TacoCat’s Travels #208 (Penang): Glowing in the Dark and Enjoying Traditional Snacks! 😮

June 2023 · 9 min read · George Town

Hey Hive!

If you missed the last few posts, I started sharing about our short getaway to Penang Island, Malaysia, back in July 2022! It was our first trip post-covid and we decided to go on a short 3 day getaway there! It had been at least a decade since either of us have visited Penang so this was a semi-new experience for both of us.

Last week, we completed our journey through the Wonderfood Museum! It showcased the various cuisines in Malaysia, how it relates to culture and different local festivals, as well as how food culture was back in the old days.

Other than being very educational, there were also lots of places for cool photos!

The biggest hook was probably their larger-than-life replicas of Malaysia's famous dishes!

We had a lot of fun reading and learning about all our favourite food, but when we finished we still had some time so we decided to go check out another one of the tourisy museums in Georgetown!

26 July 2022. Tuesday.

It was really warm outside when we exited the Wondefood Museum so we took a car to go to the other museums around. They were all in the same area but were not connected unfortunately.

There were two other museum-like places we were considering. One was the called the Upside Down Museum which as the name implies, has a lot of exhibits relying on upside down illusions and such. I guess its more of a gimmicky photo place than an actual museum.

Sean wasn't very keen on that even though I didn't mind checking it out so we decided to go see this place called the Dark Mansion instead. At first we thought it was a haunted house because of the name, but it really is just a dark place with glow-in-the-dark stuff.

Since we wanted somewhere with air-conditioning to dodge the heat either place worked. And I do enjoy seeing glow-in-the-dark stuff so we went here instead, even though our driver told us the Upside Down Museum was better.

After we got our tickets to the Dark Mansion, we went in through the left side from the entrance where they explained how the whole museum uses black lights:

I guess this was the "museum" part of the place since there was also some information about phosphors and how they're the reason why our shirts would glow under a black light. It's actually pretty cool!

Unfortunately because the whole place is quite dark, it was a little more difficult to get pictures here and some of my photos ended up blurry. Sorry about that.

I also didn't want to block the way for other people going through the mansion but I did try my best to get some shots of the beautiful glow-in-the-dark art!

Some of it was truly quite impressive, but unfortunately without the camera flash out faces could hardly be seen. But our shirts glowed!

We passed by the initial forest area that I guess was supposed to be the forest from the Avatar movies called Pandora! We even passed by this alleyway that had all these pretty butterflies! I used a flash for this since it wasn't bright enough for the camera to capture without a flash.

Then there was a huge butterfly you could take a picture with and we tried our best.

The forest area did have some lighted spots like this little tent here:

Then we came to an oceanic area that I guess is more Avatar 2 now? It wasn't out at the time but now it fits.

These were mostly just printed graphics on the wall with some glow in the dark highlights here and there though. Not as impressive as the forest which was drawn on.

There was also this room full of mirrors and hanging Playstation symbols that I guess resemble those from Squid Game as well now.

We tried to take a mirror selfie here but it was kinda difficult with the lighting and it wasn't a big room despite the mirror illusion.

After that we came into a big room with an illusion on the floor! It was kinda difficult to angle the camera just right but I think I did it.

Here's what the room really looked like:

I guess this was painted by the Master Street Painter, Edgar Mueller! There was a whole information board about him beside this illusion art.

We were kinda skeptical if they really got him to paint it or if this was inspired by one of his pieces. It did seem like it was printed on though so perhaps this was an actual piece of his that they printed and put here.

The cool thing was the waterfall would change colours because of the black light! The lights would change intermittently so you could get two different shots. This was the alternate one which I thought was super cool with the lava below!

There wasn't much else after that (that I took photos of anyway). I think there may have been some screen stuff where they projected things onto the walls but it was pretty dark in there and too difficult to photograph so I gave up. We did end with this picture that they took of us though:

There were a couple of other goofy photos as well like this one:

And this King Kong one which was probably our favourite!

And of course we ended at the gift shop where you could buy these photos if you wanted them printed. But we didn't, these shots I took were enough for us I think. There were also a random assortment of souvenirs and novelty T-shirts you could buy for exorbitant prices at the shop.

But that was pretty much it for the Dark Mansion! It was kinda meh compared to the Wonderfood Museum but I guess that was on us since we picked the best one to visit first. To be fair, we didn't know how long we would take to go through it so I guess it can't be helped.

After that we were kinda done with museums but it was still blisteringly hot outside so we tried to keep to the shade and see where we could go.

We did pass by this shop that I guess is really famous since it was absolutely packed with everyone wanting to eat the dishes here.

I couldn't really see what they were eating though so I wasn't sure which stall was the actual famous one but my guess is the Laksa in the back since it says Famous Penang Road Laksa.

It was way too warm for laksa though so we passed on it. We ended up at this shop which I guess is another famous shop for snacks!

Initially I thought this was a Traditional Chinese Medicine shop but looking inside I was gratefully wrong since they had so many pastries here!

But the misunderstanding is pretty fair since they did actually sell some medicinal stuff like these drinks and desserts called Ming Xiang Tai Medicine Tea and Jelly!

But their main product is definitely the traditional handmade pastries and biscuits! They even have souvenir boxes for tourists to buy and bring back for families and friends! I guess this must be a very famous shop but I wasn't familiar with it. I think Sean has heard of it before though.

We decided to try a few of the pastries along with a chilled dessert and drink and there was a nice seating area in the back for us to enjoy them away from the sun.

It was such a unique place and I felt like I got transported back to the 80s or something with these traditional wooden furniture.

There was even a shelf with all these old-style teacups and tiffin containers, colloquially known as tingkat.

The kitchen was also back here and there was a passageway that led to the back exit that really reminded me of my grandmother's house in Malacca.

We had bought some of the pastries to try including an egg tart, wife pastry kaya puff and pandan salted egg pastry. The pastries were actually still warm which made it so much better!

Here's what the inside of the kaya puff looked like! It was quite flaky on the inside but thankfully the kaya itself wasn't too sweet.

This was the signature egg tart which was really good! Egg tarts are probably one of my favourite pastriesand this had a nice crust that wasn't too flaky or dry, and the egg custard was bouncy and light.

This was the pandan salted egg pastry, which was a little odd since it was pandan which is sweet mixed with salty. But the salted egg paste was just a dollop in the centre so it wasn't exactly mixed completely. I did like pandan part but I didn't really like it mixed with the salted egg.

We also tried their Signature Black Beancurd dessert which was slightly chilled.

We've had soy beancurd desserts before but not a black one. I'm not sure what about this is black since it looked like normal beancurd but it did come with a container of sugar syrup so maybe that's what makes it black?