Road Trippin’ to Penang, Day 1.

Remember the Mitsubishi ASX-perience contest I won, where I got the Mitsubishi ASX for a day? Each winner got a video made of their experience with the car and guess whose video won the grand prize? That would be mine! Undeniably, it was the best wedding present I could ask for. You can watch the winning video here.

The grand prize includes a 3 day 2 night stay at Hard Rock Hotel Penang, the ASX for the trip, and RM2000 spending money. You know what they say about people needing a holiday to recover from a holiday? I decided to make it a pre-honeymoon holiday from the Saturday to Monday before my actual honeymoon to two Thursdays ago.

Check out the #ASXroadtrip hashtag or @NoraSuffian on Twitter for the tweets during the Penang trip and the photo essay below.

We woke up at 5.45am, showered, then had breakfast at 6.30am. The journey begins a little before 7am. The car we got had bigger wheels, I think, and it’s in my favorite color for the ASX/Lancer range.

Check out the rear-view camera as we were leaving home.

We stopped at Shell to buy some mineral water for the trip. If you noticed the windscreen, it started raining after we left.

The soundtrack at the beginning of the journey.

Suffian was thrilled he could push up the chair so that he could actually see the front of the car. Heh.

Of course I had time to camwhore.

Suffian drove from KL and I took over until Ipoh. It was a challenge going 90km/h or 110km/h at the speed trap zones on the straight roads.

Going up the winding, hilly roads was a breeze. We were going pretty fast too.

I love the big side view mirrors.

There are lots of cup holders — four or six in front, if I’m not mistaken.

We stopped at Petronas Changkat Jering to refuel. RM100 for 5/8 tank of RON97, which isn’t bad considering RON97′s prices have gone up and it’s a 2.0 litre engine.

We went to Taiping to visit Suffian‘s late grandfather’s home, where he had lots of childhood memories.

Thirsty, we went into town to look for the famous Ansari cendol but it was closed. Boo. Cadbury Picnic made up for the cendol disappointment.

I drove all the way to Penang, hence the slightly odd shots. Suffian didn’t know how to control the settings on the camera’s manual mode.

We finally reached Hard Rock Hotel Penang after a stretch of narrow, winding roads. It also started raining again so we waited it out in the car.

There was a minor hiccup during check-in but soon, we were in our room.

We had no idea where to go for lunch so we settled for Hard Rock Cafe. Plus, the hotel provided us with RM200 vouchers.

We rested for a bit before we ventured out to Batu Ferringhi for dinner at the Long Beach food court. Yes, I had roti pisang in Penang, meh.

The Batu Ferringhi night market beckons, where we got ourselves quite a few things: 2 handbag holders, 1 katana-inspired umbrella and some movie DVDs.

To end the night, we popped in the latest Harry Potter movie. Unfortunately, being so excited to drive the ASX, we didn’t realise how tiring it could be driving all the way up to Penang and we fell asleep halfway through the movie. We’re at the end of Day 1 — Day 2 will come soon.

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