I am a Southeast Asian who spent almost all of my 57 years in Asia, but had a 6 years stint in the US (where some of my Asian colleagues opened small restaurants), and had been in Europe for an extended period of time. This is what I learned: 1. Western countries requires permits for all kind of sh*t, while in SE Asia it is very simple. 2. All kind of insurance craps such as food poisoning need to be provided, while in SE Asia you eat at your own risk. 3. There are strict regulations in western countries. Kitchen needs to be all stainless steels. In SE Asia, we just use whatever we could find. 4. There are plenty of cheap labors in SE Asia such as your kids and family who will be glad to work only to get free meals. 5. In SE Asia, small restaurants pay very little or no tax. Or just pay small amount to corrupt officers. 6. In SE Asia you can just start to open business tomorrow as soon as you find a space on the street that is not occupied 7. Most of SE Asian foods are deep-fried. And we could “recycle” the oil even after it becomes as black as a used motor oil 8. A lot of leftover could be transformed into another Asian dish. Yesterday’s steam rice will make a delicious fried rice 9. People do not sue each other in SE Asia. If you got food poisoning, or even died, there will be no litigation and no lawyers around to profit from that incident 10. Because eating out is relatively cheap, majority of people in SE Asia are eating out. And since a lot of people are eating out, restaurants can buy groceries at deep discounts. And since restaurants can get huge discounts, they can sell cheaply. And since the prices are cheap, lots of people prefer eating out.
@@SeanGranseeTravel just sharing my experience helping a colleague opening a tiny restaurant in US. Flood insurance, Fire insurance, liabilities insurance (in case a patron fell on a wet floor), food poisoning insurance, kitchen utensil inspection, kitchen materials inspection, waste management inspection, raw materials inspection, health code inspection, sanitary inspection, noise permit, zoning permit, state permit, beer permit, liquor permit, city permit, etc etc etc. You might have heard / read the case of “China Buffet” who was cited for 110 violations! I can’t even list 110 things that could be “violated”. I myself opened an eatery in Indonesia, and needed none of the inspections/permits/codes that exist in the US
@@eddywiyana5524 I'm not surprised by any of this. So many things to inflate restaurant costs in the US, and therefore make eating at restaurants more expensive 😭
You forgot to tell how tips here are NOT MANDATORY in each bill payment. Im shocked & surprised how in the US, tips are forced towards customer like 10 to 30% of total bills even the bill already has service and sales tax. Another surprised is how a SELF-SERVICE checkout machine even has tips section for customer to choose from, even theres no human services is involved in self service store. 😂😂😂😂
Yeah, tipping culture in the US has gotten out of control. When I say in the video that I get meals in Malaysia for $2, that means I truly only spent $2 on it.
@@SeanGranseeTravel I went to a diner in San Fran, they stuffed up my order, half the table got their food after about 15 mins, the other half waited about 45 mins, service was non existent and a 20% tip was mandatory on the bill. It’s gotten to the point that it shouldn’t be called a tip anymore, should just be called wage surcharge
Most single office workers in Indonesia never cook. Occasionally they'll cook Indomie, but most of the time they just buy bubur ayam, ketoprak, nasi uduk, ketupat sayur, gado-gado, pecel ayam/lele, baso, soto ayam, nasi goreng, sate ayam, nasi padang, nasi warteg, etc... and still have enough money to pay rent, pay motorcycle instalment, buy internet data, buy mixue etc
Totally agree. I can't explain it better as you do when you live a long time in South East Asia, also my local friends (Indonesia) eat mostly outside and will never be cooking. In Europe this is very difficult to immagine.
Yeah, I can't imagine life without cooking if I lived anywhere in Europe. It's just too expensive to have someone else cook all your food. I was recently talking to my friend who traveled cheaply around Europe and he said "I ate kebabs almost every day". My experience as well is that kebab shops are the go-to cheap quick food if you want to avoid the big fast food chains in many (not all) European countries. Whereas in Malaysia, I can have a different meal from a different food stall every day of the month if I wanted to and never spend long waiting for my food.
@@SeanGranseeTravel lmao! During the 1 year stay in liverpool england (I'm now back in malaysia since a few months ago) which provided a golden opportunity for several trips visiting cities in europe, kebabs WERE the go to food basically everywhere hahah! Kebabs in switzerland, kebabs in germany, kebabs in paris, kebabs in prague, kebabs in barcelona... 🤣😭😭😭 Yup, kebabs most of the time, and sometimes some sort of rice meals like rice pilau/pilaf. Being muslim tourists, they are the simplest and most easily found halal food all over the continent. I swear if I have my way, I won't touch another kebab for the next 10 or 20 years! 🤣🤣
I'm Bulgarian, I've traveled and lived in Asia and I agree! I love eating out in Asia! BTW, the service in Bulgaria is just super bad as a leftover from communism when waiters were paid very well, restaurants were rare and the service treated customers like dirt, at least from what my parents have told me. Even tips (that still existed back then) weren't enough of an incentive for the waiters to overcome their entitlement. It's much better now but ingrained habits die slowly
You can't continue to blame communism for your own shortcomings as a country. It's been over 30 years. Laos, China and Vietnam are all communist and their service/food culture is infinitely superior to that of Europe.
This makes little sense. Everywhere there are well paid employees. That do their job. Why would paying a waiter a decent wage make them entitled? In other countries waiters are paid well and receive meager tips yet do their job. And in the States, you can find bad waiters who work on tips.
Fyi, for malaysian malays (who are muslims) who operate food businesses, there is another reason for keeping their food prices affordable: they wouldn't want to be labelled by fellow malays as a business person who charges an exorbitant price in order to be able to quickly get (fly) to mecca and perform the hajj, then return on the same day 🤣🤣🤣🤣
I'm in the Philippines, and where I'm at, the Muslim-owned businesses are as competitive as the Chinese or the Chinese was once known before. And probably because there's -rich- philanthropic muslims here, that sponsoring Hajj is common.
Being a Malaysian, having home cooked food is more of a health reason. Restaurant or hawker food may be affordable and tastier but they're loaded with msg, salt and unhealthy oil.
It's not abt hygiene. Malaysian foods always using coconut milk, curry etc and overprocessed. They don't like eating salad or any vegetable dishes @@kittenastrophy5951
It is true. I could not eat out everyday. Sometime I could taste chemical in cook vege or mix oil in stri fry. It's so tough for me thru the meal, each bite I could taste it. I end up own cook, simple rice ( like 3 type of good quality rice ) + steam fresh meat. It shocking to notice my kitchen still have full 18 condiment that 8i used to cook a lot with. Body change and eat simpler wholefood
it's always cheaper if you cook for yourself at home because these restaurant owners need to pay their employee, also monthly bills including rent. that means if you just buy raw ingredients and cook it at home you spend less. around -60% or half of restaurant price (depending on their management, different for each business) my diet is mostly vegetables including tofu and tempeh processed from soybeans, eggs, and chicken. skip the rice. other meat options also good like fish for example but chicken is the cheapest. my dad diagnosed with diabetes due to bad dietary habit and i won't make his mistake. indonesian gado gado is a good start with healthy ingredients above minus the rice. and if you don't know the recipe, just type that dish on google.
In Malaysia, you can have your breakfast at the Mamak restaurant, lunch at a Malay kiosk or restaurant, tea at hawker centre and dinner at Tom Yam Restaurant.. there are also 24hrs restaurants.
Sure can. There are so many non halal restaurants here. And we don't need to hide any drinking. We have pubs too. Wedding dinner with free flow of wines and beer.
A very good take on SEA food culture. Another point worth noting is food here are available 24hrs a day. You can order anything online at 3am and be delivered to your doorstep in 20 mins. Or dine out at mamak at 4am.. The weather allows it to be all-rounder. Where else can you eat out, having coffee or tea under the stars and chat with buddies at 4 am. It’s the laid back and flexible culture here.
Would you recommend ordering food online in SEA? I always see GrabEats advertised everywhere, but I've never ordered it since I just assume it'll be much more expensive than walking 5 minutes and getting something from a street stand or hawker center. But maybe I'm wrong about that.
@@SeanGranseeTravel as I mentioned elsewhere in here, you guys are walkers. You walk and walk and walk. So yes, if you're staying in the city and it's only a 5 or 10 minutes walk, then you walk. Unless you're under the weather, or the weather itself is unfavorable like raining cats and dogs, then yes, go for online orders, the delivery charges here aren't expensive either, just like e hailing cabs aren't as expensive as in europe
@@SeanGranseeTravelif you ever go to Indonesia, you can use grab, gofood, shopee food, i use 3 of them and choose whict offer biggest discount, coz different day they can offer different discount so compare it and choose the cheapest
I love your definition of affordable. Coming from a country with stronger currency of course would make everything affordable for you. You should compare the food cost with locals average income or things like that.
Thank you so much for actually watching the video! 😀 Half the recent comments basically say "well duh everything's cheap with your US dollars". I don't think those commenters actually watched the first minute of the video where I specifically addressed that.
@@SeanGranseeTravel Probably due to your thumbnail. 😄 You even understand price differences based on places and types of food. This video is a gold tips for avoiding "tourist prices," a very common trick in SEA. So I hope this video blows up even more.
As a Malaysian, while price affordability is relative, I still think we can get really good food at decent prices despite our currency being v much inferior to yours as you’ve implied. A lot of food source is locally-grown, so it’s always fresh. There’s also government subsidies and price controls in key food items like rice, chicken, eggs, sugar etc. So you can expect basic food items to remain affordable so most Malaysians can afford decent meals.
I think there there's a huge glaring omission on the reason why Europe does not have a street food hawker culture which is climate. In SEA, there's no problem eating outside 365 days a year. In Europe, at least half of the year. I sure there would be street hawkers with plastic tables and stools if Europe have a tropical climate too.
We have indoor food court too. My opinion is that Europe is mostly controlled by big businesses, it is harder for smaller vendors to sell food as rent and food costs are higher. Here, we have wholesale markets and wet markets that local vendors can do bulk purchase. Also the European govt generally don't want to create spaces/building for small vendors to thrive.
I don't think it just comes down to climate. In Malaysia and Singapore, the hawker centers are mostly indoors. Some are air conditioned. Even thought it's warm enough to eat outside, the heavy rains in the tropical climate often force people to eat indoors. It wouldn't be a stretch to extend that concept to Europe and have them be heated if necessary. There are also parts of southern Europe that could totally support outdoor eating 365 days a year. I haven't been to them so I can't say this with certainty, but I'm not aware of any of them having a food culture that comes close to rivaling southeast Asia when it comes to price (relative to the cost of local groceries) and efficiency.
