Penang Trip from 17th to 21st Jun!

Today's session of the course was on overview of curriculum development and innovation from the 1990's to the present, case studies of other education systems, and trends and developments in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment and policy issues. Yes, it's pretty heavy stuff and the amount of readings was pretty disgusting =p

But it was interesting to know about the various changes in curricula and what brought about those changes so at least the readings were of some interest though reading the education systems of HK and Finland was pretty dry stuff for me... =s

Anyway, went to Penang for a short holiday with some of my friends and it was a relaxing and simple but fun trip! Shopped like no tomorrow (spent $700+ on shopping which is almost double that of what I paid for my flight tickets AND accommodation) Summary of events:

17th - had late dinner at Waraku (the fried rice was terrible!) before flying off at 10.40pm. Landed in Penang and around midnight then we got a cab to Trader's Hotel which was opposite some shady looking place called "Ye Shang Hai" haha. Joked about going in there but we never did. The hotel was not bad and the rooms were nice!

18th - Woke up and started our exploration around the hotel by trying to find some of the places mentioned in their "Penang Food Trail" brochures. Ended up with a simple breakfast at some coffeeshop and had their local omelet, roti pizza and chicken murtabak. Their drinks were super sweet though (some of them were cringing as they drank their coffee/tea and my bandung was pretty sweet also), and apparently it was a theme that recurred during our trip so those planning to go there might want to ask them to put less sugar =)

Then we walked around to find a bus that would take us to this temple called "Kek Lok Si" (Temple of Supreme Bliss) which is apparently (based on Wikipedia) the largest Buddhist temple in Southeast Asia. Finding the bus stop was a pain cos sometimes it was not obvious at all! One of our friends asked some people who were standing along the road where the bus stop was and then they pointed out that the place they were at was indeed the bus stop and we were like, "How do you know?" Then they pointed out this sign on the wall which was sooooo NOT eye-catching (it's like a grey sign on a grey wall) and there were no shelter or bus guides so it's just like some random spot on the road!

Anyway, we managed to catch a bus quickly and it was cheap (2RM for pretty much the whole trip) and the bus was pretty similar to ours except that the seats had no cushion. After we alighted, we took a 15 min walk to the place and climbed up quite a fair bit of the slope but it was a pretty nice temple and we took some nice photos and also took the ride up the inclined lift to see the really large Kuan Yin statue. Had muah chee along the way and after that we had lunch at a coffeeshop where we had coconut and prawn mee and then gelato at this place called Maxim's. Bought a cheeky t-shirt there also and even though it was pretty cheap, about $6-7, but I think I was still "chopped" and probably the price was closer to $3-4.

After that we made our way to Gurney Plaza (2nd largest shopping mall in Penang) and initially we took a bus with plans to switch to another bus but it was sooooo slow we switched to a cab and it was definitely worth it. Btw, the cabs are all fixed price (no meter) and esp since we travelled in a group of 4 it was very economical for us to travel by cabs and saved a lot of time. Anyway Gurney Plaza was the place where I started my 1st shopping spree - (1) a pair of shiny, grey working shoes (2) a dress shirt (3) a casual shirt + a t-shirt (4) a pair of berms + a t-shirt (5) a sweater + a dress shirt + a pair of jeans + a t-shirt.

Then we had dinner at the Gurney Drive Food Market where we had wanton mee, shrimp dumplings soup, popiah, oyster omelet, sting ray, and kang kong with cuttlefish. After that we kinda split up with 1 going shopping then 3 of us going back to the hotel where I watched the World Cup before we went for supper at New Lane and had satay, fried chicken wings, char kway teow and chendol. Sinful!

19th (my birthday!) - went to Zim Sum Restaurant for dim sum and it was great! Had a wide variety of food (I think more than 10 different types such as egg tarts, yam balls, chee cheong fun, cha siew bun, prawn fritters, wanton soup, century egg porridge, sliced fish porridge, siew mai, ha kow, and others) and all that at a grand cost of ....... 8RM each! (that's like less than $4) Awesome! =D

After that we went to Queensbay Mall (largest shopping mall in Penang) and it was at a very nice area where I went on my 2nd shopping spree - (1) a dress/casual shirt (2) 2 t-shirts (3) a dress shirt from Raoul (wanted more cos they had really nice designs but sadly didn't have my size) (4) a pair of black working shoes. Had lunch at this Jap place called Azuma and it served really great food! Had spicy fried soft shell crab, grilled beef wrapped around enoki mushrooms, scallops and grilled tuna - yummy!

Then we headed to our next hotel, which was Flamingo By The Beach. Watched a bit of World Cup before heading to the Hard Rock Cafe there at Hard Rock Hotel (haha what an unimaginative name) where we had some simple fare like fried potato skin and a chicken salad cos we were pretty full. My friend's told the people there that it was my birthday so it ended up with a celebration where the live band sang the birthday song and I was asked to blow out the candle as the waitress held the cake far from me haha.

20th - had breakfast at our hotel and there was nothing inspiring cos it was quite a standard continental breakfast but the standards were pretty low =p then we retired to our room to chill and ended up playing mahjong (using cards that I bought in Japan) and it was super funny but I won't elaborate here. Had their buffet lunch there and it was pretty reasonable - only 25RM for a very wide spread of food - shiok!

Chilled in the room again before going for a swim and then went to try parasailing which was soooo cool! The only bad part was that it was very painful for me apparently cos I didn't know how to adjust the harness properly but had a great view up there and it was very cooling also. For those who don't know, parasailing involves you being tied to a parachute and then a ski boat pulls you so that you'll fly up (need to do some other stuff like running and lifting your hands up - some physics stuff).

Went out for dinner and we took a long walk (unintentionally) to this food centre called Viva and again we had another feast and I had my favourite Yang Zhou fried rice and we had fried chicken wing, oyster omelet, satay, sting ray, and Thai coconut - another sinful meal! Went back by cab and watched World Cup again before sleeping cos we were so full!

21st - same hotel breakfast again then chilled before going to Island Plaza which was pretty pathetic cos it was quite devoid of people and many shops were not opened. But still managed to buy a dress shirt there in that little bit of time that we were there before meeting up with this cab driver whom our friend got acquainted with earlier and he took us to buy some local food like the Ghee Hiang tau sar piah (there's another one with similar name which is also supposed to be really nice) and other local snacks. Brought us to have sea food dinner and it was a great last meal in penang - chilli crab, mantis shrimp (very interesting species - first time that I ate it) and some species of garoupa.

So that's it for my Penang trip - very relaxing with a lot of good shopping and good food! =D