Malaysia - Dave Life Squared


Upon my departure from Istanbul, I made my way through Abu Dhabi and Kuala Lumpur to my next destination - Penang, Malaysia. 

Within moments of my arrival to Malaysia, I had a new SIM card, pocket full of Malaysian cash and was ready for adventures! The first of which was my very first UBER ride. Yes I realize I am one of the few people to never have used this service before but man was it sweet. As a traveller I am always nervous in a new city, there are way too many stories of getting ripped off by cabbies at the airport. UBER let me watch the entire drive towards my destination with their real time map, talk about piece of mind. Add in the fact that it was about $10 for a 45 minute drive across the city and we will call that a win. 
Touring around on the back of Dave's bike, snapping pics as I went
Post UBER experience I arrived at my friends Dave, Tasha and family's condo which was big, beautiful and way less to rent than mine back home, these expat guys are doing something right I think haha. After getting settled, Dave took me out to a great Chinese place for  dinner and then we just hung out at cool spot on the beach and caught up. Why am I eating Chinese food in Malaysia? Fun Fact: there is a tonne of Chinese influence on Penang as they have heavily invested in the area. 


Most of my next day was spent relaxing in Dave's pool while he worked. The downtime was good as there is a lot to process on this trip. It's an odd season of life and floating in a pool in a tropical climate is definitely welcomed as I sort out the next moves of my life. We did meet up with a friend of Dave's for lunch and had awesome bbq steaks and satay for dinner so the day wasn't without any adventure. 

The next morning we went a bit more touristy. Ate breakfast near Dave's son's school, I forget the name of what we ordered but it was some Malay dish. After we went the "Wet Market" basically a farmers market/butcher shop, all the fruits and veggies of a typical farmers market but also dead chickens, pigs, fish (I don't remember if there was beef or not) all being cut up and served direct to customer. Pigs ears hanging from the stalls, fully plucked chickens with their heads still attached, was definitely a sight, but we got our order of chicken breasts and carried on. After dropping off our groceries and a quick stop at home we were off to meet with another connection of Dave's who is an expat working in the area, was great to hear his experiences as he works with a missions organization throughout South East Asia.  After lunch Dave and I scooted off on his motorbike down to the Georgetown area of Penang, this is an older hippy vibed area that has a bunch of street art. We toured around on a pedal cart and I will do a separate post later with all the art pictures I took as there were a lot. We ended the tour with some delicious cake at a cool spot called China House, sugary goodness for sure. I can't remember the name of the spot we had dinner that night, I want to call it AVA but not sure. It was cool though, lots of food stalls all in a lot, which let you choose what you wanted that evening, lots of very strange choices and I of course chose something that I had no idea how to pronounce, haha. All in all a super fun filled day!


My last day, we went out for Nazi kandar for lunch, basically a Malaysian form of Indian food. Definitely delicious and like everything else here super cheap. After lunch we spent some time at the mall which I wandered while Dave ran errands, found a very cool marketing exhibit for the LOGAN movie which I will also post separately later. The rest of the day was low key as Dave needed to prep for a speaking engagement he had on the weekend, so I hit up some floating in the pool and then after dinner checked out the night market. Night market was cool lots of little shops selling knock offs of all sorts, picked up a sweet pair of "Raybans", found a barber and got a fresh cut, and closed it off by finding a Starbucks and strolling my way down the beach. 




The next morning I hopped another UBER to the airport and was Railay Beach bound :-)





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