@@phunk8607 Asian food is pretty basic cooking too. Most of the real cooking are done beforehand and vendors only need to assemble them at their store. Eg, a stir fry noodle can be done quickly in 1-2 minutes as the raw noodles and sauces are already premade.
I really like your ideas and opinions about traveling, and just subscribed! One thing that might be helpful is to do a voice recording at your hotel/stay and then do a separate walkthrough video of the city, because I'd like to see where you're walking. :-)
The good thing living in SEA is that we have CHOICES in many areas. not just food, but healthcare, housing, education, mode of transport. From the cheapest to the most expensive. So we like to go food hunting for cheap but viral food on the weekends. We are willing to drive 1 or 2 hours, queue for another hour just to eat the food that everyone is talking about, after that, probably stop by another road side stall or a shop to buy ourselves some snacks, bubble tea, or local produce on our way home.
Hmm, welcome , Another new youtuber / content creators. Wishing you the best on your youtube journey. Pretty close to the 1k sub mark. Keep grinding!... Hope you enjoy the rest of what Malaysia has to offer. Cheers mate!
If you like slow easy living, SEA is your place. Here maybe not futuristic like western country, but you will get less problem, as long as you dont start it first. And will get more easier if you can get along with locals, locals will help you in many case.
i thought in australia i paid aud20 for a bowl of ramen already felt like day light robbery. paying $30 for a bowl of ramen is just price from HELL. it can be my entire food bill for eating out in malaysia for 3 to 4 days,
That's not too far off from what I pay for good ramen in Chicago. It's absurdly expensive, but there's clearly a market for it if people are continuing to pay those prices. In Asia (at least the parts I've been in so far), there's soooo much local competition from small independent food sellers, so anyone trying to charge those prices would instantly go out of business.
Good Lord! You can spent less than 10 bucks in Tokyo for a good bowl of ramen. This is Tokyo we are talking about, where things, as they are saying are expensive living.
China, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Taipei, Korea are all much richer and more expensive than Western countries. "hella money" lmao - you'll be broke in East Asia with your light salary.
I don't know about Europe but in the US, it's kinda ingrained into the culture (and the laws🙄) that meals must be served hot and fresh (except salad and sushi, etc , thank goodness). Growing up in Thailand, it's completely normal to eat food at room temperature. Food safety and that kind of stuff don't really work the same in Southeast Asia. I'm no scientist but I never got sick from eating Thai street food. Dairy products in the US give me waaaay more stomach issues.
Come to Jakarta. There are hundreds upon hundreds of street food. Including the famous martabak and padang cuisines. You just sit down, and those foods are delivered right at your table within minutes. You just pick anything from your table.
I have been in Thailand and Malaysia long enough to note that so-called "street food" here is first and foremost for native people, not for foreign visitors. It's not only cheap and eating out is affordable, it is also a communal act to meet your neighbors during meals. This is like having coffee and breakfast in small town in rural America today, and everywhere in America in the 1950s, too. Do you notice that many food stalls disappeared during the weekend or holidays in Bangkok? That is because the locals are not there to buy their products.
I’m from Australia so have access to great food from all over as we are a very multicultural country, we have some decent Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants here but when I went to Malaysia it was next level and very affordable. I feel like the Malaysian food here is dialled down a touch to cater for the western palette where as they dial that up to a 12 in Malaysia in terms of spice, herbs, fat, etc
I've never been to Australia, but I had similar experiences in Europe. I visited 8 European countries last year, and struggled hard to find anything that could match the spice level of our average southeast Asian food. For example, I found an Indian restaurant in Prague I really liked. The Indian woman warned our group that one of the dishes we ordered was "really spicy" and asked if we'd like to tone it down. We said "No, make it really spicy. We can handle it." Nothing we received was spicy. She came to check on us later to see how we were handling the spicy, and we couldn't even tell which dish was supposed to be the "spicy" one. Not to say Europe doesn't have some good Asian food. Thinking back to Prague again, the Vietnamese food there is excellent (but still, not spicy).
Gotta love that you don’t need to be rich to enjoy good food in Asia. A lot of the street food there taste as great as 5 stars restaurants (sometimes even better! especially for traditional dishes) and can be healthy too if you chose the vegetable soups/local salad dishes or steamed fish/meat dishes.
I live in Kuching, a small (by Asian standards) city on the island of Borneo. Even though we're smack dab in the middle of nowhere, there are fairly strict regulations governing food preparation standards. Though I must admit, enforcement is stricter in the city than in the suburbs and rural areas (where there zero oversight). However, restaurants, foodcourt stalls and street vendors do get quickly shut down and fined when there are cases of food poisoning or there's a complaint of pests being found in the premises. We might be a bit of an outlier though in the region, though, as although we're a small little known city, UNESCO has recognised Kuching as a city of gastronomy. Food hunting takes a bit of discovering as the city is very spread out and the parts of the city that tourists/visitors usually see and can access by walking is less than 5% of what the city has to offer.
I spent just about 3 usd for 2 full meal delivered to my house here in Jakarta, it's either chicken rice with speciality sambal or rice with fried duck, also with speciality sambal. It's cheaper than cooking at home, do note i'm living alone. To the point i'm confident enough to not cook at home, i renovate half of my kitchen into a car port 😂
Malaysia is truly Asia.. It's a melting pot of Asian and Western foods, cuisines and cultures.. it's unique and you can get any delicious food from other parts of the world here, and they taste and look more delicious and interesting than their original countries.. Malaysians are good in improvising the foods.. and of course the price is affordable.. 👍😋🇲🇾
Taste better than the original country? That's taking it too far. Those have to be specialty stores that cost a lot. Take Japanese food where a set meal cost rm40. It's nowhere near authentic.
As a Singaporean, I will travel down to JB for Chinese food because it’s really much better compared to Singapore. Of course we are talking about a few particular stores. :D
Thailand, Thai culinary, Thai varieties, favorite delicious Thai food for sometime now have been deeply buried in country like The UK, Germany, Switzerland and France. Even at local supermarkets Thai products options is no longer a distant stranger and many shoppers do often settled on Thai choices over Chinese and Indian. Particularly in the summer season - Thai style fresh salad selections and their dressing rocketed in popularity. Must say, the Thai really do know how to turn a simple leafy greens & fresh cut veg into a brilliant amazing tasty meal mixtures. We are addicted to all their Yum -… selections because it always has humongous choices of different unique dressing that can turn many veg hater around. Though, until a couple of months back when we discovered the Thai Larb style salad and its selections. The Thai herbal infused dried coarse powder rice gave a crunchy wow new dimension to a salad dish. We never tasted any salad sprinkled like this before. Present day - our whole family even my children became a salad carnivorous Rabbit monster - Scooping away their 🥒 wrapping inside lettuce leaves 🥬 with herbal grounded minced chicken. Ritually 6 iceberg lettuce heads and 10 cucumbers along with mint leaves and the rest of the ingredients veg = lasted four of us for only three days and it’s not even summer yet. So guys search it up. The Thai larb selection is not only delicious but a truly = eat away, no guilt and healthy.
First of all, you can grow fresh veggies all year round. Spices grown all year round as well. Herbs too. Rice too. No need green house. Many farmer relies on rain and well water to grow so they don’t need to pay for water. Tips are optional and sometimes even offensive.
This is a great explanation of the differences in food culture. “Service” may be brusque to non-existent in SEA street food eateries but that’s part of the charm and appeal. 😂 No nonsense, get your food, done. Wham bam thank you mam. And it tastes great! Who cares about fussy “service.” (You can go to upscale full-service restaurants for that.) The variety, ease and affordability of getting a good meal makes for a fantastic food culture in SEA! Your comments about anxiety with European restaurants rings so true. But you can kinda avoid that nonsense in two ways. Eat at McDonalds. 😂 Or - eat at Asian/Chinese hole in the wall type eateries. Usually fast, good, and reasonably priced if lots of Asians eat there too.
Tbh, I actually think the service at hawker centers in Malaysia is _better_ than in most European restaurants. I still get my food brought to me. I still have someone cleaning up after me. If I want something more, I can immediately walk up to someone and order. Service at restaurants might be more "upscale", but given how much you often have to wait to get what you want (or even wait to pay), I greatly prefer the low-end SEA style of service.
Us SEAsian are busy people, we often only had the time to grab a meal outside during our 15-30 minutes lunch break lol Of course we'd appreciate if the service was more "wham bam thank you ma'am"
In Indonesia especially in Java & Bali, there are many Warteg.. it's a food stall thaf serve typical home cooking food with vegetable..you can choose any dish you want.. They're already displayed so you just point your finger. It's healthy too. Most employees who work in office buildings in big cities in Java & Bali eat in Warteg
We have something similar in the Philippines. They're called turo-turo. Turo is the Tagalog word for pointing so ordering food is as simple as pointing to what you want.
Like others have said, I really appreciate the additional context - it's cheap here, but not just from a "US dollar is strong" standpoint. I think this might be exemplified in Singapore. Currency-wise, it's much closer to the US than any country in SEA (except Cambodia, which uses the USD alongside its own currency), and things are generally pricier - hotels, taxis, etc. However, in Singapore it's actually really affordable to get a hawker meal, costing generally ~$3 to ~$6 (about 0.5x the hourly 'minimum' wage of ~S$10) for most dishes. People who stay alone absolutely have to spend more than that for ingredients.
Totally agree! Singapore is definitely the place where we’ve seen the biggest price disparity between our hotel and our average meal. We stayed at one of the cheapest hotels we could find, and it was more expensive than most hotels we stayed at in Europe. However, most of our meals in Singapore were cheaper than the cheapest meals we had in Europe.
I have never understood why even in Singapore, the most expensive cost of living country in SEA, it is cheaper to eat out (well, in a food court, pre-cooked dishes I admit) than to buy groceries and cook at home there.
@@hermes8258 hawker centers in Singapore usually have very cheap rentals for stores, and such stores have thin margins on their food, so it's very affordable. I think it's only cheaper to cook for yourself if you meal prep or live with other people (speaking as someone who stays alone)
@@hermes8258 Someone who lives in Singapore told me the food courts are subsidized by the government. I haven’t fact-checked this, but it’s what I heard.
