A few weeks back, my eldest brother invited us to join him and my parents for a short vacation to Malaysia. His initial destination was Langkawi. We went to the Silkair Road show to try to book our tour packages. However, we were told all the Langkawi packages were sold out. As we were flexible with the dates and destinations, the consultant finally managed to confirm us for a 3 Days WOW Penang holiday. With this confirmation, we were all ready and looking forward to another great holiday experienced.
Day 1: Thursday, 09 December
Singapore → Penang (MI 360) Dep: 1320 / Arr 1445
We met up with my eldest brother and my parents at Changi Airport Terminal 2. As Adrian just took his annual leaves for the Phuket trip, he was unable to get leaves for this Penang trip, so it was just Anthea, Anders and I.
We checked in our 1 luggage and went in to the Duty Free area for a quick snack before our flight. Refreshment was served on board the 1 hour flight from Singapore to Penang. As usual, the children had their child meal.
Upon arrival at the Penang airport, we were met by the local representative and he drove us to our hotel –
G Hotel. This hotel was highly recommended by the consultant who booked us for this holiday.
We had booked 3 rooms for our party of 4 adults and 2 children. To our delight, we were all upgraded to the Executive rooms. The hotel rooms had the added value of FREE Mini Bar and FREE WIFI. The mini bar was replenished daily and both Anthea and Anders enjoyed the drinks and the kit kat bars.
It was almost 4pm by the time we checked in and the 1st activity would be swimming for the children. While we went to the pool, my brother and my parents went around the hotel and check out the vincity.
We met up around 6pm for dinner. Our 1st stop was the Esplanade area. We took a nice stroll by the Esplanade and managed to even visit Fort Cornwallis before dinner.
Dinner was at the
Red Garden and we had a sumptuous dinner of sushi, Penang yong tau foo, 芽菜和海南鸡肉。 After dinner, we took a walk to their famous Eastern & Oriental hotel to admire the hotel architecture. Then we called it a night and went back to the hotel to rest as we had a full day of sightseeing the next day.
Day 2: Friday, 10 December
For this trip, my elder brother had done up a tour itinerary for us and he was our official tour guide.
We rented a chauffeur driven mini car for our party from the hotel tour and transport desk. The charge was MYR$50 per hour. The driver was Mr. Tan and he was a very nice, elderly man. We proposed our routing and he even added on a few other ad-hoc stops for us.
Our tour of the day included:
1. Penang hill – view the closed site area as they are now upgrading the cable car. According to Mr. Tan, it should be ready by New Year.
2. Kek Lok Si – visited the famous temple and saw the 观音 statue.
3. Coffee Tree – bought coffee and some chocolates. Highly recommend for coffee lovers.
4. Fishing Village – En Route to tropical farm, we stopped by a Fishing village and saw fisherman came in with their catch – lots of fishes of different type.
5. Tropical Fruit farm – located at the hill top, we paid about RM$28 for an adult and RM$20 for a child for a guided tour of the farm. The children had a great time listening to the growth of different kind of fruits. At the end of the tour, we were treated to a Fruit Buffet and a nice cup of fruit juices.
On our way back to the hotel, we had lunch at a local coffee shop. We ordered the Fried Kway Teow and 炒面 and to our greatest surprised, the 2 dishes tasted very good, even though it was a small shop and the “chef” was a very young lady.
On way back, we requested Mr. Tan to bring us to local product shop to buy some 土产。He brought us to a shop quite near to our hotel – 田园土产 (Tean Ean Local Products (M) Sdn Bhd) located at 90 Jalan Sultan Ahmad Shah, 10050 Penang, MY.
The 豆沙饼和马蹄酥were very fresh and tasty. We were very happy with our purchase.
As we had a long day of tour, we decided to do dinner at the shopping centre next to the hotel. We had Manhattan Fish market and it turned out to be a very good choice. As none of us had eaten it in Singapore…haha.
We had ice cream after dinner and then went back to the rooms for a good night rest. It had been a very FRUITFUL day for us, especially the children.
Day 3: Saturday, 11 December
We had buffet breakfast at the café and then we checked out 2 rooms and kept our room for late checked out.
We had booked the mini car and again we had Mr. Tan as our driver cum guide.
Our day 2 itineraries were as follow:
6. Reclining Buddha temple along Lorong Burma Road.
7. Khoo Kongsi temple - This temple has rich historical value and learning about it gives me the interest to find out more about my own root too…hehe.
8. 水上人家 - seeing the houses built on such condition reminds me of those old kampong days.
We had a quick tea break stop at a local coffee shop in Little India and tried the roti canai (aka roti prata)
9. Our final tour stop was Blue Mansion (
Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion). There was a guided tour at 11am and we were brought around the Mansion and given a very detailed introduction. It was really an awesome tour and to learn so much about the history of the Mansion.
We left the place around 12noon and went back to the hotel to get change and checked out. We had a quick lunch at 小南国 at the shopping mall before our transfer pick up to the airport for our flight to home sweet home.
It had really been an enjoyable tour for the family and we learnt so much about Penang in such a short span of time. There are so much more places to see and things to do and I know we would be going back again for the Durians and fried Kway Teow.
Till we meet again…Jumpa Lagi Penang!!
Penang → Singapore (MI 355) 1805/1930
