Getting Ready for Malaysia!

Well after many years of discussing and trying to make it happen, we are finally about to embark on our three month trip to Malaysia! the idea came during Covid as Zhaoyang was working from home as a CPA at a Public Accounting firm and we thought, well you can work from anywhere, let’s go to Asia!

So we started looking for places to go in Asia and settled on Penang, Malaysia due to its proximity to many other parts of Asia, the food culture, the prevalence of English and Chinese. So we began looking seriously at George Town, a former British settlement, in fact the first one in Southeast Asia. The next step in making the trip was to get approval from Zhaoyang’s employer. While they were supportive, there were many hurdles to overcome due to the nature of her work and the need to get specific approvals from the companies she was handling.

So after that plan fell through we put the plan on the back burner until after she changed jobs. She waited about a year after she joined to ask them and they were immediately supportive! So the plan was back on!

We will be leaving in the middle of February and flying to Singapore where we will transfer to a flight to Penang, an island off the northwest of Malaysia. We ended up renting two separate AirBNBs because it made it easier to find something we liked since it didn’t have to cover the full three months. So for the first six weeks we settled on a place just outside of George Town near Straits Quays and then moving closer to the main part of George Town near the Gurney Plaza, a place known for many restaurants and “hawker stalls” i.e. street food. We will return in mid-May and fly back through Hong Kong.

Of course Zhaoyang will be working, but she still plans to do some blogging, but certainly not everyday. Also, we will have some visitors during the trip, Matthew and Megan will visit in April and Zhaoyang’s sister coming from China, which will be her first trip outside of China!

We are really excited about the trip and we hope to do several long weekend trips, possibly to Vietnam, Cambodia, Indonesia and Thailand, although none of that has been definitively planned yet.