I'm Indonesian, a country that located in south east asia We have over 1400 ethnicities that have it's own unique local dishes, desserts, sweets and cakes. Hunting every indonesian food will take decades of your life due to how much the variant of foods we have
Food courts in malaysia and singapore is at another level. It keeps street vendors away from streets and pavements unlike countries like indonesia or other countries nearby
i think you never go outside malaysia. it's called street food because it's on the streets, LMAO and in other countries there are always food courts and street foods .
Lol you don't even know the difference between food courts and street foods..??! Your standard is very low if you think food courts in Singapore or Malaysia is at another level. LOL Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand is way up there in food courts and/or street foods. the Variations of the foods, taste, value for money can't be match by Malaysia/Singapore.
I don’t know about Malaysia, but in Thailand the food portions are ridiculously small. 60 baht for a small plate of food is not enough to fill anyone up. I end up needing 3 plates which is 180 baht or £4. I can get the equivalent for around £8 in the UK. Asian street food is not high quality food so the comparison I gave is correct. If you can eat a meal in Malaysia for $1 and be full I’ll be there tomorrow. 😮
My experience in Chiang Mai in January 2024 was 40 baht for a moderately sized meal ($1.12 USD) that was fine if I wasn’t super hungry, or double that for two portions for a filling meal ($2.24). In practice, for most meals, Lexi and I would get three portions between the two of us, which came to 60 baht / $1.68 per person. In Penang Malaysia in February 2024 we shared fewer meals together, but my meals for myself generally ranged from RM8 ($1.69) to RM14 ($2.96). Sometimes we’d spend more to go to a restaurant or eat a huge meal, but I’d say about 80% of our meals followed the price ranges I just gave.
Note that all these prices are on non-major roads in residential neighborhoods. In touristy areas or streets with lots of foot traffic, prices get higher and portions get smaller.
Malaysia portion is about 50% bigger than Thailand street food. Depends on where you eat but local usually spend USD 2 for lunch. If you prefer eating at fancier setting, cost around USD5~10 per meal. No need to tip.
I agree that eating out is so convenient right here in Malaysia but too much outside eating gonna cost you your health if you're not watching what you eat. I've been eating out since 21 after I moved out and live by myself, and it starting to take a toll on my health... a lot of them are high in sodium and there is a reason why a lot of locals here have either high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, diabetes or all three of them together.
Locals are more prone to getting those unfavorable side effects on our health. For tourists, especially from the west, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, because they walk it off. They walk and walk and walk. Even when touring europe several times, I too walked on average 15 thousand steps each day
And sorry about your bad restaurant experience in Bulgaria. I rarely eat in restaurants but never really had those problems. It could only be with foreigners
Bulgaria: Shopska salad, banitsa, tarator soup Turkey: Adana kebab, lentil soup, wetburger, stuffed mussels Italy: PIZZA! Especially in Napoli Czechia: Anything with red cabbage Germany: Pork knuckle. And beer, if that counts. France: Beef bourguignon, baguette Romania: Salata de vinete, bean soup Ireland: Beef stew, Irish breakfast Hungary: Lángos Poland: Pierogi Russia: Borscht I'm sure I'm missing a ton, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.
It's okay! It didn't make me like Bulgaria any less. Every country has its good and bad sides. In my video where I did a recap of my experiences in Bulgaria, a bunch of other Bulgarians chimed in about how they also think the service is bad on average. So I don't think it's only because I'm a foreigner. Although maybe being a foreigner makes it a little worse.
You@@SeanGranseeTravelyou can try making banitsa when you are back in Chicago. I heard there are stores where you can buy bulgarian foods so you can buy the pastry sheets. The other things are easy to find and the recipe is easy
I share the same thoughts as you on the topic. It's just so much more expensive to eat out in an European destination as a tourist, especially if you're there upwards of a month. It all really adds up, and if converted to my country's local currency, it could run up to 5 figures a month for 2 pax! That's just too much. In Malaysia, we can generally get a good meal at a kopitiam for Rm12 per pax that includes a main meal and a drink, thats like 2.5 Euros. If it was in an Europe country, that'll run up to 8 - 10 Euros per pax! 😅😅
I shutter to think how much we spent on food during the 4 months we were in Europe, even though we tried to eat pretty cheap food most of the time. It was such a struggle to routinely find food that was cheap and fast that we were okay eating every single day. In Malaysia, it's so incredibly easy.
I live in Laos, and here people do still cook quite a lot at home, depending on the location. At the countryside the choices in food here get quite limited quickly, although the shops, where you can some sticky rice with pork or a noodle soup, are usually easy to find. At bigger cities people will eat out a lot more. However if you have a big family to support, cooking at home with local ingredients can still be cheaper.
My family and I,3 of us went to Thailand,Malaysia And Singapore,a few months ago,food in Thailand and Malaysia were very reasonable like in foodcourts or sidewalk ,a little cheaper than in Indonesia(we're Indonesians),but in Singapore we have to be rxtremely careful where to eat even in area considered to be cheap like Chinatown,if given menu without price on it,it's much better to ask and don't feel inconvient,we had meals in testaurant I should say it's not a big one,we call it ruko in Indonesia,usually downstairs for doing business and the second for living,we had 2 plates of fried rice and my wife had a bowl of rice with small fried snapper without drink(cuz I overheard a couple of white guys said it's expensive though they only drank beer) and it cost me around 60 US $😡
Since this is 5 months ago, walking at noon in Penang is trying to get a heat stroke...what are you thinking, just take it easy bro! Take care of your health
I'm Filipino from the Philippines. I want to visit Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong simply for their own authentic food. There are many restaurants here in the Philippines with these types of food but nothing beats real authentic food from these respective countries.
Do not forget, spices came from asia. European food are 'tasteless'. Cheese, bread, pasta are common food. Our seafood is cooked with spice too. Example, in Switzerland you dip bread into melted cheese.
dont lump the entire Europe continent into one. French, italian, Greece and Spanish are some of the nicest food, including sweets and desserts. I wont come to the extend of european food is tasteless, They salvage more of original taste and natural taste than more herbs and spices are added. One thing i agree, if you can master the cooking of eastern and southern asian food, preparing of European food is literally chicken feet.
‘Western food’ is definitely a lot more subtle in flavour, in terms of seafood you absolutely cannot beat seafood in Asia especially live seafood, it’s next level
Europe has some great food! Especially around the Mediterranean. But in general, I prefer most Asian food over most European food. Even when I was living in the US before I started traveling, my food preferences had always skewed more Asian than European.
spices come from Latin America and some parts of Asia, the Portuguese introduced spices from Latin America to South East Asia and even East Asia, do not be an obnoxious Asian. For goodness, do not give yourselves too much credit Be humble and do your research.
@xxstormxx56 do your research first. Think carefully why portuguese and dutch came to south east asia and india. For the sexy women(half naked in sarong?). Of course not. It is the spice. Why do you think spice trade is important for them? Money. Then food for europe. Do not make me laugh, spice does not exist here that we take from Latin America? You may have mayan and inca which I respect but stop claiming spices.
Except Malaysian or Sumatran foods tho. They are so close with Indian foods. Thick, gravy over processed foods. I love Thai, Vietnamese, Javanese, Sundanese foods
Southeast Asia foods heavily influenced from India.. before Christianity and Islam arrived in Southeast Asia.. entire Southeast Asia region were under sphere of influenced from Indian Civilization. just look at our language have many loan words from Sankrit.
I am frustrated with European restaurants.1) I have to book weeks or months before 2) no show must pay 50 CHF per person 3) I have to take courses of foods and sit for hours, waiting for meals to come 1 by 1 4) waiting for bills etc. 5) Cannot even just sitting accompanying friends/families who want to eat, but not actually order food for myself. 5) Waiters keep interrupting when guests are talking to each other on important topics because they want to make announcement 6) waiters keep coming asking for feedback but when I am honest they cannot bear it, so need to make sure we always say what they want to hear that all good. In SEA I can come at anytime, order as needed, it is ok just to be there accompaning family but not ordering anything for myself. Once finish I can just get up and pay quickly, no need to keep waving and waiting for busy waiters. Even sometime can bring food ordered from restaurant X, which is next to restaurant Y then eat it with family in the restaurant Y. No waiters who keep interrupting as it is impolite in SEA. I am from SEA working in Europe, btw.
Food at the outdoor and night markets in Thailand is less expensive and better quality than anything I can get in America. I actually lost weight while I was there, and I ate so well.
There's a bit of thing you got wrong. The food price is cheaper in south east asia, because the ingridients are just as cheap. And cooking at home is always much cheaper than eating out. When I was in Ireland, I spent like 10-20 quids eating at restaurant. In Indonesia it's only about 1-5 quids. But if I cook my own food, a quid is enough for the whole day.
One thing you missed is that in Malaysia, basic goods (such as flour, rice, cooking oil, sugar, etc) are heavily controlled by the government. Afaik, these prices are still the same as it was 5 years ago. Imagine that, no price increase for 5 years. It's one of the factor why it's cheap. (Although as of now July 2024, we starting to feel global inflation hitting us hard.
my biggest regret is being an italian, food sucks, cuisine is overrated, lack of flavors, and everything is just cocky. the pad thai I tried in germany was enough reason to leave europe and just go anywhere in Asia, It's just so big and unique in terms of real food, I mean REAL FOOD!
Good video! What camera are you using? You're recording while walking and there's minimal to no screen shaking. Is this all due to the camera alone or also a bit of post processing? Cheers.
Same is true for Japan, China, Taiwan etc. People are willing to put in a lot of effort and do a great job whether they work for themselves or for someone else - and don't expect to earn a ton of money from it. It's a different culture. I remember reading a column in a Philadelphia paper by an American writer who said you could have a tasty, well-made 3-course meal in Tokyo for eight bucks - this was in the late 2000s, so before prices plummeted in Japan. The same would be like $50 in the US and there'd be foodies lined up around the block.
Born and raised Filipino here; went to the US for Uni and to start my career, and have been traveling the world ever since. I appreciate foods from all over, but …I can declare that the West Coast of Malaysia might be the single greatest “chowhounding” zone in the world. Such a stunning, delicious, and fun food culture. And further still, soaking in all the history that shaped that food culture, makes it even more rewarding. Can’t wait to go back!
