Penang Food Hunt 2008 with Feedmelah.com!

In an earlier post, we mentioned that we had taken part in the Penang Food Hunt 2008 and boy was it an experience.

I didn't realize how true this was going to be.

I should have put 'super super busy food hunting'

As first time treasure hunters (except Sue Ann), myself, Jason and Khe Shene didn’t really know what to expect. We were thinking, how hard could it be? I’ve done Easter egg hunts before when I was a kid and that was a piece of cake. We were so wrong.

Registration

The day started bright and early with registration being at the Paradise Sandy Bay hotel at 9 a.m where all participating teams must go and register and collect some things from the organizers. This included the stickers for the sponsors (which we were required to stick on our car) as well as a goody bag with a map, a copy of the Rasa-Rasa food guide and some discount vouchers for the various outlets we might be passing.

Some free advertising for the sponsors.

Some more free advertising (held up by Khe Shene)

Hey wait a minute, I PAID them to put advertising on my car.... doh!

We were then briefed on the rules and regulations of the race as well as what we were expected to do on the day.

Task 1: Find 4 locations around Penang Island and collect a stamp from each location. You must eat at one location and take a picture of yourself eating the food as proof. You are given the name of each restaurant and a Google map of each location.

Shouldn’t be too hard.

Go go go!

I said go go go!

Fine. Just sit in your cars then.

Problem 1: We had no idea where any of the roads were in Penang.

Solution 1: So we used the tourist map we had wisely bought in KL before heading to Penang.

One of the locations we had to stop at.

At one of the locations we were meant to take a ‘creative picture’ to submit to the organiser with the chance of winning a prize. Here was ours:

Quite creative right? Too bad we didn’t have time to hand it in to the organizers.

Also, the picture was meant to be proof that we actually ate at the restaurant. We decided to stop and eat at the restaurant that sold beef noodle soup, but when we got there, the lady said it would take half an hour for our food to be ready.

It was worth it.

Being starving tourists from Kuala Lumpur, we happily ordered 4 bowls of noodles. On top of that, the noodles cost RM7 a bowl!

But it was worth every single penny. The soup had pork rind in it and the beef was extremely tasty, we were so tempted to order some more food.

So good I didn't want to share.

The result of our stop at the beef noodle place?

We got to the checkpoint for task 1 in second last place! We later found out that the veteran treasure hunters don’t even eat any of the food at the 4 stops. They wait for someone to finish eating, sit at the table, pick up the bowl and take a picture of themselves pretending to eat it.

We panic and quickly head to task 2.

The center of the food court.

One member had to cook something as well.

Task 2: Go to New World Park food court and solve a list of riddles.

Problem 2: The riddles.

Solution 2: Simply guess the answers.

There were only 10 riddles to answer for task 2 and all the answers were in plain sight, but the way the organisers worded the questions, it was as if it wasn’t in English.

You are too slow! Faster lah! (OK he didn’t actually say that, but it suits the picture right?)

After spending way too long at the food court, we quickly moved on to task 3, which was almost the same as task 2 except you have to follow directions on a premade map while at the same time trying to solve the clues. All the answers could be ‘seen from the car’.

Although the person who made the questions must have eagle like vision to see some of the answers.

Problem 3: See problem 2 above.

Solution 3: Get lost, confused and simply answer the questions. Also arrive at last checkpoint 2 minutes before deadline.

Unfortunately for the organisers, one of the roads that was marked on their map was closed on the day of the hunt. Easy enough for Penangites, just drive around it and get to the other side. But for us, we resorted to a high speed chase of the nearest Penang license plate car with the ‘Penang Food Hunt’ sticker on the side.

Because of this unexpected detour, getting lost and taking too long on our clues, we had to skip the last few questions and make a mad dash for the finish line.

The finish line. Everyone scrambling to submit their answers.

The deadline for the hunt is 6 hours from when your car leaves the parking lot of the hotel. We arrived at the final checkpoint 2 minutes before our deadline.

What a tiring day.

FYI, we wrote down ‘Feedmelah.com’ for each of the answers we skipped, and at prize giving the next morning (We were nowhere near the top hunters. Somehow, 1st place managed to score full marks! FULL MARKS! How???) the MC was reading out the funniest answers he got when he said:

“One team wrote down ‘Cin Chai’ as an answer and one of the other teams wrote down Feedmelah.com, Feedmelah.com, Feedmelah.com.”

Haha… I love free advertising.

We survived! Check out my shorts!

All in all a great weekend out, albeit a bit rushed. I can’t wait till they bring the food hunt onto home turf, i.e. KL and Selangor. Maybe we won’t get so lost next time.

Blog Penang, penang food hunt 2008, Penang Island