TacoCat’s Travels #198 (Penang): Lounging around before our island Getaway! 🛫

March 2023 · 8 min read · Penang

Hey Hive!

Great news because it's time for us to share another trip we went on recently! If you missed the posts over the last few months, I've been sharing about a couple of places we visited locally here in Singapore due to travel restrictions during the covid period. It wasn't until July 2022 when we felt safe enough to take a trip again!

But just to be safe, we decided to take a short trip to see how we'd fare (and how strong our vaccines were). Since Sean has never been to Penang island in Malaysia while it's been a good decade since I've been, we decided to go there together! It was only a 3-day trip but it was still pretty interesting, so here we go!

24 July 2022. Sunday.

Our flight was in the afternoon and because Sean had access to some of the airport lounges, we decided to go check it out and get some free lunch before we flew! We've never been to an airport lounge before so this was an interesting new experience. We followed the signs up to the lounge area:

The airport lounges were past the immigration check so we didn't have time to explore the airport before we checked in. But it was alright; we saw most of the airport already it had just been a while now that we stay further from Changi.

There were plenty of other food options here besides the lounges so people without access like the staff had plenty of food to choose from of course.

One of the lounges was the Marhaba lounge which I think are for the European airlines like Lufthansa, Finair, etc. Of course we weren't taking those but Sean's credit card does enable him access as well.

We had a few lounges we could choose from and thankfully they let us in to see what kind of food they had so we could make an informed decision.

The lounge itself looked pretty nice, with plenty of seating but it did look a little dim.

For food they had 3 hot dishes, some salad, bread and drinks. The dishes they had were Japanese Chicken Curry, Singapore Style Vegetarian Noodles and Ratatouille?

It looked pretty alright, and was quite comfortable but we decided to check out the other lounge just to compare.

We passed by plenty of other lounges but those were for people in Business class.

We could however enter the SATS Premier Lounge, and we asked if we could look around as well.

And I must say, this lounge looked a lot more inviting! With the comfortable looking leather chairs, bright lights and greenery.

There were also plenty of tables and chairs to choose from, and a larger buffet area.

They even had a more zen area in the back, which looked so peaceful. We unanimously decided that this lounge was superior compared to the other one and chose to settle in here.

I got a booth in the zen area while Sean went to tell the staff that we'd eat here. After they checked that we did indeed have access, we were all set!

The buffet spread here was more impressive compared to the other lounge for sure, with 2 aisles and a wider selection of cooked dishes, salad, fruits and bread.

For the cooked dishes, there were different carbs like pasta, noodles, rice, meats like sausages and samosas and of course curry!

There was mashed potato and fish fillets as well which I tried and were kinda meh.

We did try a little of everything to see what was good so we could load up on that instead. Everything was still good but I liked the noodles best since it was my favourite kind of noodle - Ee Fu!

SATS provides the food for Singapore Airlines flights which has a reputation for having good food so the standard here should be the same if not better since it's more fresh.

The food was pretty good! It was also our first meal of the day but we were impressed. The curry was nice and tasty which was what we were gunning for since Sean wanted curry. There was also some broccoli soup that I tried but I think it was a little sour for me. What a shame, since that was the only vegetable dish they had.

Apart from the buffet dishes we also got to try the SATS Signature Laksa! It was still part of the buffet though since they just had the bowls with noodles on display, but there were instructions on how to prepare it yourself.

We prepared it as instructed and it smelled pretty legit! We were excited to give it a try.

We shared a bowl just in case we didn't like it and it looked pretty much like the picture.

It actually tasted delicious! The soup was not too creamy or oily and had a spice kick to it. The noodles were still springy too despite being on the shelf for a while. The egg matched well with the soup since the yolk lessened the spice. This was Singaporean laksa and not asam laksa which I don't like as much, so this was good.

There were booths on the other side of the lounge and even some massage chairs! There were only a few though and they were all taken up of course so we didn't get to try them.

After we were stuffed and also tried some of their drinks (but not the alcohol because even though it's free we don't have the taste for it) we sat for a bit in the brown leather chairs that we saw when we entered. We relaxed after such a filling lunch and went to use the bathroom before leaving.

The restroom comes with a shower as well for those travelers with long layovers and it was actually really nice! It looked so modern and had a nice design to it; it reminded me of those bathrooms I'd seen in interior design ads.

We didn't have much time to rest though since our flight was around 3pm and we had yet to find our gate. So after a little while we started making our way there.

Other than food there were shops aplenty selling all sorts, from souvenirs to travel essentials!

Turns out our gate was a little ways away so we were glad to have left the lounge early.

But even though we got there early, we almost missed our flight! There was a long queue to go into the gate so we sat outside and waited for the line to clear, but turns out the line was for another flight at the same gate! We ended up skipping the line and zooming through the security scan and were the last to board the plane!! It was quite a scare but after we were safe in our seats we were all good and excited for the trip ahead!

After about 2 hours, we arrived in Penang! The immigration took a while but it was fairly quick.

Then we called for a driver through an app and waited at the arrival pickup point. We could already feel the heat just stepping outside and it did feel warmer than it was in Singapore for some reason. Probably because there are a lot more cars here than in Singapore.

After about a 40 minutes drive, we arrived at our hotel in Georgetown! It's an area in Penang with plenty of food and is popular with tourists so we thought we'd just stay there so we'd be accessible to everything.

The hotel we chose is called the Wembley and is a pretty fancy hotel, albeit a little older and traditional-looking. The lobby was decked out with a big chandelier and marble floors. And it was quite spacious with a wide entrance, a cafe on one side and the reception area on the other.

The most important thing was there was air-conditioning, which we were really thankful for. I waited with our luggage while Sean went to check-in.

The hotel was quite big and had 20 or so floors. After a swift check-in, we made our way to our room.

The room itself looked pretty nice! We had a view of another hotel opposite and the bed felt nice and comfortable.

The bathroom was also acceptable with a shower and toilet. Nothing much to look at, but it was a nice reasonable room. The decor matched the overall traditional vibe. It felt like a boomer hotel but there weren't that many choices around and it was clean and nice so no complaints.

We didn't spend too long in the room since there wasn't much daylight left. So we dumped our stuff and packed a day bag before heading off to sightsee! It was in the early evening so we still had some time to see stuff and were hoping the sun wouldn't be as brutal at 4pm.

But I think we'll leave that for next week! Sorry for the lack of content in this one but first posts of every trip tend to be like this. Hope you enjoyed it anyway and look forward to next week when we visit our first tourist spot - the biggest temple in Malaysia!

Thanks so much for reading!