@@SeanGranseeTravel Singapore is pretty great as well . But I like to think of the Singapore food culture as “Penang, when he wears a suit to the office “ Penang is , well…” Penang while enjoying holidays w/its family 24/7/365 “ ;-)
@@pushslice One thing I didn't expect was how "upscale" Malaysia felt compared to Singapore when it came to service at hawker centers. At most of the hawkers I went to in Malaysia, once you ordered, you could sit down and the food would be brought to you when it's ready. A separate person comes around and takes your drink order and then brings it to you. When you're done, you just leave everything on the table and someone else will come clean up after you. In Singapore, it seemed like everywhere was more "self-service". You had to wait by the food stall for your food to be ready, and then bring it to your table yourself. If you wanted a drink, you had to go order it from another stall. And you have to clean up your table at the end. This might not be true across the board since I only spend 4 nights in Singapore, but it applied to all the hawker centers I had a chance to visit there. I expected Singapore to have a higher level of service, but I found that Malaysia had much more customer-friendly service.
@@SeanGranseeTravel I’ve experienced the same thing, but honestly, I generally accept* the differences. labor is just more expensive in Singapore, among other things. And I understand the rents for those SG hawker stalls are very expensive; thus leaving very tiny margins for the operators to allocate to ‘service’ overhead. * tho That doesn’t mean I can’t still pick a personal preference ;) I can’t tell you how many times while in SG I’ve sat down with my food and then just realized “ gosh darn it, I really want a Tiger beer to go with this; now I have to get up to walk to join another Q , and go get it “
i couldn't speak about all of SEA countries, but in Indonesia eating out mostly cheaper than cooking the same meal for yourself, and it's also tatste more delicious 😂 ive tried cooking the exact same nasi goreng that i usually ate on the specific street vendor, it's delicious, but compared to what i usually ate? it's literally NOTHING, not even near...
I live in Philippines and eating out is still cheaper than cooking as ingredients costs more than take outs in turo turo meals in carenderia. So yeah, eating out is still cheaper than cooking.
Seriously, when I was younger I was feeling like I want to go to Western countries but once I realized the food options in Western countries, I think I will be depressed if I were actually living there hahahaha
Try going to a city with a Chinatown! Lots of western cities have good Asian food (not just Chinese), although not as affordable as in eastern countries. One thing I loved about Prague was how much good Vietnamese food there was.
you are at malaysia ? cool 👍theres a lot of good food all over asia i never gone to europe but maybe the government regulation impacted the food culture there ?
Let me correct one bit: it's still cheaper to cook in SEA countries than to eat out. it's like 1/2 as cheaper. You just need to know which ingredients are cheaper and which ones are more expensive, and estimate the price of your every meal from that. Don't do it too hard, tho. We want to eat good food, too.
In the Philippines our Fastfood is like fine dining restaurant because we serve with Utensils also we served with rice and sauces for example in McDonald’s unlike here in Europe when you say fastfood it’s literally fastfood with just hamburgers nothing more also unfriendly service crew!
yeah. i'm a local and i always go out to night market and go try different stalls every week. even if the food is shyt its like okay, the food is shyt, wasted my USD1.50 or whatever. do it again next week. but well i'm single so doesn't mean much to spend that amount of money. and just like you said if you spend like 4 USD on these stalls you would totally die.
Most countries in SE Asia with the exception of Singapore are developing countries. By spending money there you bring hard currency to their tourist reliant economies.
@@SeanGranseeTravel go to sarawak and try their sarawak laksa. Also mee udang (prawn noodle) which has curry gravy (so it's curry mee but specifically with 2 or 3 prawns) And in KL have you tried the satay? Go to kajang down south, simply take the mrt to kajang stadium and then it's a short walk to the medan satay kajang. The popular one is by satay haji samuri. Oops sorry I just remembered you're up north in penang, not in KL. But try it, if you haven't already, when you're in KL 👍
good luck try cooking 3 nasi kandar curries and you will cry for mummy. Curry dishes are some one the most complex dishes to cook. It may involve up to 20 types of herbs and spices, protein, vegetables and aromatics. Just bcos they were precooked from home or central kitchen, it doesnt mean they are easy dishes,
Oh, I’m sure they take a while to make. What I love is that all the hard work can be done in large batches in advance. So the customer only has to wait for the easy part, which is assembling everything on a plate.
Trust me when that happened, asia will grow to become developed nations and the price will be on par with the European. When that time comes, people start flocking to Africa next
I was just in Singapore. It's an incredibly wealthy and developed nation. Yet they've maintained the efficiency of the food culture, and therefore, the low prices. Not quite as low as Malaysian and Thai prices, but still, I was shocked by how cheap food was in such a wealthy nation.
@SeanGranseeTravel FYI most produce for food came from malaysia including durian. Yes even the great hainanese chicken rice, live chicken we export to them. Vegetables are from Cameron highlands. And yes durian is from malaysia.
As South East Asian, its hard to find the food as delicious and rich of spices than our food, my fav is Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. Even the fellow Asian as Chinese and Japanese food not as yummy as South East Asian ones
European food really kinda sucks, (I'm not talking rich gourmet with 50 ingredients that come from all over the world that require a trained professional to prepare), I'm talking real food that people prepare in the kitchen, It's soup, porridge and stew...all full of potatoes...some are better than others (the hotter the country the better the food)
the war in Ukraine has caused food prices, or everything really, gone up a lot. Dunno, maybe many other factors including political & currency weakening causing it as well. eating outside today costs TWICE then before Putin went crazy. At least that is the case at Borneo. if you think currently it's cheap, you'd be surprised how much more cheaper it is several years before. before, you can have a meal (include drink) for MYR5, now you need MYR10.
+ Putin didn't went crazy. Eversince the USSR disintegrated in 1991, NATO promised not to expand NATO. They lied, they have expanded 5 times. The last straw came in 2022 when US and NATO provoked Russia by trying to include Ukraine into the EU. This means the US military can be deployed there and its missiles are just 5 mins from Moscow. This is why the war started. Besides that Ukraine, NaZ>> have been killing Ukrainian of Russian descent in the Donbass region since 2014 because the ethnic Russians wants to join Russia with a referendum from the people but Ukraine rejected it.
I am a Southeast Asian who spent almost all of my 57 years in Asia, but had a 6 years stint in the US (where some of my Asian colleagues opened small restaurants), and had been in Europe for an extended period of time. This is what I learned:
1. Western countries requires permits for all kind of sh*t, while in SE Asia it is very simple.
2. All kind of insurance craps such as food poisoning need to be provided, while in SE Asia you eat at your own risk.
3. There are strict regulations in western countries. Kitchen needs to be all stainless steels. In SE Asia, we just use whatever we could find.
4. There are plenty of cheap labors in SE Asia such as your kids and family who will be glad to work only to get free meals.
5. In SE Asia, small restaurants pay very little or no tax. Or just pay small amount to corrupt officers.
6. In SE Asia you can just start to open business tomorrow as soon as you find a space on the street that is not occupied
7. Most of SE Asian foods are deep-fried. And we could “recycle” the oil even after it becomes as black as a used motor oil
8. A lot of leftover could be transformed into another Asian dish. Yesterday’s steam rice will make a delicious fried rice
9. People do not sue each other in SE Asia. If you got food poisoning, or even died, there will be no litigation and no lawyers around to profit from that incident
10. Because eating out is relatively cheap, majority of people in SE Asia are eating out. And since a lot of people are eating out, restaurants can buy groceries at deep discounts. And since restaurants can get huge discounts, they can sell cheaply. And since the prices are cheap, lots of people prefer eating out.
Thanks so much for the detailed explanation! This comment is so much more insightful than my actual video 😄
No. 7 😂 we'd be like "yuck!" but we love them anyway
@@SeanGranseeTravel just sharing my experience helping a colleague opening a tiny restaurant in US. Flood insurance, Fire insurance, liabilities insurance (in case a patron fell on a wet floor), food poisoning insurance, kitchen utensil inspection, kitchen materials inspection, waste management inspection, raw materials inspection, health code inspection, sanitary inspection, noise permit, zoning permit, state permit, beer permit, liquor permit, city permit, etc etc etc.
You might have heard / read the case of “China Buffet” who was cited for 110 violations! I can’t even list 110 things that could be “violated”.
I myself opened an eatery in Indonesia, and needed none of the inspections/permits/codes that exist in the US
@@eddywiyana5524 I'm not surprised by any of this. So many things to inflate restaurant costs in the US, and therefore make eating at restaurants more expensive 😭
@@eddywiyana5524 kalo boleh tau nama resto nya apa ya? jd tertarik 😅
You forgot to tell how tips here are NOT MANDATORY in each bill payment.
Im shocked & surprised how in the US, tips are forced towards customer like 10 to 30% of total bills even the bill already has service and sales tax.
Another surprised is how a SELF-SERVICE checkout machine even has tips section for customer to choose from, even theres no human services is involved in self service store. 😂😂😂😂
Tips are pretty much exclusively a US thing so employers don’t need to pay sufficient wages
Yeah, tipping culture in the US has gotten out of control.
When I say in the video that I get meals in Malaysia for $2, that means I truly only spent $2 on it.
Americas tipping policy is pure joke
And if you give them tips they will not just very happy but will serve you ultimately like a king.
@@SeanGranseeTravel I went to a diner in San Fran, they stuffed up my order, half the table got their food after about 15 mins, the other half waited about 45 mins, service was non existent and a 20% tip was mandatory on the bill. It’s gotten to the point that it shouldn’t be called a tip anymore, should just be called wage surcharge
Most single office workers in Indonesia never cook. Occasionally they'll cook Indomie, but most of the time they just buy bubur ayam, ketoprak, nasi uduk, ketupat sayur, gado-gado, pecel ayam/lele, baso, soto ayam, nasi goreng, sate ayam, nasi padang, nasi warteg, etc... and still have enough money to pay rent, pay motorcycle instalment, buy internet data, buy mixue etc
cooking is only if we want to be healthy and eat less gorengan lol
@@TheresiaChungcan relate...
Totally agree. I can't explain it better as you do when you live a long time in South East Asia, also my local friends (Indonesia) eat mostly outside and will never be cooking. In Europe this is very difficult to immagine.
Yeah, I can't imagine life without cooking if I lived anywhere in Europe. It's just too expensive to have someone else cook all your food.
I was recently talking to my friend who traveled cheaply around Europe and he said "I ate kebabs almost every day". My experience as well is that kebab shops are the go-to cheap quick food if you want to avoid the big fast food chains in many (not all) European countries. Whereas in Malaysia, I can have a different meal from a different food stall every day of the month if I wanted to and never spend long waiting for my food.
