Penang Hawker Food at New Lane Penang – Fabulous Hawker fare at local prices! by backpackies

New Lane Hawker food street

Backpacking in Penang? Hunting for some famous Penang Hawker Food? Forget Gurney Drive. It’s over hyped up. One good place to go for plenty of variety of Hawker food is New Lane Penang. Here you can find almost every kind of hawker food found in Penang. And they taste good too.

Lets check it out!

Road is closed to traffic for the safety of diners

Well at least the Government and State Council (MPPP) is doing something. About 2 years back, eating in this road can be a nightmare. Literally risking your life just to order food. This street used to be open to traffic. So you would get cars, busses, and motorbikes going up and down this very narrow road. It is already narrow and congested. Not to mention the amount of exhaust and pollution from the traffic. Very unhygenic to eat here. Now it has changed alot. The roads are closed to traffic starting from 4pm to 12 am.

Closed to traffic except on wednesdays

You can either sit at the many coffee shops around, or  just sit anywhere by the side of the road. Plenty of outside open air dining. Just order what you want and sit anywhere you want. All you got to do is point the hawkers in the direction of your table and wait to be served!

Open air seating is the best way to enjoy the environment

Outside seating at New Lane Penang

There is a music shop just by the side of where the diners sit and eat. Free music while you eat! Perfect! There is so many food stalls here, from the typical Char Koay Teow (fried flat noodles), laksa, char hor fun, fried rice, chee cheong fun to pork innard broth. The pork innard broth stall at the corner of the lane  is very famous.

Famous Pork Porridge New Lane Penang

In Hokkien its called Chee Cheong Chook which in direct translation means Pigs Intestine Porridge. Inside each bowl is mixed ingredients of fried and boiled pork innards cooked with porridge. Good stuff!

Pork Innards Porridge

This is called “Yong Tau Hoo” which actually a soupy dish. You choose from an assorted variety of meat balls, fish balls, soya strips, crab sticks, tofu, vegetables which are then served in soup. You can also add in yellow noodles or glass noodles to make it more filling.

Yong Tau Hoo

Sotong Kangkung – Jew Hoo Eng Chai in hokkien. Strips of Cuttle Fish are mixed with Kangkung (a type of vegetable) and topped with a black sauce and chili sauce, and then garnished with sesame seeds.Fragrant and usually eaten as a starter

Sotong KangKung- Mixed Vegetable and Cuttlefish Salad (Savoury)

Going for the heavy stuff. you can also order fresh seafood- GRILLED!

Thai Grilled Seafood

Famous all time finger food. Barbeque Chicken Wings. We love the ones that are honey coated. Sweet and crispy skin with juicy meat inside.

Barbeque Chicken Wings -everybodys favourite

The Sate is simply fabulous. Delicious with the peanut dip sauce. If you see the BATU MAUNG SATE. Order it! They costs alittle more but they are much bigger and have been marinated for hours in a special sauce. One word- Delicious.

Sate- BBQ meat on skewers.

If the pork innards broth isnt you. Then you might want to go for something mild for starters. The broth stall serves pork and fish broth. Very good! If you dont want the innards, tell them. The “only pork meat” or “only fish meat” broth is our favourite.

Famous "moi" at new lane penang

Char Koay Teow that is fried with charcoal, and she only does it one place at a time

Portuguease grilled platter? Customize your own dinner. Take a pick from the assorted ingredients. The ingredients will be cooked over a flat metal plate. Most of the time, chilli paste is added to make it spicy. You got to let them know if you dont want it too spicy.

Grilled Frog Legs Anyone?

Woman rolling poh piah

Poh Piah - wrapped wet version of a spring roll

Poh Piah – Shreded white cabbage, green lettuce, crab meat, egg and chilli paste wrapped in a thin dough skin. The Poh Piah is sliced and doused with some tasty hot gravy. Perfect to slowly pick on while you wait on your main dish.

