Wedding Reception in Penang, Malaysia (1) 《Travel》

As I wrote in the Vietnam chapter before, I used to try to get some local information from locals before traveling abroad alone.

Since the convenient social media environment we have now didn't exist, when I wasn't used to traveling abroad, I used a famous chat software called ICQ.
If you searched by country name, you could randomly talk to people related to that country.

In the previous Bonbee (UK chapter), I had also heard stories in advance from people I could search for in the UK.
From someone who had studied abroad in the UK, I gathered various negative information, such as that I should survive on scones for meals, that subway fares were surprisingly high, and what transportation was like.

Among them, I was also connected with a woman from Malaysia who was studying abroad in the UK.
She said she was attending to get an accounting-related qualification, but it was a grueling qualification that seemed to have no end in sight, and she didn't know when she would graduate.

For a while, she taught me information not only about the UK but also about Malaysia, and we had fun chatting a few times about our own stories.
After that, we lost touch.

However, about half a year after I went on my UK trip (Bonbee chapter), a message suddenly came on ICQ.

I'm getting married soon.

Come to think of it, I remembered she said she was dating a person from Hong Kong who was also studying abroad in the UK.
When I replied, "Congratulations,"

She said, "I've decided to have my wedding in my hometown, Penang Island."

She said.

I had mentioned in our small talk that Penang Island appears in 'Midnight Express' and that it was a place I definitely wanted to visit.

Then she said.

Will you come?

Huh!?

We've never actually met.
We only talked a few times on ICQ.
Moreover, we didn't even have deep conversations.

Why?
My brain glitched.

Various thoughts raced through my head.
Can I really go? Will it be fun if I go? It's a wedding reception for someone I've never met...

While I was thinking that,
my already glitched brain glitched even more.

It sounds interesting.

In terms of the anime
Spy x Family,
it was Anya Forger's
"Waku waku!" (Exciting!)
state.

When I asked about the dates, it seemed they would coincide nicely with our long weekend in autumn.
At the time, work was going well, and since we hadn't had a company trip in a long time, I thought it would be killing two birds with one stone—a great way to enjoy ourselves.

"I'm going."

Not just a simple yes.
An enthusiastic one.

The conversation ended with the understanding that I should be on Penang Island the day before the event.

The following week, I talked about the plan at work.
Naturally, everyone was keen, my family wanted to go too, and in the end, we all decided to go.

Penang Island.
It was a place I had always thought of as
being in my top five places I wanted to visit, so I was looking forward to it.

The planning went smoothly.

Since all my employees are women and very diligent, they researched and
listed up
the best hotels, where to go, what to eat, and fun places to visit, almost perfectly.
If it were just me, my trips usually end up being haphazard, centered mostly around what I want to eat, so I was very grateful to have the plan made for me.

I decided to take one of them,
an employee of the same age, along with me to attend the wedding.
The others apparently planned to go to a spa while we were at the wedding.
Well, spas take a long time, like four hours.
It must be the perfect thing to do during a wedding reception.

In truth,
that employee of the same age probably wanted to go to the spa too, but since it ended up being a bit of a power-harassment-style tagging along, she was grumbling a little.

We flew Cathay Pacific via Hong Kong.
From Hong Kong, we headed straight to Penang.

To share a small anecdote, besides the in-flight meal, they served something like a large chocolate bar as a snack. It was quite big.
Moreover, since it was a transit flight, we were served a full course of meals and snacks twice.

As expected, the employees struggled to eat it the second time around.
It's very much like them not to be able to turn it down because they feel it would be a waste to cancel.
Though I'm the same way.

With that, off to Penang we went.

To be continued