@@SeanGranseeTravel lmao! During the 1 year stay in liverpool england (I'm now back in malaysia since a few months ago) which provided a golden opportunity for several trips visiting cities in europe, kebabs WERE the go to food basically everywhere hahah! Kebabs in switzerland, kebabs in germany, kebabs in paris, kebabs in prague, kebabs in barcelona... 🤣😭😭😭
Yup, kebabs most of the time, and sometimes some sort of rice meals like rice pilau/pilaf. Being muslim tourists, they are the simplest and most easily found halal food all over the continent. I swear if I have my way, I won't touch another kebab for the next 10 or 20 years! 🤣🤣
In Indonesia if we live alone as single person, cooking is more expensive thsn just eating out.
@@piaku3920😊😊😊
@@piaku3920 so true..
I'm Bulgarian, I've traveled and lived in Asia and I agree! I love eating out in Asia! BTW, the service in Bulgaria is just super bad as a leftover from communism when waiters were paid very well, restaurants were rare and the service treated customers like dirt, at least from what my parents have told me. Even tips (that still existed back then) weren't enough of an incentive for the waiters to overcome their entitlement. It's much better now but ingrained habits die slowly
It’s such a shame! Bulgaria is such a wonderful country, but I guess every place has its downsides.
You can't continue to blame communism for your own shortcomings as a country. It's been over 30 years. Laos, China and Vietnam are all communist and their service/food culture is infinitely superior to that of Europe.
This makes little sense. Everywhere there are well paid employees. That do their job.
Why would paying a waiter a decent wage make them entitled?
In other countries waiters are paid well and receive meager tips yet do their job. And in the States, you can find bad waiters who work on tips.
@@jamespohl-md2eq what makes bad employees is the sense that they can never be fired
@@banicataWhy can’t they be fired?
Fyi, for malaysian malays (who are muslims) who operate food businesses, there is another reason for keeping their food prices affordable: they wouldn't want to be labelled by fellow malays as a business person who charges an exorbitant price in order to be able to quickly get (fly) to mecca and perform the hajj, then return on the same day 🤣🤣🤣🤣
that also common mockery here in indonesia 😂
"that so expensive! did he want to hajj so fast or what?!"
I'm in the Philippines, and where I'm at, the Muslim-owned businesses are as competitive as the Chinese or the Chinese was once known before. And probably because there's -rich- philanthropic muslims here, that sponsoring Hajj is common.
Reason 1 is true, I'm in Indonesia, eating out is sometimes cheaper than cooking the food myself 😅
12.50 for nasi rames here. 2.50 for Nasi uduk. Its hell here when it comes to pricing. 3.50 for Frikadel Lomboc. :V
that's bad
Being a Malaysian, having home cooked food is more of a health reason. Restaurant or hawker food may be affordable and tastier but they're loaded with msg, salt and unhealthy oil.
Same in Thailand. Not every food stall has the decent delicacy and hygiene.
It's not abt hygiene. Malaysian foods always using coconut milk, curry etc and overprocessed. They don't like eating salad or any vegetable dishes @@kittenastrophy5951
It is true. I could not eat out everyday. Sometime I could taste chemical in cook vege or mix oil in stri fry. It's so tough for me thru the meal, each bite I could taste it. I end up own cook, simple rice ( like 3 type of good quality rice ) + steam fresh meat. It shocking to notice my kitchen still have full 18 condiment that 8i used to cook a lot with. Body change and eat simpler wholefood
it's always cheaper if you cook for yourself at home because these restaurant owners need to pay their employee, also monthly bills including rent. that means if you just buy raw ingredients and cook it at home you spend less. around -60% or half of restaurant price (depending on their management, different for each business)
my diet is mostly vegetables including tofu and tempeh processed from soybeans, eggs, and chicken. skip the rice. other meat options also good like fish for example but chicken is the cheapest. my dad diagnosed with diabetes due to bad dietary habit and i won't make his mistake. indonesian gado gado is a good start with healthy ingredients above minus the rice. and if you don't know the recipe, just type that dish on google.
i dont agree, cooking at home is still wayyy cheaper than eating outside
4:51 now, europe might be a 'continent' but SEA spans just as wide if not even bigger. some of the countries can easily split to tens of states.
In Malaysia, you can have your breakfast at the Mamak restaurant, lunch at a Malay kiosk or restaurant, tea at hawker centre and dinner at Tom Yam Restaurant.. there are also 24hrs restaurants.
ดื่มเหล้าในที่สาธารณะได้ไหม
@@suhribzevolution645555 why do you have to be so funny. They probably could as long as no one can see that they are drinking.
Sure can. There are so many non halal restaurants here. And we don't need to hide any drinking. We have pubs too. Wedding dinner with free flow of wines and beer.
@@yokkyk635 have you seen the price mate, particularly by the beach.
@@user-ps6fk5cd8b lol. It's always the 1 item that cancels out thousand others 🤣🤣🤣
A very good take on SEA food culture. Another point worth noting is food here are available 24hrs a day. You can order anything online at 3am and be delivered to your doorstep in 20 mins. Or dine out at mamak at 4am.. The weather allows it to be all-rounder. Where else can you eat out, having coffee or tea under the stars and chat with buddies at 4 am. It’s the laid back and flexible culture here.
Would you recommend ordering food online in SEA? I always see GrabEats advertised everywhere, but I've never ordered it since I just assume it'll be much more expensive than walking 5 minutes and getting something from a street stand or hawker center. But maybe I'm wrong about that.
@@SeanGranseeTravel as I mentioned elsewhere in here, you guys are walkers. You walk and walk and walk. So yes, if you're staying in the city and it's only a 5 or 10 minutes walk, then you walk.
Unless you're under the weather, or the weather itself is unfavorable like raining cats and dogs, then yes, go for online orders, the delivery charges here aren't expensive either, just like e hailing cabs aren't as expensive as in europe
@@SeanGranseeTravel online food delivery sometimes offer promo/discounts, definitely check that before ordering.
@@SeanGranseeTravelif you ever go to Indonesia, you can use grab, gofood, shopee food, i use 3 of them and choose whict offer biggest discount, coz different day they can offer different discount so compare it and choose the cheapest
I love your definition of affordable. Coming from a country with stronger currency of course would make everything affordable for you. You should compare the food cost with locals average income or things like that.
Thank you so much for actually watching the video! 😀
Half the recent comments basically say "well duh everything's cheap with your US dollars". I don't think those commenters actually watched the first minute of the video where I specifically addressed that.
@@SeanGranseeTravel Probably due to your thumbnail. 😄
You even understand price differences based on places and types of food. This video is a gold tips for avoiding "tourist prices," a very common trick in SEA. So I hope this video blows up even more.
As a Malaysian, while price affordability is relative, I still think we can get really good food at decent prices despite our currency being v much inferior to yours as you’ve implied. A lot of food source is locally-grown, so it’s always fresh. There’s also government subsidies and price controls in key food items like rice, chicken, eggs, sugar etc. So you can expect basic food items to remain affordable so most Malaysians can afford decent meals.
I think there there's a huge glaring omission on the reason why Europe does not have a street food hawker culture which is climate. In SEA, there's no problem eating outside 365 days a year. In Europe, at least half of the year. I sure there would be street hawkers with plastic tables and stools if Europe have a tropical climate too.
We have indoor food court too. My opinion is that Europe is mostly controlled by big businesses, it is harder for smaller vendors to sell food as rent and food costs are higher. Here, we have wholesale markets and wet markets that local vendors can do bulk purchase. Also the European govt generally don't want to create spaces/building for small vendors to thrive.
I don't think it just comes down to climate. In Malaysia and Singapore, the hawker centers are mostly indoors. Some are air conditioned. Even thought it's warm enough to eat outside, the heavy rains in the tropical climate often force people to eat indoors. It wouldn't be a stretch to extend that concept to Europe and have them be heated if necessary.
There are also parts of southern Europe that could totally support outdoor eating 365 days a year. I haven't been to them so I can't say this with certainty, but I'm not aware of any of them having a food culture that comes close to rivaling southeast Asia when it comes to price (relative to the cost of local groceries) and efficiency.
And European food is pretty basic cooking
@@phunk8607 Asian food is pretty basic cooking too. Most of the real cooking are done beforehand and vendors only need to assemble them at their store. Eg, a stir fry noodle can be done quickly in 1-2 minutes as the raw noodles and sauces are already premade.
I really like your ideas and opinions about traveling, and just subscribed!
One thing that might be helpful is to do a voice recording at your hotel/stay and then do a separate walkthrough video of the city, because I'd like to see where you're walking. :-)
The good thing living in SEA is that we have CHOICES in many areas. not just food, but healthcare, housing, education, mode of transport. From the cheapest to the most expensive. So we like to go food hunting for cheap but viral food on the weekends. We are willing to drive 1 or 2 hours, queue for another hour just to eat the food that everyone is talking about, after that, probably stop by another road side stall or a shop to buy ourselves some snacks, bubble tea, or local produce on our way home.
Hmm, welcome , Another new youtuber / content creators. Wishing you the best on your youtube journey. Pretty close to the 1k sub mark. Keep grinding!... Hope you enjoy the rest of what Malaysia has to offer. Cheers mate!
Thank you so much! Best of luck on your RUclips journey as well :)
If you like slow easy living, SEA is your place. Here maybe not futuristic like western country, but you will get less problem, as long as you dont start it first. And will get more easier if you can get along with locals, locals will help you in many case.
I just spent $30 for a bowl of Ramen Noodle Soup in Washington DC !!!! No wonder I'm broke all the time :(
i thought in australia i paid aud20 for a bowl of ramen already felt like day light robbery. paying $30 for a bowl of ramen is just price from HELL. it can be my entire food bill for eating out in malaysia for 3 to 4 days,
Lol
In Malaysia, the native malay will say those prices are from tel aviv
That's not too far off from what I pay for good ramen in Chicago. It's absurdly expensive, but there's clearly a market for it if people are continuing to pay those prices.
In Asia (at least the parts I've been in so far), there's soooo much local competition from small independent food sellers, so anyone trying to charge those prices would instantly go out of business.
Good Lord! You can spent less than 10 bucks in Tokyo for a good bowl of ramen. This is Tokyo we are talking about, where things, as they are saying are expensive living.
This was a great video Sean! Keep it up.
Thanks for watching! Still enjoying Prague? Have any travel plans solidified yet?
