Breakfast the next day....
Roti canai with kapitan chicken curry and some South Indian coconut curry, some really good pineapple.
Another Penang specialty - Prawn mee - prawn noodle soup. This is a bit different than Singapore's prawn mee, which is basically a "dry" noodle dish of a combination of wheat and rice noodles, with bean sprouts and shrimp in a rich gravy made from the shrimp heads. In Penang, it's a noodle soup - the broth is a really shrimpy broth made from the prawn heads, with some sambal (of course).
And now.... the beginning of the end!!!!
After breakfast, we went to visit a very famous tourist site, called the Blue Mansion, or Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion. Cheong Fatt Tze was the wealthiest man in Asia and built this house for his favored 7th wife in the mid to late 1800s. The house is now a luxury boutique hotel, but they give tours of the common areas several times a day to non-hotel guests. It is also supposedly a model for feng shui.
It was around this point that my wife, suddenly and out of nowhere, started to feel sick. We were both listening to the guide who was very informative and was constantly throwing in little jokes here and there, like "How did Cheong Fatt Tze become the richest man in Asia? Wah.... he married the boss's daughter... wah!!!!" (The wah is a common Penang expression, like Wah, this is really tasty). Anyway, all of a sudden she has this thing hit her like a ton of bricks - she starts feeling nauseous and a bit light headed and crazy exhaustion. We quietly make our way out of the room the guide is currently explaining to an area where it's quieter and sit her down to put her head between her knees. At the time, we thought her blood pressure dropped suddenly - something that has happened many years ago, but hasn't happened for a long time. After a while, she starts feeling a bit better and we make our way to the hotel's bar as they're supposed to have this fruit juice drink that is invigorating (and really tasty), so we thought it might perk her up.
Pineapple, ginger and lime juice drink. It was really refreshing.
After the drink she started to feel quite a bit better, so we decided to go to lunch. We went to a local hawker center with a well known prawn noodle vendor.
The entrance
Inside. This photo actually does a good job illustrating something we saw all over Penang. Masks!!! Everywhere! On practically everyone!!! Basically, any time you were inside, everyone was wearing masks. Even many times outside people were wearing masks. Every taxi we were in, the driver was wearing a major N95 mask, hotel staff, restaurant staff, everywhere. It was really great to see.
Prawn noodles (sambal in the soup spoon). This was pretty good, but it definitely didn't blow me away.
Pasembur - this is kind of like a salad - made from shredded jicama and drowned in a salt/slightly sweet sauce and of course, sambal.
When my wife is not feeling well, she craves fried food. Serendipitously right in front of our table was the Vietnamese stall so I got some cha gio, spring rolls:
No nuoc cham - served with a chilli sauce for dipping.
This food centre is also known for a popular char kuay teow vendor. They had a long line and once I ordered, the woman told me it would be over a half hour for it to arrive....
Personally, I felt like the Outram Park Fried Kway Teow stall in Singapore was heads and tails better than this one. It was underseasoned and no cubes of puffed lard! Instead, there were some slices of lap cheong - chinese sausage - which is common in the Penang version. In fact, people there criticize any kuay teow that doesn't have the lap cheong.