Ashy Macsoybean
Tai Tong is the best Chinese restaurant I have ever been to. The veggie assortment is not so large, but what there is is very good indeed. Along with my braised bean curd, I had stir fried broccoli and garlic fried baby pak choy...mmmmm... delicious! We go to Tai Tong every time we are in Georgetown and I recommend it to everyone. It's in Chinatown, of course, on Lebuh Cintra, which is just off Lebuh Chulia, where all the cheap hostels and backpacker cafes are.
The evening before we left for Penang, we returned to our favourite vegetarian restaurant in Kuala Lumpur. I forget the name, but it's also in Chinatown. I had fried pork and pineapple again and tried vegan cuttlefish, which wasn't very good - a bit springy and chewy for everyone's tastes, but that's probably what real cuttlefish is like. The veggie satay was excellent...
A few years ago in Hong Kong, we had a spooky experience involving cuttlefish. We were browsing the menu and marvelling at the things some people will eat for recreational purposes and the topic turned to cuttlefish. My daughter said she had tried some and found it disgusting and began to describe why it was so horrible... Just as we were all going 'Eugh! Yuk!' and all that kind of thing, the waiter approached and plonked a plate in front of Oxana and said, 'Cuttlefish, madam!' It turned out to be a mistake - it was for someone at the next table, but we all thought it as a bit weird that it should have happened at all.
I managed to update my cookbook today.... the guys in an Internet cafe on Lebuh Chulia let me plug their ADSL cable into my notebook. I've been working a little as we travel and the computer is holding up nicely. I'm glad I put a new mains lead on it - it has proved very versatile. I used a lead with a 2-pin plug of the cheapo-Chinese type that has narrow prongs. I've been able to plug it into every socket we've come across including 110 volt shaver sockets in hotel bathrooms, Sri-Lankan roung-hole, three-pin sockets and Malaysian square-pin, three-hole socket. The trick with the three pin sockets is to shove a thin piece of non-conducting material into the earth socket while you're putting the two-pin plug into the live holes. My instrument of choice for this is Sveta's plastic comb, which has a thin pointed handle on it - just perfect for any socket. It also works for the water-heating element, of course, so it's altogether a handy wee piece of travelling kit.
On Christmas day, we're travelling to Lankawi Island to do some serious lying-about-on-the-beach and maybe even a spot of beer-drinking....