BBQ- Lok Lok -We found this stall by the road side, as you enter New Lane from Maccalister Road. This stall sells the typical Lok Lok which is actually many varieties of food stuff stuck to a stick, which you will take and stick it into hot boiling water to cook or sometimes to heat up the food. Then you choose your dip. The usual is non spicy peanut sauce or maybe chili sauce. This stall has improvised alot to let you have the option of BBQ’ing the food. Grills are provided.

This stall sells lok lok (food on skewers) either boiled or BBQ'ed

For Desert, try the Chinese desert. Red bean, assorted nuts, ginko nuts served hot or cold.

Thong Sui to wash everything down

Thong Sui - Chinese Sweet Desert

We hope you like this write up on New Lane Penang. This place is a great place to come to sample all of Penangs hawker fare. New Lane Penang beats Gurney Drive 10 thumbs down. Enjoy!

Here is a map of where New Lane Penang is>> NEW LANE PENANG

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Kimberly Street – Best Penang Char Koay Teow, Chicken Feet, Duck Broth and Tong Sui

Backpacking Penang and feeling a little hungry? Looking for a nice place to have some Penang Hawkers food at night?

If you  are in downtown Georgetown, you can head over to Kimberly Street where they are famous for their very good Char Koay Teow (Chinese fried noodles), Duck Broth, Tong Sui (Sweet desserts using Lotus seeds, Longans, almonds etc) and chicken feet

These stalls are at the Junction of Kimberly Street, Cintra Street and Sungai Ujong Road.

Kimberly street is one of the famous streets for hawker food in Penang

There is a fancy building on the corner of Kimberly Street and Jalan Sungai Ujong (Sungai Ujong Road). You can order dishes served with rice here. We peeked in and didn’t see anyone inside. We dare not judge if it is good or not. Maybe you can  try it and let us know.

This is not one of the Hawker stalls

This is the hawker stalls we are talking about

Most of the famous food stalls are located on the corner of Kimberly Street and Cintra Street.
Below is the famous Char Koay Teow.
Char Koay Teow: Fried flat noodles with prawns, slices of pork sausages, egg and cockles.  It can be spicy, so just request to adjust how spicy you like it. (This is a non halal dish. Muslims should beware of this)

Famous Char Koay Teow in Kimberly Street Penang

Penang char koay teow

Kimberly Street Koay Teow Thing. Flat rice noodles served in either clear soup or dry soya sauce.

Famous for its Koay Teow Thing and Chicken Feet

Duck drumsticks and boiled eggs

Koay Teow Thing is served with fish balls, chicken meat and liver.
You can also order thin rice noodles (bee hoon, on the right) if you like.

Bowls of Koay Teow Thing (Clear soup, flat and smooth rice noodles)

Chicken Feet- Apparently it taste’s so good that you just got to try it. There is no meat at all. Only skin. Sucking out the tender skin and tendons from the feet is a delicacy to the Chinese people.

Every body orders a plate of Chicken feet on the table

The stall below sells duck broth and koay chiap. Koay Chiap are flat sheets of rice noodle served in an aromatic soup which is flavored with herbs, spices and soy sauce served together with different parts of the duck and pork.
Every bowl of Koay Chiap is topped with slices of duck meat, all sorts of innards (optional), bean curd and hard-boiled egg and doused with the soup.

famous kimberly street koay chiap

Ingredients to cook up the dish. Duck meat, innards, eggs, pork innards etc.

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Chopped up duck meat, duck innards, and pork innards used to cook the dish

delicious and tasty koay chiap

It is a full delicious explosion, when you put one mouthful of Koay Chiap in your mouth. 😀 (Pork intestines, Pork Skin, Duck meat, Coaggulated pigs blood)

Down everything with some soothing lotus seeds, or mixture of nuts in sweet soup served cold or hot

Peace Brother! (No it’s not a peace sign in the middle of the road) These are the other two hawker stalls along Kimberly Street. The Stall where my middle finger is pointing is famous for selling expensive Char Koay Teow. Think its like RM 6 per plate. Go check it out and let us know.

Two other hawker stalls along Kimberly street

The stalls on the right sells cheap fried beehoon that tastes pretty good. There is also a stall selling fresh soya bean drinks there.

