Amazed by Penang Island
Hello there Penang people, I am from Johor and recently decided to travel to Penang with my family. I also stayed in KL years ago for my study in university for easier review and comparison.
Let's start with the positives.
Food. The food here is so much cheaper and higher quality compare to kl and johor food, as myself often go to various spots to try out different kind of new food, I didn't expect most of the food in penang are even below RM6~RM8, while kl and johor are usually above RM10 average, this really surprises me as the food taste incredibly good for char kuey teow, hokkien mee and so much more while retaining low price.
I am kinda disappointed at how expensive the food in Johor is due to the influence of Singaporeans moving to johor to taste food and the local decided to up the price, but I guess it is what it is.
For all the prawn mee(hokkien mee) hawker stall chef out there's salute to you all.
Traffic, I know that LRT is still an ongoing process, so my family decided to drive to Penang instead and have the freedom to drive to any places we like to sightseeing. overall I really enjoy the traffic and the people who drives here, they are willing to wait and drives slow so you can go out to the main road or t junction easily. I suppose this is how it looks like during non holiday or peak hours, since I don't go out during office hours like 8am or 6pm. Overall I really enjoyed driving around in penang and people don't aggressively drive fast or honking you like there's no tomorrow, as it happens in KL and Johor a lot.
I also assume because I stay in Tanjung tokong, so the traffic there isn't as severe as Georgetown, so this might be one of the factors.
Cleanliness, this is the most important part that I am amazed the most as most of the places I visit, there isn't any single rubbish on the street, even the wet market with food it is so much cleaner than the wet market I visited in KL and Johor, no weird smelling, no random floor puddle, no garbage thrown on the floor, I really like it a lot. It feels like I am at SG.
All the beaches I visited so far are considered as "Clean", the beaches at the hardrock hotel or bayview beach resort sometimes have small litters probably thrown by the tourist.
Other beaches or the hotel that I stayed at (Hompton) so far they all looks pretty clean from the first glance and walk around it.
Kudos to the community or the state government keeping the island clean.
Historical Buildings. There is a lot of old building being maintained very well from the outside view, I kinda expected they should be older and more damaged because of wear and tear, but I am surprised a lot of the branded company like car company or electronic companies are reusing the old building, refurbished them to sell their product, this is surprising quite nice and different from the other places like standard mall or individual shoplet u saw in the other states.
Security Safeness, it is pretty comfortable to walk most of the places in Georgetown because I notice there's always a security camera on each of the street, I liked this as it is indeed providing sense of security for encouraging people to walk around and visit all the stores there.
I visited other areas like bayan lepas and balik pulau on a surface level, but probably those are just residential places or hill area so I didn't go down and walk around much.
The island is expanding at such a rapid pace where I notice there's an entire small island near Georgetown being expanded outward with condo and landed properties.
Now let's get to the bad part. (Don't worry, only 1 bad part about this trip)
Parking, I don't have issue with the parking spaces, but holy the Penang smart app is horrendous, unable to receive verification code, couldn't find the location to park, the app somehow ate my entire rm30 when I am paying for the saman because I couldn't register it in the first place properly. I went through TnG, FPX transaction, adding money to ewallet, non of it works until the fourth time it magically works and I lost my rm30 out of nowhere when the saman is just rm10.
Whoever developed this, please get some help. No wonder it has 1.8 stars, this is incredibly inconvenient because all the other states have their own parking app or something but TnG manage to consolidated most of them, yet Penang is the only one not within the TnG parking.
I ain't gonna download another app just to add money to it because I come here rarely and I have another 5 parking apps for other states.
Overall I really enjoyed my stay here, quality food and cheap prices, road are connected everywhere with only slight traffic jam at non peak hours sometimes. I appreciate you all making this place nice and cozy to visit as a tourist, and again kudos to the community and the state government or whoever taking care of this place.
I won't comment about Butterworth or Bukit Mertajam yet because I haven't visited those places, maybe next time.
Visited Place: Georgetown Penang Hill Kek Lok Si Temple Bayan Lepas Balik Pulau Batu Ferringhi Tanjung Tokong