Malaysia: Toon Leong Coffee Shop

We were supposed to hit up the famous roti canai stall on Transfer Road, but we left the guesthouse too late.  By the time we got there the stall was closed for afternoon prayers.  

Thwarted and at a loss, we wandered into the first restaurant that looked promising, which happened to be Toon Leong Coffee Shop:

Lots of old Chinese people inside:

I think we were the only people under 40 in that place.

The first thing we ordered was iced pulled tea.  Nothing was more important than downing something to combat the sticky heat.

There wasn't a menu in sight, so we had to resort to looking around at what was on the other tables.  We mostly spied coffee and toast.  (We later found out that Toon Leong is supposed to have some of the best Malaysian coffee or kopi in Malaysia.  Too bad neither of us are coffee drinkers.)  We did, however, see some people browsing through a food cart and packing things to-go.

CK went to investigate and somehow ended up bringing back a plate of food to share:

Apparently the lady at the cart shoved a plate in CK's hand and started piling stuff on.  We ended up with potato, okra, cauliflower, and chicken.  Deceptively simple, everything on that plate was delicious.

Before we left, we made sure to take two pulled teas to-go.

They came in bags.  BAGS.  No trip to SE Asia is complete without drinking out of a bag.  Seriously.  It's genius.

We puzzled over those bags for a good long while.  Don't laugh.  It's more complicated than it looks.  What's the proper way of inserting the straw?  We finally gave up and asked someone for help.  She looked at us like we were idiots and then did a bag for us.

I'm not going to tell you the secret to bag drinking because it's more awesome to see it firsthand.  CK and I geeked out over the bags all the way back to our guesthouse.

Now here's the story of how CK and I almost became criminals in Penang.  After finishing off our plate, we called the lady who took our drink orders over to calculate the bill.  We paid her and then walked out.  Only to be called back by the lady who "convinced" CK to get a plate of food.  Apparently there are two separate restaurants with two separate payment systems in one place.

Oops.  No wonder the bill was so astonishingly cheap.