Have a tasteful and tummy filling meal here at Kimberly Street. We hope you find Kimberly Street an interesting eating joint as much as we love it. Happy eating from all of us as backpackies.com. Join us on facebook at backpackies is now on facebook.

Ben Tre and My Tho Tour in Ho Chin Minh with backpackies

Backpacking around Ho Chin Minh soon? Or if you are old school,we should actually say “Backpacking Saigon soon”?
We got feed back that the one day Mekong river tour wasn’t that good. So we asked the tour counter of which tour to follow. They recommended the Ben Tre and My Tho One day Tour. So we decided to go for it.
We referred to the Lonely Planet Guide, and apparently The Sinh Tourist Tour Company seems to be reliable and quite popular among travelers. So we decided to check it out.

The sinh tourist is famous and runs well-organized tours in Vietnam

There are brochures that come in different languages that explains the different tours that The Sinh Tourist Agency offers.
There are pictures on the walls but they don’t tell you much. Just a pretty picture of one of the places that you will be visiting in the tour. Most likely the photographer chose the best place and angle to take the picture, to give you the impression that it is a beautiful place. So as a tourist, you can’t really depend on the words and single picture framed up on the walls to tell you what you will be expecting during the tour. It is usually a sales gimmick!!
We hope you don’t mind, that this blog is a little too long, because we took everything and anything that could help you visualize what to expect on the Ben Tre and My Tho One Day Tour.

ben tre and my tho tour

The staff at the counter seemed helpful enough. We paid 240,000 dong (~13 USD) for the Ben Tre and My Tho Tour per person. We are about to know if was worth our money. Read on.

queuing up to be served by English speaking tour staff

Instead of the usual blog of just telling you what to expect. We decided to do the tour, with a scenario. And today’s scenario is “What if you forgot to bring your slippers for the holiday and all you have are hotel bedroom free slippers” . So we try

Doing the tour with disposable hotel bed slippers

At first when the slippers came out from the plastic bag, it was all new and comfortable. It seemed to draw a lot of attention from other tourists tho.

Seem to stand out from the crowd in my slippers

On your receipt, you will be told what number is the tour bus, that you will be boarding. So take note and stay alert because plenty of times where they change the bus numbers, just to fill the buses up. So you might end up having to board another bus. So be attentive. Last thing you want is to be left out.

Let the fun begin! All the tourists get hurdled in to air conditioned express buses

The bus ride took about 1 hour 30 minutes. Then you need to board a motorized wooden boat, that will take you up the Mekong River.

Taking the boat along the Mighty Mekong

Proving that the slippers are still on board!

The boat is a simple wooden boat. The cute thing about it is that there are wooden seats just put on top of the boat. So make sure you don’t topple over.

all aboard!!!

Plenty of vegetation around the banks of the river. “The tour guide told us” that most of the plantations beside the river were palm trees and sea coconut plants.

scene from the very front of the boat as it cruises along the Mekong

Please ignore the feet. The feet were enjoying the cool village breeze.

Coconut plantations by the river side

We went under bridges and past locals riding bicycles going about their daily routine.

panoramic view of the river

drying coconut husks under the sun

view of the banks of the river

The  banks of the river is lined with sea coconuts.

for those who haven't seen a sea coconut

After the boat ride. You will need to get off and walk through the village to have lunch.

walking in the country side

Lunch is served at one of the local village huts. There are people there to serve you. Take note that the food is paid with the tour fee. But you will need to pay for the drinks. (So don’t go too happy when you see that they serve beer)

stopping at a local village hut for lunch

One of the specialties served is the fish that they call “Elephant Ear Fish”  that is found abundantly in the Mekong. Maybe the fish is flat and wide which reminds them of elephant ears 😀

Girl serving some "elephant ear fish"

Nicely decorated standing up, but a bit hard to eat. We ended up lying it down on its sides.

elephant ear fish with Vietnamese spring rolls

You will be served with fresh fish wrapped with a thin rice film, with some rice noodles, mint leave, pineapple and cucumber strips. Dip it in the sweet and sour sauce for a yummy experience.

wrapping up the "elephant ear fish meat" to make fresh spring rolls

Next on the menu is cat fish. Cat fish meat is very rich and has very high fat content. And it tastes very smooth when you put it into your mouth.

steamed rice with cat-fish and vegetables

P/s: Again we would like to stress that the meal comes with the price of the tour. But you will need to pay for your drinks. They serve can drinks and also beer.