Ohhhh I enjoyed prague during new year celebration 2023 🥰🎆🎇 Fireworks all around the river! 💖
Make hella money in Western countries and go to anywhere in Asia and you'll be a billionaire. Gotta be glad where we grew up from.
Singapore would like to have a word with you.
@@SeanGranseeTravelhong Kong too
@@SeanGranseeTravel 😂😂😂😂
Yes Asia is only one small country😅😅
China, Singapore, Hong Kong SAR, Japan, Taipei, Korea are all much richer and more expensive than Western countries. "hella money" lmao - you'll be broke in East Asia with your light salary.
2:53 as Indonesia. there is no tax for food stalls. taxing food is like taxing the poor. different from tax cars for the rich.
not really.. you need to pay "uang keamanan", "uang kebersihan", or some uang-uang bullshit to your local "pemuda pancasila"
@@andibachtiar8788 "Free Man" hahahaha
I don't know about Europe but in the US, it's kinda ingrained into the culture (and the laws🙄) that meals must be served hot and fresh (except salad and sushi, etc , thank goodness). Growing up in Thailand, it's completely normal to eat food at room temperature. Food safety and that kind of stuff don't really work the same in Southeast Asia. I'm no scientist but I never got sick from eating Thai street food. Dairy products in the US give me waaaay more stomach issues.
ตอนเด็กๆไม่เคยเหมือนกันนะครับ สามสิบสี่สิบปีที่แล้ว แต่เดี๋
ยวนี้เจอครับ ก๋วยเตี๋ยวต่างจังหวัด ตลาดโต้รุ่งมั่ง ร้านตามสั่งมั่ง เจอไปขนาดท้องร่วงเลย สองสามทีแล้ว ไม่อยากโทษว่าแรงงานต่างด้าวลูกมือร้านอาหารเ อาเชื้อพวกนี้มาปล่อยรึเปล่า หรือhygienicกันแค่ไหน
Come to Jakarta. There are hundreds upon hundreds of street food. Including the famous martabak and padang cuisines. You just sit down, and those foods are delivered right at your table within minutes. You just pick anything from your table.
I have been in Thailand and Malaysia long enough to note that so-called "street food" here is first and foremost for native people, not for foreign visitors. It's not only cheap and eating out is affordable, it is also a communal act to meet your neighbors during meals. This is like having coffee and breakfast in small town in rural America today, and everywhere in America in the 1950s, too. Do you notice that many food stalls disappeared during the weekend or holidays in Bangkok? That is because the locals are not there to buy their products.
I’m from Australia so have access to great food from all over as we are a very multicultural country, we have some decent Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants here but when I went to Malaysia it was next level and very affordable. I feel like the Malaysian food here is dialled down a touch to cater for the western palette where as they dial that up to a 12 in Malaysia in terms of spice, herbs, fat, etc
Bull shit 😜😜😜😜
I've never been to Australia, but I had similar experiences in Europe. I visited 8 European countries last year, and struggled hard to find anything that could match the spice level of our average southeast Asian food.
For example, I found an Indian restaurant in Prague I really liked. The Indian woman warned our group that one of the dishes we ordered was "really spicy" and asked if we'd like to tone it down. We said "No, make it really spicy. We can handle it." Nothing we received was spicy. She came to check on us later to see how we were handling the spicy, and we couldn't even tell which dish was supposed to be the "spicy" one.
Not to say Europe doesn't have some good Asian food. Thinking back to Prague again, the Vietnamese food there is excellent (but still, not spicy).
Gotta love that you don’t need to be rich to enjoy good food in Asia. A lot of the street food there taste as great as 5 stars restaurants (sometimes even better! especially for traditional dishes) and can be healthy too if you chose the vegetable soups/local salad dishes or steamed fish/meat dishes.
I live in Kuching, a small (by Asian standards) city on the island of Borneo. Even though we're smack dab in the middle of nowhere, there are fairly strict regulations governing food preparation standards. Though I must admit, enforcement is stricter in the city than in the suburbs and rural areas (where there zero oversight). However, restaurants, foodcourt stalls and street vendors do get quickly shut down and fined when there are cases of food poisoning or there's a complaint of pests being found in the premises.
We might be a bit of an outlier though in the region, though, as although we're a small little known city, UNESCO has recognised Kuching as a city of gastronomy. Food hunting takes a bit of discovering as the city is very spread out and the parts of the city that tourists/visitors usually see and can access by walking is less than 5% of what the city has to offer.
I spent just about 3 usd for 2 full meal delivered to my house here in Jakarta, it's either chicken rice with speciality sambal or rice with fried duck, also with speciality sambal.
It's cheaper than cooking at home, do note i'm living alone.
To the point i'm confident enough to not cook at home, i renovate half of my kitchen into a car port 😂
Malaysia is truly Asia..
It's a melting pot of Asian and Western foods, cuisines and cultures.. it's unique and you can get any delicious food from other parts of the world here, and they taste and look more delicious and interesting than their original countries.. Malaysians are good in improvising the foods.. and of course the price is affordable.. 👍😋🇲🇾
I agree! We had an incredible time during our 5 weeks in Malaysia. And so much good food!
Taste better than the original country? That's taking it too far.
Those have to be specialty stores that cost a lot. Take Japanese food where a set meal cost rm40. It's nowhere near authentic.
@@NEAAFFAIRS not true there are also authentic korean and japanese food cost below RM20 like at Dodo Korea and Japanese food court at Lot 10
@@brownyadam The lot 10 Japanese food is ok. But can't say beat Japan. NYC, SF, Perth, Sydney also have similar and many better standard
As a Singaporean, I will travel down to JB for Chinese food because it’s really much better compared to Singapore. Of course we are talking about a few particular stores. :D
Thailand, Thai culinary, Thai varieties, favorite delicious Thai food for sometime now have been deeply buried in country like The UK, Germany, Switzerland and France. Even at local supermarkets Thai products options is no longer a distant stranger and many shoppers do often settled on Thai choices over Chinese and Indian. Particularly in the summer season - Thai style fresh salad selections and their dressing rocketed in popularity.
Must say, the Thai really do know how to turn a simple leafy greens & fresh cut veg into a brilliant amazing tasty meal mixtures. We are addicted to all their Yum -… selections because it always has humongous choices of different unique dressing that can turn many veg hater around.
Though, until a couple of months back when we discovered the Thai Larb style salad and its selections. The Thai herbal infused dried coarse powder rice gave a crunchy wow new dimension to a salad dish. We never tasted any salad sprinkled like this before.
Present day - our whole family even my children became a salad carnivorous Rabbit monster - Scooping away their 🥒 wrapping inside lettuce leaves 🥬 with herbal grounded minced chicken. Ritually 6 iceberg lettuce heads and 10 cucumbers along with mint leaves and the rest of the ingredients veg = lasted four of us for only three days and it’s not even summer yet.
So guys search it up. The Thai larb selection is not only delicious but a truly = eat away, no guilt and healthy.
I love asian food! Interested observation. Just subscribed 🎉
First of all, you can grow fresh veggies all year round. Spices grown all year round as well. Herbs too. Rice too. No need green house. Many farmer relies on rain and well water to grow so they don’t need to pay for water. Tips are optional and sometimes even offensive.
This is a great explanation of the differences in food culture. “Service” may be brusque to non-existent in SEA street food eateries but that’s part of the charm and appeal. 😂 No nonsense, get your food, done. Wham bam thank you mam. And it tastes great! Who cares about fussy “service.” (You can go to upscale full-service restaurants for that.) The variety, ease and affordability of getting a good meal makes for a fantastic food culture in SEA!
Your comments about anxiety with European restaurants rings so true. But you can kinda avoid that nonsense in two ways. Eat at McDonalds. 😂 Or - eat at Asian/Chinese hole in the wall type eateries. Usually fast, good, and reasonably priced if lots of Asians eat there too.
Tbh, I actually think the service at hawker centers in Malaysia is _better_ than in most European restaurants. I still get my food brought to me. I still have someone cleaning up after me. If I want something more, I can immediately walk up to someone and order.
Service at restaurants might be more "upscale", but given how much you often have to wait to get what you want (or even wait to pay), I greatly prefer the low-end SEA style of service.
Us SEAsian are busy people, we often only had the time to grab a meal outside during our 15-30 minutes lunch break lol
Of course we'd appreciate if the service was more "wham bam thank you ma'am"
Southeast Asia is amazing! they got a variety of fruits there , i even cant name some of them.
In Indonesia especially in Java & Bali, there are many Warteg.. it's a food stall thaf serve typical home cooking food with vegetable..you can choose any dish you want.. They're already displayed so you just point your finger. It's healthy too. Most employees who work in office buildings in big cities in Java & Bali eat in Warteg
We have something similar in the Philippines. They're called turo-turo. Turo is the Tagalog word for pointing so ordering food is as simple as pointing to what you want.
Like others have said, I really appreciate the additional context - it's cheap here, but not just from a "US dollar is strong" standpoint.
I think this might be exemplified in Singapore. Currency-wise, it's much closer to the US than any country in SEA (except Cambodia, which uses the USD alongside its own currency), and things are generally pricier - hotels, taxis, etc.
However, in Singapore it's actually really affordable to get a hawker meal, costing generally ~$3 to ~$6 (about 0.5x the hourly 'minimum' wage of ~S$10) for most dishes. People who stay alone absolutely have to spend more than that for ingredients.
Totally agree! Singapore is definitely the place where we’ve seen the biggest price disparity between our hotel and our average meal. We stayed at one of the cheapest hotels we could find, and it was more expensive than most hotels we stayed at in Europe. However, most of our meals in Singapore were cheaper than the cheapest meals we had in Europe.
I have never understood why even in Singapore, the most expensive cost of living country in SEA, it is cheaper to eat out (well, in a food court, pre-cooked dishes I admit) than to buy groceries and cook at home there.
@@hermes8258 hawker centers in Singapore usually have very cheap rentals for stores, and such stores have thin margins on their food, so it's very affordable.
I think it's only cheaper to cook for yourself if you meal prep or live with other people (speaking as someone who stays alone)
@@hermes8258 Someone who lives in Singapore told me the food courts are subsidized by the government.
I haven’t fact-checked this, but it’s what I heard.
