Oops – visa run to Penang, Malaysia
The story is too long with too many complicated details. Suffice it to say I needed to go somewhere out of Bangkok immediately. I needed to come back on a different visa than the one I had the last time I entered Thailand. We found this out on a Thursday afternoon and had to make an immediate decision on where to go to get this done. We certainly wanted to go somewhere close and some place where it wasn’t going to cost us a fortune to get there and back. After my husband and I mulled it over separately we came up with Penang, Malaysia. This was a place I wanted to go ever since I had read that it was a destination for medical tourism in this reputable magazine.
The first great thing about this choice was that we could fly out of Don Muang Airport, which is not far from our home in Nichada making it easier to get out of the city. At first we were going to try to get out on Friday afternoon and had booked a flight on AirAsia premium flex however my job at the time prevented me from getting away; I had a meeting that went well and truly over and we couldn’t make the flight. Anticipating this might happen, Friday morning we moved our flight to the first one out on Saturday taking the pressure and stress off me. This really only gave us just over 24 hours in Penang.
The flight is an hour and three quarters. There is a time change between Bangkok and Penang so we lost an hour. It took by taxi about 30 minutes to get to our hotel and cost approximately 16USD. We stayed at the Blue Mansion in Georgetown. It also has a Malaysian name Cheong Fatt Tze. It is a gorgeous heritage building.
In fact there are tours of this gorgeous restored house now boutique hotel three times per day. As guests we went on the tour for free. The tours are given in a variety of languages by historians and are very interesting. As guests we never felt like these tours intruded on us however as I said we were only there for just over 24 hours.
The Mansion is right beside an outdoor eating space and area with live music that seemed very happening. We didn’t check it out as we ate at a lovely restaurant called Kebaya. It was a Malaysian restaurant with a set menu located in the beautiful hotel Seven Terraces. It was a four-course menu that was delicious in every bite and authentically Malaysian. We enjoyed it tremendously. There are only two seatings at this restaurant and a reservation is a must because it was very busy.
The next day we printed off a walking tour of Georgetown and got up early enough that it was quite pleasant. We walked around Georgetown and saw all the sites – it was really fun. There was after a wonderful made to order breakfast at the hotel included in the stay.
Not far from the hotel is a Chocolate and Coffee Museum which we visited just before we needed to have lunch and check out. The tour of the museum was brief but we got to try lots of samples of different kinds of delicious chocolate. Of course, we bought both coffee and lots of chocolate. Definitely recommend going here.
For lunch we went to Indigo the restaurant in the Blue Mansion. They serve a variety of set lunches and a la carte items. Both my husband and I had a set menu, different from each other. The food was superb. It was a great way to finish off our trip with a bottle of red wine to toast it all. All of the places we went were very reasonable.
We may have only had a short time in Penang but it definitely gave us enough of a taste to want to go back and discover much, much more.
