On Tuesday the 31st of August Malaysia celebrated Merdeka; their 53rd National Independence Day.
I love Merdeka, during that period there seems to be an excited energy in the air. Maybe it's because the Merdeka song is so peppy and happy (I could be totally wrong, I can't understand it but from the tune it seems like it to me), it gets me psyched up and I assume everyone else is psyched too! Last year was my first Merdeka in Malaysia, and I noticed the country gets really into it. There's Malaysian flags everywhere and the song is on the radio over and over (not so much this year). So to celebrate this Merdeka our friends planned a mini-roadtrip to Penang to take advantage of the public holiday.
Because there's a lot of pics in this post ill put the rest after the jump -->
When your in Penang for less than 24 hours and it's the countries Independence Day what do you do?
Eat and party!
And that was literally all we did...Our crew for the holiday was Me, Alvin, Alex and Wes, or as I have unofficially (lame-ly) dubbed us, the Awesome Foursome (it's often just us four hanging out these days).
We stayed at Cititel Hotel which was OK for just crashing. Its walking distance to the clubs (hence why we stayed there) and the view was not bad.
For dinner we went to some famous BBQ steamboat place. I've never had BBQ steamboat, and it was really nice. In the middle is a hotpot and around the outside is a grill with foil where you BBQ meat and stuff yourself. It was really nice, the meats were marinated so really tasty. As usual when you have steamboat, its super hot and sweaty and you leave stinking like food, and when kids like us are BBQing you'll smell like smoke too.
The outside of the restaurant, and the BBQ steamboat
Articles on the wall published about the place
As night fell the four of us switched into party mode. In Penang a bunch of the hot clubs are together on one street. We chose Voodoo, apparently a new addition (I don't actually know, this is just what I was told). Inside by 11 the place was packed with others celebrating Merdeka in style. To our delight the Hennessy was way cheaper than KL (although we suspect it may have been of a 'different grade').
At midnight they counted down then played the Merdeka song. I sang along to the words I knew... "lima puluh tujuh, Merdeka Merdeka something something Merdeka" (thats it).
At midnight they counted down then played the Merdeka song. I sang along to the words I knew... "lima puluh tujuh, Merdeka Merdeka something something Merdeka" (thats it).
It was a super fun night and we took many blurry pics to commemorate it!
Awesome housemate crew!
To conclude the awesome night we headed to a mamak for some delicious maggie goreng.
Now if you go all the way to Penang you'd be stupid not to eat some of the stuff they're most famous for, aka, char kway teow. So that we did!
On the way back we stopped by Ipoh for lunch, i've never been there so we went for their famous chicken noodle soup stuff.
That concluded our short less-than-24hr Penang holiday. I hadn't been to Penang since 2007 so it was cool to head back, but MAN they are crazy drivers.
See you next time Penang!
u went all the way to bloody penang to eat mi goreng!! we have it here.. bahaha jks jks i no it tastes beta in malaysia.. jason say's its da best wen u get indians to cook it :S i dunno y???
ReplyDeleteI've been to cititel hotel.. but in KL not penang i liked blvd more.. da hotel not da club in meb :S hehehe and u shud learn da malaysian anthem so u can sing it next time at the merdeka.. i pretended to sing it at last yrs merdeka in meb CQ :S i was singing " sumfin sumfin sumfin" and my sister was singing " satu satu satu"... was fun :D