georgetown). Until now I’ve been keeping close to “home” in Queensbay on the southeast side of the island. But when tourists come to Malaysia they come to Penang, and the resort town of Penang, Batu Ferringhi, is where they go for scenery and shopping.

Batu Ferringhi is on the opposite side of the island from where I’m staying and is a 40-60 minute cab ride. Normally that would be prohibitively expensive but here it can be had for 55 ringgits, which is under $16. I met with Intel in the mid afternoon (which went well, by the way). Afterwards I took a cab to Batu Ferringhi which went through Georgetown allowing me to at least see some of its tourist attractions in passing. On the recommendation of my cabbie he dropped me off at the Sunset Bistro.

The picture with all the cars shows the row of resort businesses including the bistro, a spa, and watersports rentals. Frankly it looked more like a slum area than a tourist trap to my eye. Nevertheless, with a couple of hours to kill before sunset I began exploring on foot. A car with tinted windows pulled up, a window rolled down revealing three men inside, and a passenger asked in a friendly voice, “Where are you from?” (I am so identifiable as a tourist here it’s not funny.) “California,” I replied. He extended his hand, welcomed me warmly, and the other passenger shook my hand while the driver waved his greetings before driving off. What I thought might be a prelude to robbery turned out to be just three nice guys welcoming a complete stranger. People here in Penang have been consistenly very genuinely nice.

I didn’t walk long. I’ve put more miles than I know on my sneakers in the last three days, and the sun was baking me good. I took cover in the Sunset Bistro where I hung out for several hours watching the sun set over the mountains while I was shaded under a canopy of trees. Paragliders took off and landed right in front of the bistro, making for good entertainment, especially when they landed too near said canopy of trees. It happened several times and always resulted in much shouting and hand waving. One couple actually put their parachute into the trees, but fortunately they landed themselves on the sand.

While I chilled out I sipped on fresh coconut water. I didn’t know what coconut water was, but it’s different from coconut milk. They take a chilled, immature coconut that hasn’t yet developed its husk, slice off the top, stick in a straw and hand it to you. It was rather refreshing. On my cabbie’s recommendation I tried satay. I know I said I would back off on the exotic food, but this wasn’t exotic. This is what I should have started with, grilled meat on a stick. It came with a spicy peanut dipping sauce, but I even liked that.

After dark I walked through one of Penang’s famous attractions, the Batu Ferringhi night market. Every evening many vendors set up booths on the sidewalk along the main drag. Think of all the vendor booths at a standard county fair and just put a mile of them (no exaggeration) along the sidewalk. I tried to get a picture, but it came out blurry. Just imagine booths along the road stretching as far as you can see, selling cheap knock-off watches, cheap knock-off handbags, cheap knock-off everything. All in all a very enjoyable evening, but man, I am going to try and do less walking tomorrow.