Day 8 (22.12.2019)
Today was the Winter Solstice, so we finally got to eat our tangyuan. It does feel strange to celebrate the Winter Solstice in a country that has no winter, but I suppose it is passed down from Chinese custom.
The big event of the day was going to the mall. A cultural difference I find very interesting is that while mall culture is dying in the US, it is still huge here. I think part of it may be that it is so hot for most of the day, that there isn’t all that much to do except go shopping and eating in a nice air conditioned environment.
The mall was decorated for Christmas, and imagine my excitement when I learned the theme this year was Hello Kitty! There were pink Christmas trees everywhere, a giant tree made of macarons, and in the centre of the main Plaza there was a big Ferris wheel made of sweets. It was so adorable!!! 
One thing I love about the malls in Penang are the crane machines. They are everywhere and contain all varieties of plushes, especially off-brand plushes of characters from San-x or Disney. Gu-zhang (my boyfriend’s uncle) is so skilled at winning prizes from these machines that he has several large plastic bags stuffed full of plushies, most left to repose in the attic but some favorites left on display in the bedroom. Boyfriend and I spent around 20 tries on the machine to no avail, but Gu-zhang won a prize (a little baby Tigger dressed as a bumblebee) on his very first try. I suppose it’s something you get better at with practice.
We went to a Chinese restaurant specializing in Peking duck for lunch. I was feeling quite ill around this time, and I’m pretty sure it was because I hadn’t eaten any Western-style food since the start of our trip. I was nervous to tell my boyfriend this because I was certain he would make fun of me, but he told me he feels exactly the same way if he goes too long without eating any Asian food! I felt pretty rude going to McDonald’s after barely touching the food at the Chinese restaurant, but I really did feel a lot better after eating a chicken sandwich. I very rarely eat McDonald’s at home, but I feel like the quality is significantly higher here. The menu is largely the same but the food is much less greasy.
After eating, we went to the arcade. There was this cute Chinese rhythm game called Maimai Milk Plus. I also played a few rounds of Taiko no Tatsujin. It is harder than it looks!
Day 9 (23.12.2019)
We went to a hawker center for breakfast today, as per usual. I tried this pancake dish made with bananas and crushed peanuts, yum! I also had bak kwa (sweet pork jerky) between white bread, this is another treat typically eaten around the Lunar New Year.
Another day, another mall–This one was a bit smaller than the one we went to yesterday. We spent a lot of time in the bookstore; the books are so cheap here, even the English ones. I bought a beautiful pocket-size edition of Little Women with a robin’s egg blue clothbound cover and gilded pages. We ate ice cream and bubble tea and a Korean style corn dog, and went to the mall arcade. This arcade had a bit more selection than yesterday’s, there was even a Pokemon game machine that gives you a card that has your Pokemon’s data on it, so you can keep training and battling with the same Pokemon at different machines.
Day 10 (24.12.2019)
This morning we went to a “wet market”, which is basically an open-air market selling “wet” or perishable goods like meats and vegetables. We went to something very similar 2 years ago in Cusco, Peru. It was interesting to see but I have to say I would be careful buying anything at these markets. There is a lot of potential for spread of disease due to all the meat in the open air (in fact, the recent coronavirus epidemic is thought to have originated from one of these markets).
We went back to the mall for a little bit today. I bought a gift for a friend there, and bubble tea for myself (brown sugar milk tea with cheese foam 
). In the evening we went to an open-air restaurant for dinner (most restaurants are outdoors or open-air due to the weather) and during our meal I spotted several monkeys crawling across the telephone lines!
Cuteness overload on this entry! 🙂 The Hello Kitty decorations you described sounded so adorable! And that claw machine was cute! I have zero luck on claw machines …(I actually prefer capsule machines, but only because you always end up with something! lol) I wonder if there’s a method to claw machines, but I feel like even if I knew the method I would probably be unable to get the prizes, lol!
It is interesting how you mentioned that Mall culture is so big there. I think you have a point with the heat thing. Malls were a big thing when I used to live in Florida too, a few years ago, because it was something to do in an air conditioned space, as opposed to going out in the heat. Another big thing that became sort of “Trendy” in my area of Florida that was sort of like a mall was going to walk around Ikea! I still do that where I live now, but definitely not as often.
Oh thank you, I really try to deliver on cuteness whenever I can ^^ I think it depends on what kind of claw machine it is, it’s usually a combination of both skill and luck. The one in the picture has a really small, weak jaw that can manage to pick up a toy for a second and then immediately drop it, so you feel like you “almost” had it. But every dozen plays or so the claw will get tight enough so it can actually hold a firm grip on the toy. My bf’s uncle can tell by looking how loose/tight the jaw is. Then he was somehow able to “tighten” the jaw by wiggling the control stick around really fast. It’s pretty crazy honestly, I hadn’t realized how complex those machines actually were.
That’s an interesting point about Florida! I have only ever lived in the northeast so I was wondering if malls were more popular in warmer parts of the country. And honestly, Ikea is great no matter the weather outside lol.