Trip Reports: Tour Bust in Penang, Malaysia

I was super excited about seeing Penang for the first time, and eating was going to the be the focus. So I did my research and a month in advance I booked a private 8 hour culinary tour with Rasa Malaysia, which interspersed siteseeing with custom food tastings. Or at least I thought I’d booked it.

From their emails, I was under the impression that my tour was confirmed, no deposit was needed, I’d just pay the driver upon arrival. A week before I emailed to confirm my food preferences and send our flight information. Only to get an email back saying they had no availability! That was an important lesson learned. Apparently confirming in writing wasn’t enough — I should have confirmed multiple times?

I was upset that they had not contacted me before cancelling my reservation but I was even more panicked that we had no transportation or tour. With only a few days before we were scheduled to arrive and only being there 24 hours, I figured the options would be few. I got on Trip Advisor and found the name of a well regarded driver. I also sent a desperate tweet to @EatingAsia.

The tour guide got back to me in a few hours and was able to take us. @EatingAsia, my top choice, did an hour or two later, but unfortunately I had already confirmed with the driver. 

Our Firefly flight to Penang went well and we landed at 10AM in the morning to find our driver waiting for us outside immigration.

The person I had booked had fallen ill and sent our guide in his place. A very friendly man, very talkative. In the first 45 minutes we were left with the impression that he only wanted us to be happy and would take us anywhere, tell us anything we wanted to know. The only problem was he rarely stopped talking long enough to listen.

After dropping our bags off at the hotel, we started the tour, beginning with Penang Hill. Both of us had the beginnings of a headache from the non-stop chatter, but couldn’t think of a polite way to ask him to tone it down. While we were exploring the hilltop we decided to cut the tour short — the butterfly farm we had wanted to visit was an hour and a half drive in both directions and we didn’t think we could handle it.

Instead we would ask to go to the Hawker stalls for lunch and the clan jetties, and call it a day. Maybe venturing out again in the evening. Our guide kept trying to dissuade us from seeing fewer things, in fact, kept trying to upsell us, so in desperation I claimed I was feeling ill from the heat, which was actually half true.

The disappointment on our side continued when we were told the hawker stalls didn’t open to the evening, instead he took us to a local version of a “food court.”

The food looked good and we were planning to try a bunch of things, but he then advised us not to finish everything was considered rude, so we’d want to be careful.

Even more crestfallen we settled for a delicious chicken and rice in clay pot dish and some spicy soup.

Our guide was nothing if not enterprising, so because I’d claimed heat was the problem, he decided to take us on a driving tour of Penang’s art scene — which actually wound up being really cool.

Artists had been commissioned to paint various walls or sculpt metal and they had been amazingly inventive, utilizing multiple mediums.

My favorite was the kids painted to appear astride a motorcycle and bicycle.

The “Kung Fu” girl.

And other interesting scenes on random streets.

Having successfully tacked on an additional half hour, the guide finally took us to the Chew Clan Jetties. For some reason I found the jetties quite beautiful and interesting, even though they’re basically historic fisherman homes set on wooden piers (not to over simplify).

But just walking through was neat — lots to see and it didn’t take very long. And the guide did provide us with umbrellas for shade from the sun, which wound up being very helpful as I did eventually end up almost fainting from the heat by the end of the tour.

The interior of a traditional jetty house.

View from the end of the pier

But during this time, the narration rarely ceased and we were exhausted when we left the jetties and asked to return to the hotel. The guide was clearly disappointed in us that we didn’t want to add-on to our tour and we were pretty disappointed that we couldn’t wait to get away.

He only charged us for the 3 1/2 hours we’d toured, though the place had a 4 hour minimum and agreed to meet us back at the hotel the next morning to take us to the airport. When he picked us up he told us his boss had pointed out the 4 hour minimum and he had to charge us for the extra half hour ($5), which was fine, but rather left a bad taste in our mouth from the whole experience. We weren’t trying to cheat him out of anything that was owed him but we had felt like we were constantly having to decline constant upsells and ways he could get a kickback.

The most notable was right after I had told him I wrote for a travel advice website, he told me I should contact him before our next visit and he would book our hotels for us. And it was clear the ones he was recommending were the ones that would give him referral credit. Sigh.

Anyway, he was a nice guy, but we did not enjoy our day in Penang and fervently wished we could have taken the tour with Eating Asia.

These things happen, you’re not always a good fit with your travel guide. I do need to get better about being polite but firm. Does anyone have any tips on approaches that have worked well for them?

More posts from the trip:

Checking In and Air France Lounge at IAD
Korean Airlines First Class IAD-ICN
Hyatt Regency Incheon: Great Service, Hard Beds
Accidentally Seeing Seoul Like a Native
Tight Quarters at the Park Hyatt Seoul
Worth a Hike — Bukchon Hanok Village
Checking In for a Flight from Downtown Seoul 
Korean Airlines First Class Lounge Incheon Airport
Korean Airlines First Class Seoul to Kuala Lumpur
You Don’t Get Massaged By a Blind Paralympic Everyday...
Great Value at the Le Meridien Kuala Lumpur
Flying Firefly Airlines from Subang to Penang
Is Penang Hill Worth It?
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Related Posts:

• Trip Reports: Is Penang Hill Worth It?
• Thinking About a Trip to Penang? Better Hurry!
• Trip Reports: Penang to Koh Samui
• Flying Firefly Airlines from Subang to Penang