I'm Indonesian, a country that located in south east asia
We have over 1400 ethnicities that have it's own unique local dishes, desserts, sweets and cakes. Hunting every indonesian food will take decades of your life due to how much the variant of foods we have
Food courts in malaysia and singapore is at another level. It keeps street vendors away from streets and pavements unlike countries like indonesia or other countries nearby
you mean Thailand? haha
Lol korean boo
i think you never go outside malaysia.
it's called street food because it's on the streets, LMAO
and in other countries there are always food courts and street foods .
Bull shit😜😜😜😜
Lol you don't even know the difference between food courts and street foods..??!
Your standard is very low if you think food courts in Singapore or Malaysia is at another level. LOL
Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand is way up there in food courts and/or street foods. the Variations of the foods, taste, value for money can't be match by Malaysia/Singapore.
I'm subscribing based off that thumbnail alone. Well done, sir
Thank you! 😀
I don’t know about Malaysia, but in Thailand the food portions are ridiculously small. 60 baht for a small plate of food is not enough to fill anyone up. I end up needing 3 plates which is 180 baht or £4. I can get the equivalent for around £8 in the UK. Asian street food is not high quality food so the comparison I gave is correct. If you can eat a meal in Malaysia for $1 and be full I’ll be there tomorrow. 😮
My experience in Chiang Mai in January 2024 was 40 baht for a moderately sized meal ($1.12 USD) that was fine if I wasn’t super hungry, or double that for two portions for a filling meal ($2.24). In practice, for most meals, Lexi and I would get three portions between the two of us, which came to 60 baht / $1.68 per person.
In Penang Malaysia in February 2024 we shared fewer meals together, but my meals for myself generally ranged from RM8 ($1.69) to RM14 ($2.96).
Sometimes we’d spend more to go to a restaurant or eat a huge meal, but I’d say about 80% of our meals followed the price ranges I just gave.
Note that all these prices are on non-major roads in residential neighborhoods. In touristy areas or streets with lots of foot traffic, prices get higher and portions get smaller.
Malaysia portion is about 50% bigger than Thailand street food. Depends on where you eat but local usually spend USD 2 for lunch. If you prefer eating at fancier setting, cost around USD5~10 per meal. No need to tip.
@@ckokloong thank you, that’s good to know that the portions are bigger.
@@SeanGranseeTravel thanks Sean, good to get an idea how much on average people are spending between Thailand and Malaysia
I agree that eating out is so convenient right here in Malaysia but too much outside eating gonna cost you your health if you're not watching what you eat.
I've been eating out since 21 after I moved out and live by myself, and it starting to take a toll on my health... a lot of them are high in sodium and there is a reason why a lot of locals here have either high blood pressure, high cholesterol level, diabetes or all three of them together.
Still probably healthier than the average American 😄
Locals are more prone to getting those unfavorable side effects on our health. For tourists, especially from the west, it shouldn't be too much of a problem, because they walk it off. They walk and walk and walk. Even when touring europe several times, I too walked on average 15 thousand steps each day
What were your favoutite foods from the European countries you have visited?
And sorry about your bad restaurant experience in Bulgaria. I rarely eat in restaurants but never really had those problems. It could only be with foreigners
Bulgaria: Shopska salad, banitsa, tarator soup
Turkey: Adana kebab, lentil soup, wetburger, stuffed mussels
Italy: PIZZA! Especially in Napoli
Czechia: Anything with red cabbage
Germany: Pork knuckle. And beer, if that counts.
France: Beef bourguignon, baguette
Romania: Salata de vinete, bean soup
Ireland: Beef stew, Irish breakfast
Hungary: Lángos
Poland: Pierogi
Russia: Borscht
I'm sure I'm missing a ton, but those are the ones that immediately come to mind.
It's okay! It didn't make me like Bulgaria any less. Every country has its good and bad sides.
In my video where I did a recap of my experiences in Bulgaria, a bunch of other Bulgarians chimed in about how they also think the service is bad on average. So I don't think it's only because I'm a foreigner. Although maybe being a foreigner makes it a little worse.
You@@SeanGranseeTravelyou can try making banitsa when you are back in Chicago. I heard there are stores where you can buy bulgarian foods so you can buy the pastry sheets. The other things are easy to find and the recipe is easy
@@ivanstankov2675 Awesome! I'd love to try making banitsa once we're back home. I haven't had it since August, and I miss it.
I share the same thoughts as you on the topic. It's just so much more expensive to eat out in an European destination as a tourist, especially if you're there upwards of a month. It all really adds up, and if converted to my country's local currency, it could run up to 5 figures a month for 2 pax! That's just too much. In Malaysia, we can generally get a good meal at a kopitiam for Rm12 per pax that includes a main meal and a drink, thats like 2.5 Euros. If it was in an Europe country, that'll run up to 8 - 10 Euros per pax! 😅😅
I shutter to think how much we spent on food during the 4 months we were in Europe, even though we tried to eat pretty cheap food most of the time. It was such a struggle to routinely find food that was cheap and fast that we were okay eating every single day. In Malaysia, it's so incredibly easy.
I live in Laos, and here people do still cook quite a lot at home, depending on the location. At the countryside the choices in food here get quite limited quickly, although the shops, where you can some sticky rice with pork or a noodle soup, are usually easy to find. At bigger cities people will eat out a lot more. However if you have a big family to support, cooking at home with local ingredients can still be cheaper.
My family and I,3 of us went to Thailand,Malaysia And Singapore,a few months ago,food in Thailand and Malaysia were very reasonable like in foodcourts or sidewalk ,a little cheaper than in Indonesia(we're Indonesians),but in Singapore we have to be rxtremely careful where to eat even in area considered to be cheap like Chinatown,if given menu without price on it,it's much better to ask and don't feel inconvient,we had meals in testaurant I should say it's not a big one,we call it ruko in Indonesia,usually downstairs for doing business and the second for living,we had 2 plates of fried rice and my wife had a bowl of rice with small fried snapper without drink(cuz I overheard a couple of white guys said it's expensive though they only drank beer) and it cost me around 60 US $😡
Since this is 5 months ago, walking at noon in Penang is trying to get a heat stroke...what are you thinking, just take it easy bro! Take care of your health
I'm Filipino from the Philippines. I want to visit Thailand, Malaysia and Hong Kong simply for their own authentic food. There are many restaurants here in the Philippines with these types of food but nothing beats real authentic food from these respective countries.
Do you have the money ?😂😂😂😂
at one point, looks like you were walking on Lorong Selamat in Penang
Yep, that’s correct!
That area is famous for some food, right?
@@vincentchin88 yes. Last time got two famous char kueh teow there. An old uncle and the 2 sisters who wear goggles and fry the noodles
Do not forget, spices came from asia. European food are 'tasteless'. Cheese, bread, pasta are common food. Our seafood is cooked with spice too. Example, in Switzerland you dip bread into melted cheese.
dont lump the entire Europe continent into one. French, italian, Greece and Spanish are some of the nicest food, including sweets and desserts. I wont come to the extend of european food is tasteless, They salvage more of original taste and natural taste than more herbs and spices are added.
One thing i agree, if you can master the cooking of eastern and southern asian food, preparing of European food is literally chicken feet.
‘Western food’ is definitely a lot more subtle in flavour, in terms of seafood you absolutely cannot beat seafood in Asia especially live seafood, it’s next level
Europe has some great food! Especially around the Mediterranean.
But in general, I prefer most Asian food over most European food. Even when I was living in the US before I started traveling, my food preferences had always skewed more Asian than European.
spices come from Latin America and some parts of Asia, the Portuguese introduced spices from Latin America to South East Asia and even East Asia, do not be an obnoxious Asian. For goodness, do not give yourselves too much credit Be humble and do your research.
@xxstormxx56 do your research first. Think carefully why portuguese and dutch came to south east asia and india. For the sexy women(half naked in sarong?). Of course not. It is the spice. Why do you think spice trade is important for them? Money. Then food for europe. Do not make me laugh, spice does not exist here that we take from Latin America? You may have mayan and inca which I respect but stop claiming spices.
Me stumbling on this video and saw you walking along the street of macalister and lorong abu siti in Pulau Penang...that bring back old memories.
Such a huge difference
I know, right?!
There's a reason rents, loans, bills etc. are much higher in Europe and America
Except Malaysian or Sumatran foods tho. They are so close with Indian foods. Thick, gravy over processed foods. I love Thai, Vietnamese, Javanese, Sundanese foods
Southeast Asia foods heavily influenced from India.. before Christianity and Islam arrived in Southeast Asia.. entire Southeast Asia region were under sphere of influenced from Indian Civilization. just look at our language have many loan words from Sankrit.
I am frustrated with European restaurants.1) I have to book weeks or months before 2) no show must pay 50 CHF per person 3) I have to take courses of foods and sit for hours, waiting for meals to come 1 by 1 4) waiting for bills etc. 5) Cannot even just sitting accompanying friends/families who want to eat, but not actually order food for myself. 5) Waiters keep interrupting when guests are talking to each other on important topics because they want to make announcement 6) waiters keep coming asking for feedback but when I am honest they cannot bear it, so need to make sure we always say what they want to hear that all good. In SEA I can come at anytime, order as needed, it is ok just to be there accompaning family but not ordering anything for myself. Once finish I can just get up and pay quickly, no need to keep waving and waiting for busy waiters. Even sometime can bring food ordered from restaurant X, which is next to restaurant Y then eat it with family in the restaurant Y. No waiters who keep interrupting as it is impolite in SEA. I am from SEA working in Europe, btw.
Food at the outdoor and night markets in Thailand is less expensive and better quality than anything I can get in America. I actually lost weight while I was there, and I ate so well.
There's a bit of thing you got wrong. The food price is cheaper in south east asia, because the ingridients are just as cheap. And cooking at home is always much cheaper than eating out. When I was in Ireland, I spent like 10-20 quids eating at restaurant. In Indonesia it's only about 1-5 quids. But if I cook my own food, a quid is enough for the whole day.
This is pretty accurate. I'm in Indonesia and now I'm eating out all the time or buy food to take home since it's cheaper than cooking on my own
One thing you missed is that in Malaysia, basic goods (such as flour, rice, cooking oil, sugar, etc) are heavily controlled by the government. Afaik, these prices are still the same as it was 5 years ago. Imagine that, no price increase for 5 years. It's one of the factor why it's cheap.
(Although as of now July 2024, we starting to feel global inflation hitting us hard.
Interesting... I didn't realize the prices were so controlled. Thanks for the info!
my biggest regret is being an italian, food sucks, cuisine is overrated, lack of flavors, and everything is just cocky. the pad thai I tried in germany was enough reason to leave europe and just go anywhere in Asia, It's just so big and unique in terms of real food, I mean REAL FOOD!
