Episode 847 – Penang at a Leisurely Pace: Day 9 (3D Penang & Farewell)

It’s our last day here, and while we’re ready to move on to our next adventures we are going to miss the incredible staff here at Campbell House.

Kumar, especially, made us feel like family every day, sharing stories and experiences which created a personal connection that went well beyond just delivering 5 star hotel service – that part seems to come effortlessly to all the staff here. It’s no wonder that his name comes up so often in the hotel’s reviews. Over our ten day stay we laughed together almost every day, and cried together too. He was a tangible reminder of the fact that we are all one worldwide human family.

We could just have distracted him from his job and spent the entire day talking, but that would have been very unfair to him – plus we had one last iconic Penang experience waiting for us – Penang chendol – and one more touristy thing to do: creating our own version of “art” at the Penang 3D Trick Art Museum.

First, as always, there was walking involved, which also meant taking photos of more of George Town’s sights.

A very modern looking Hindu temple on Jalan Penang in the shopping area.

Almost every corner has a former shophouse with the same kind of curved façade that Campbell House features.

This was the town house and trading base of Tengku Baharudin bin Tengku Meh also known as Ku Din Ku Meh. Ku Din was made High Commissioner in 1897 and Governor in 1900 and was known to be the Ruler or Raja of Setul from 1902. He was conferred a non-royal title of Phya Phuminath Pakdi which means “Devoted to the King” by King Rama V of Thailand. Reputed to be the “Founder of Modern Setul”, Ku Din was a distinguished administrator, a successful trader, and a man of Malay and Thai letters. This house later became the residence for his only son Tengku Zainul Abidin.

This, too, is Penang. The Catholic Church of the Assumption is just as comfortable here as the Muslim mosques and Hindu and Buddhist temples.

One of the cherubs is writing – the other is reading, as befits a convent school.

Fishing boats visible from just down the street from the municipal complexes.

The concept of the Penang 3D Trick Art Museum is to allow visitors, by taking photographs of the painted sets at the correct angle, to create images that look as if the person being photographed is in a three-dimensional display.

Alternatively, a few were set up to make us look as if we were 2-dimensional!

Some definitely worked better than others, and a few really didn’t work at all (so those photos are not included) but we had an hour or so of fun posing each other to create images that will suitably embarrass our grandsons when they see how silly we can be.

This space, and the next one, worked especially well.

Climbing out of Indiana Jones’ pit of spiders

The next two sets, the snake and the bridge over lava, became my two favourites when we looked at our photos after getting back to the hotel.

And here’s a bit of insight into how my magical levitation worked:

Silliness done, we were off in search of two of Penang’s most famous cool refreshments: chendol, and ais kacang.

We ate the former at a restaurant and hawker stand that has been a Penang institution since 1936.

Chendul (the Penang spelling – elsewhere in Malaysia it is chendol or cendol) consists of shaved ice topped with melaka (palm sugar syrup), red beans, and green pandan jelly noodles, all absolutely flooded with sweet evaporated milk. It looks like soup, but tastes like melted ice cream.

Having tried chendol, we moved to the Nyonya Cendol hawker stand across the road for ais kacang, which is similar …but different.

Ais kacang (pronounced like “ice kachang”) also starts with shaved ice, but the proportion of ice to liquid leans far more heavily to the ice. It is topped with three syrups (rose, sarsi/sarsaparilla, and melaka/palm sugar), plus red beans, sweet corn, green pandan jelly, and assorted fruit jellies (in this case lychee), and then topped with a much smaller amount of creamy evaporated milk.

Of the two desserts, we preferred the ais.

Having those sweet treats mid afternoon as our “lunch”made it easy to wait for our 7 p.m. dinner reservation at Il Bàcaro.

Dinner was fantastic, both from the point of view of the food and the service. No wonder that it has been a Michelin selected restaurant three years running.

Our appetizers: tomato bruschetta and maybe the best melt-in-your-mouth beef carpaccio we’ve ever had: raw sliced paper-thin beef, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, served with parmesan shavings, rocket lettuce, and truffle cream.

Our mains: tender pillowy homemade gnocchi with Gorgonzola cream, finished with the crunch of walnuts; homemade al dente fettuccine with pulled duck ragout, and a side of crisply fried garlicky king oyster mushrooms

Ted enjoyed an Italian beer, I had two glasses of the excellent house Montepulciano, and we finished with cappuccinos.

Throughout, we had not only unobtrusive yet attentive service, but also the attention of the very hands-on young owners of Campbell House and Il Bàcaro.