After lunch, you will have to walk past coconut plantations and local village huts to the main road.

taking a short walk with a full stomach

Then you get on the carts which are waiting for you. We saw the same cart, carrying a bunch of squealing pigs, most probably headed to the market. Got us thinking if the same cart ferrying us, was the same before it came and fetch us. O.o scary!

carted away on make shift carts attached to motorcycles is an experience

The ride was very refreshing because you get to see the local countryside and also enjoy the fresh breeze.

Here, you will get the chance to experience, how to row your own boat along the Mekong River, while you wear a Vietnamese conical hat!

after lunch you get to row your own boat along the Mekong!

6 to a boat. Of course they have a boat man sitting behind just to make sure you dont take all day to reach the other side

After competing to see who could row faster along the river. (This is a great place to take pictures of each other). It is hard to take pictures of your self because, a slight movement on the boat can cause it to rock really violently.

Next visit is the coconut candy factory! This is only one of the many produce from the coconuts they plant here.
This first picture shows a man, slowly stirring the coconut mixture to caramelize it.

visiting the coconut candy factory

The caramelized paste is then molded into long strips and then manually cut into small cubes. Very delicious chewy cubes! Not too sweet and fragrant. Just the way we like it.

Sticky yummy coconut candy! Fresh from the stirring pot! Sticks to the hand

Here they sell the wooden craft you can find in the markets in Saigon. What is interesting is the thin pancakes they sell. They have different flavors. There are free samples for you to try. You will need to BBQ or gently pan heat it to make it crispy. Goes well as a snack.

Some souvenir shopping at the Coconut Candy factory

Tour guide explaining and selling coconut candy to the group

Offer offer he says. Buy 4 packets get 1 free. (Nice as souvenirs) However we did see some other coconut candy for sale in town that had better wrapping. The taste is the same.
The bottles on the left are coconut wine. It is similar to “Todi” or Coconut Liquor found in Malaysia. Warning: Coconut wine are very strong stuff. You can ask the guide for samples. Samples come in shot glasses.

The visit to the coconut candy factory ends with: You get to sit down and sample the different local fruits and also fresh local honey

Clockwise: Round brown fruit: Longan, Pineapple, Dragon fruit, banana and rambutan.
After sampling the fruits and the coconut candy factory visit. You guys will take the slow big boat back home.

taking the big boat back home

Plenty of scenery along the river. The river was a bit brownish, and dirty. Its amazing that the Vietnamese use the water for everyday usage.

houses along the river

On the way back, the boat will make one last stop before heading home. A visit to the red brick factory. Here you will get to see how they make bricks in Vietnam.

Last visit before heading back. A visit to the brick factory

Nothing goes to waste in Vietnam. Rice husks are being used as fuel to burn the fires in the kiln. Then the burnt husks are sold off as fertilizer for the crops.

Man using rice husks to slowly burn and heat up the bricks

from inside the kiln, looking up!

red bricks being stacked in the kiln before being cooked for few months

After a short visit to the brick factory. Its time to head home.

taking the river boat back

The  slippers SURVIVED!!!. Though half the thread has already come off. And the worse part of the trip was that it rained. We would be in deep trouble if the tour lasted another 2 hours. The mud kind of got the better of the slippers.

Overall: We fare the Ben Tre and My Tho tour trip, as relaxing with very little strenuous activities to do. If you love nature and would like to take a break from the “Chu Chi Tunnels” and horrific war torture and history attractions, then you might want to consider this tour. It was a one day relaxing tour!

If you are interested, you can always find any of the Sinh Tourist Tour Outlets at The Sinh Tourist .

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