The Canon-ieat Penang Photo and Food Trip: So is the grass really greener on the other side?

I've just return from the first official ieatishootipost overseas food trip and boy do I have lots of blog posts to write! Our team comprised of 15 participants, 7 of whom where there for food and photography while the rest were there for photography and food.

Penang is a real foodies' paradise and I have heard comments ranging from "Singapore food is nothing compared to Penang's" to "Penang food really cannot make it leh!". So I was on a personal mission to track down Penang's most famous and best eats to see if the grass (Char Kway Teow in this case) is greener on the other side or if we should be happy with the grass we have in Singapore.

Apart from accompanying Canon Photo Professional, Jino, who spent over 30 years of his life in Penang, we were very fortunate to be joined by leading Penang blogger, CK Lam, who blogs on the very popular www.what2seeonline.com. CK tagged along for all four days and we managed to cover quite a lot of food stalls. And the best thing is that being a blogger, she didn't just bring us to the famous ones but also included some hidden gems which our tour guide knew nothing about.

We went during a very festive period in Penang and managed to capture shots of World Heritage sites like the Kek Lok Si temple, Clan Houses and Chew Jetty which were all lit up for the Chinese New Year celebrations. Our photography tour also included the butterfly gardens, Penang Hill, Fort Cornwalis and we even ventured to "The end of the world".

Being with a group of "Camera Siow" enthusiasts can be quite daunting. Some of the photographers were going around with equipment worth a whole years' salary hanging off their necks, waists, backs and any anatomical parts where you could hang an equipment bag. On one of the nights, I actually "caught" four grown men giggling away behind the door of their hotel room with all their cameras set on tripods taking photos of each other's cameras! You might think that that kind of behaviour is a bit queer, but then again, they might also think that a bunch of people running around town just eating at stall after stall haven't really got their lens screwed on too tight either.

Anyway, we all had a great time and I am satisfied that I have tasted enough of Penang food to make up my own mind on how green the grass in Penang really is. So, stay tuned over the next few weeks as I slowly work through all the stalls that we visited. In the meantime, you might like to try identifying the stalls that we visited from the photos in the slideshow.

Many thanks to Canon for jointly organizing the trip with ieatishootipost!