The first thing that Lonely Planet says about Penang is that visitors need to eat as much as they can. It was an unexpected description, probably the only one of its kind that I’ve seen from it. At our hostel in KL, when we asked them about Penang, they also said that we should consume as much as possible. I’m not sure I’ve ever heard of a place associated so much with the food that it produces. But at least it made our purpose for visiting Penang quite clear.

Our bus to Penang didn’t depart until 2 PM, giving us time to grab something to eat and chill out. Our breakfast of choice has been roti. The Malaysian version is basically a rubber band made of dough. It’s stretchy to the extreme and super chewy after it’s cooked. They serve it with a bowl of dal and it costs $0.25. We kept the Indian theme going and got a dosa snack before our five hour bus ride to Penang.

Penang is an island. The main city is Georgetown. We were staying at an AirBnB in Air Itam, just outside of Georgetown. Our host picked us up from the bus station… WITH A BROKEN LEG. Now that’s an amazing host. Jern, our host, and his wife, Kai, drove us to a hawker center near their house and told us to eat something. That sounded simple. Until we got out of the car.

From what I can tell, the entire island of Penang is basically an enormous hawker center. When everyone says to eat stuff in Penang, they’re not referring to fancy restaurants. They’re referring to down and dirty street stands as far as the eye can see. We’re talking multiple blocks with nothing but food stands. Overwhelmed by our options, we just chose the closest stand with a line. We ended up picking stir fried turnip cakes (like the ones you get at dim sum). They were chopped up into cubes, stir fried with who knows what and then mixed together with a fried egg. We added some satay, some more roti, and had our first meal in Penang.