As far as Europe goes, Italian is some of my favorite. I spent a month in Napoli and the pizza was incredible.
Good video! What camera are you using? You're recording while walking and there's minimal to no screen shaking. Is this all due to the camera alone or also a bit of post processing? Cheers.
GoPro Hero 12. All stabilization was done automatically by the camera. No post-processing.
It’s a great camera for getting smooth walking footage.
Good video. And great point
Thank you!
Same is true for Japan, China, Taiwan etc. People are willing to put in a lot of effort and do a great job whether they work for themselves or for someone else - and don't expect to earn a ton of money from it. It's a different culture. I remember reading a column in a Philadelphia paper by an American writer who said you could have a tasty, well-made 3-course meal in Tokyo for eight bucks - this was in the late 2000s, so before prices plummeted in Japan. The same would be like $50 in the US and there'd be foodies lined up around the block.
Not really true anymore but still far better what it is like in America atm
Is wrong
Born and raised Filipino here; went to the US for Uni and to start my career, and have been traveling the world ever since.
I appreciate foods from all over, but …I can declare that the West Coast of Malaysia might be the single greatest “chowhounding” zone in the world.
Such a stunning, delicious, and fun food culture.
And further still, soaking in all the history that shaped that food culture, makes it even more rewarding.
Can’t wait to go back!
It's amazing! I just spent some time in Singapore, which I've heard so much about, but honestly I think the food and food culture is better in Penang.
@@SeanGranseeTravel
Singapore is pretty great as well .
But I like to think of the Singapore food culture as “Penang, when he wears a suit to the office “
Penang is , well…” Penang while enjoying holidays w/its family 24/7/365 “ ;-)
@@pushslice One thing I didn't expect was how "upscale" Malaysia felt compared to Singapore when it came to service at hawker centers.
At most of the hawkers I went to in Malaysia, once you ordered, you could sit down and the food would be brought to you when it's ready. A separate person comes around and takes your drink order and then brings it to you. When you're done, you just leave everything on the table and someone else will come clean up after you.
In Singapore, it seemed like everywhere was more "self-service". You had to wait by the food stall for your food to be ready, and then bring it to your table yourself. If you wanted a drink, you had to go order it from another stall. And you have to clean up your table at the end.
This might not be true across the board since I only spend 4 nights in Singapore, but it applied to all the hawker centers I had a chance to visit there.
I expected Singapore to have a higher level of service, but I found that Malaysia had much more customer-friendly service.
@@SeanGranseeTravel
I’ve experienced the same thing, but honestly, I generally accept* the differences.
labor is just more expensive in Singapore, among other things. And I understand the rents for those SG hawker stalls are very expensive; thus leaving very tiny margins for the operators to allocate to ‘service’ overhead.
* tho That doesn’t mean I can’t still pick a personal preference ;)
I can’t tell you how many times while in SG I’ve sat down with my food and then just realized “ gosh darn it, I really want a Tiger beer to go with this; now I have to get up to walk to join another Q , and go get it “
i can say, no places in this world that have more variety of foods than East and Southeast Asia...
In SEA everything is good , only the weather is freaking humid.
i couldn't speak about all of SEA countries, but in Indonesia eating out mostly cheaper than cooking the same meal for yourself, and it's also tatste more delicious 😂 ive tried cooking the exact same nasi goreng that i usually ate on the specific street vendor, it's delicious, but compared to what i usually ate? it's literally NOTHING, not even near...
You’re spot on
I live in Philippines and eating out is still cheaper than cooking as ingredients costs more than take outs in turo turo meals in carenderia.
So yeah, eating out is still cheaper than cooking.
how come europe as continent of countries that "conquered" the southern hemisphere still have no idea how to utilize herbs and spices they took
Seriously, when I was younger I was feeling like I want to go to Western countries but once I realized the food options in Western countries, I think I will be depressed if I were actually living there hahahaha
Try going to a city with a Chinatown! Lots of western cities have good Asian food (not just Chinese), although not as affordable as in eastern countries.
One thing I loved about Prague was how much good Vietnamese food there was.
you are at malaysia ? cool 👍theres a lot of good food all over asia
i never gone to europe but maybe the government regulation impacted the food culture there ?
Let me correct one bit: it's still cheaper to cook in SEA countries than to eat out. it's like 1/2 as cheaper.
You just need to know which ingredients are cheaper and which ones are more expensive, and estimate the price of your every meal from that.
Don't do it too hard, tho. We want to eat good food, too.
Every Penang resident is an expert on where to get the best whatever food at whichever hawker stand.😆
During ramadhan (fasting month), please come to Jakarta..you'll enjoy the takjil war.. LOLS..
In the Philippines our Fastfood is like fine dining restaurant because we serve with Utensils also we served with rice and sauces for example in McDonald’s unlike here in Europe when you say fastfood it’s literally fastfood with just hamburgers nothing more also unfriendly service crew!
I've eaten Jollibee rice with burger and gravy, loved it more than McDonald burger.
yeah. i'm a local and i always go out to night market and go try different stalls every week. even if the food is shyt its like okay, the food is shyt, wasted my USD1.50 or whatever. do it again next week. but well i'm single so doesn't mean much to spend that amount of money. and just like you said if you spend like 4 USD on these stalls you would totally die.
Mati duduk = die seated
Most countries in SE Asia with the exception of Singapore are developing countries. By spending money there you bring hard currency to their tourist reliant economies.
My French friend always ask me to go makan & drink at food court that he come visit to Malaysia every time.
Go to Indonesia and I guarantee you'll get delicious and diverse food with cheap price
nice info and review 👍🙏
Haha... That school on your right at 1:56 is literally across the street from the house I grew up in Penang!
Oh, cool! I walked right near it all the time during my month in George Town.
Have you tried Char Koay teow, hokkien mee, curry mee and koay teow tnng? Yummy 😋😋😋
Yeah, I've tried the first 3 things you mentioned. Once I discovered char koay teow, I started eating soooo much of it. Same with curry mee.
@@SeanGranseeTravel go to sarawak and try their sarawak laksa. Also mee udang (prawn noodle) which has curry gravy (so it's curry mee but specifically with 2 or 3 prawns)
And in KL have you tried the satay? Go to kajang down south, simply take the mrt to kajang stadium and then it's a short walk to the medan satay kajang. The popular one is by satay haji samuri.
Oops sorry I just remembered you're up north in penang, not in KL. But try it, if you haven't already, when you're in KL 👍
SEA countries serve really great streefood, some with 24/7 service.... I miss my country!!!!!
good luck try cooking 3 nasi kandar curries and you will cry for mummy. Curry dishes are some one the most complex dishes to cook. It may involve up to 20 types of herbs and spices, protein, vegetables and aromatics. Just bcos they were precooked from home or central kitchen, it doesnt mean they are easy dishes,
Oh, I’m sure they take a while to make. What I love is that all the hard work can be done in large batches in advance. So the customer only has to wait for the easy part, which is assembling everything on a plate.
I have gotten food poison 9 times in asia. 4 in thailand and 5 in vietnam 😢
good explanation
Trust me when that happened, asia will grow to become developed nations and the price will be on par with the European. When that time comes, people start flocking to Africa next
It is the low salary and food source is around us eg south China sea, mountain crops, fruits.
I was just in Singapore. It's an incredibly wealthy and developed nation. Yet they've maintained the efficiency of the food culture, and therefore, the low prices. Not quite as low as Malaysian and Thai prices, but still, I was shocked by how cheap food was in such a wealthy nation.
@SeanGranseeTravel FYI most produce for food came from malaysia including durian. Yes even the great hainanese chicken rice, live chicken we export to them. Vegetables are from Cameron highlands. And yes durian is from malaysia.
@@keangwooichoo6138 the chicken are from batam, indonesia. it was in the news some time ago.
@@rizkyadiyanto7922 temporary only. That was when we banned live chicken export
Haha,we came frm south east asia n travels to europe.with our currencies we hv to starve while travelling😂
Yep. 1 meal a day. 1 meal in Switzerland (outside coop) is 30 chf.
Even as an American, I think prices in Switzerland are crazy expensive.
As an Asian I simply can’t survive eating cheese, bread, tomato and cheese again. I have to cook while travelling in Europe
As South East Asian, its hard to find the food as delicious and rich of spices than our food, my fav is Indonesian, Thai and Vietnamese cuisine. Even the fellow Asian as Chinese and Japanese food not as yummy as South East Asian ones
The Europeans came and plundered most of our resources but have somehow managed to not take spices back home as well.😆
Welcome to Southeast Asia countries, everything about price so cheap here
Come to Indonesia and eat rendang
Just little correction, sir. Try do lil research better! Search "Padang" in the map and is it say originated in Penang as you say?
It is Nasi Kandar, not nasi padang...
Subscribe for a cookie. Or a bowl of noodles.
Try indonesia if you haven't yet
I remember paying one Euro if I’m eating in 😂
European food really kinda sucks, (I'm not talking rich gourmet with 50 ingredients that come from all over the world that require a trained professional to prepare), I'm talking real food that people prepare in the kitchen, It's soup, porridge and stew...all full of potatoes...some are better than others (the hotter the country the better the food)
the war in Ukraine has caused food prices, or everything really, gone up a lot. Dunno, maybe many other factors including political & currency weakening causing it as well.
eating outside today costs TWICE then before Putin went crazy. At least that is the case at Borneo.
if you think currently it's cheap, you'd be surprised how much more cheaper it is several years before.
before, you can have a meal (include drink) for MYR5, now you need MYR10.
To be fair, in Msia and Singapore, wage also increased. In SG, full time McD is SGD2k. I think 5 years ago it was SGD1.7k.
+
Putin didn't went crazy. Eversince the USSR disintegrated in 1991, NATO promised not to expand NATO. They lied, they have expanded 5 times. The last straw came in 2022 when US and NATO provoked Russia by trying to include Ukraine into the EU. This means the US military can be deployed there and its missiles are just 5 mins from Moscow. This is why the war started. Besides that Ukraine, NaZ>> have been killing Ukrainian of Russian descent in the Donbass region since 2014 because the ethnic Russians wants to join Russia with a referendum from the people but Ukraine rejected it.
Eating in Europe sucks compared to practically anywhere and everywhere.
Im eating out everyday... 3-5 times a day n it cost me less than USD10 😂😂😂😂