Georgetown – Mazes, Murals, and Midnight Musicians

I have friends that took the ferry from Georgetown on the island of Penang, to Langkawi in July and described it as one of the worst experiences of their trip. It was hot, chaotic and the seas were rough. Fortunately for us it was now the dry season and the seas were calm and the trip uneventful. We’d spend the next few days exploring the island of Penang – here are some of the highlights:

The old town of Georgetown:

Georgetown is a UNESCO world heritage site which has a rich mixture of Malay, Chinese and Indian cultures. In the late 18th century the British settled the region building a fort at the north end of the island, hoping to make it a major trading port. It, along with Singapore and Melaka, was governed as a colony until it was occupied by the Japanese during WWII. After the war it returned to British rule before ultimately becoming part of Malaysia following independence in 1963.

Milk Tea!

Exploring Georgetown

This fusion of numerous cultures makes the old part of the city an amazing mixture of foods, buildings and art work. We were honoured to have met Richard in Langkawi. He was from Penang, and he was kind enough to take a day to show us around some of the more interesting, and local hidden gems, of the old city. He took us to a cool coffee shop, a great Chinese place for milk tea, and we had an afternoon snack at a Indian restaurant which served us on banana leaves. We also saw numerous buildings and cool art work . Local artists have decorated many of the buildings with colourful murals and I would spend another day wandering around more of the streets of the old city checking out this art work. He was also kind enough to let Elly and Vince cool off in the pool of his apartment building. Thanks for your hospitality Richard!

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Some of the Artwork in Georgetown

There was a Chinese festival occuring while we were in Georgetown and our hostel was near to one of the sites where music was being played until wee hours of the night. While it was interesting and Vince and I got to see inside one of the temples where worship was going on at 1:30AM (complete with gongs), this loudness made it impossible to sleep and did definitely dampen our experience in what was otherwise a really cool hostel that had been built in an old warehouse.

Late night festivals and Temple worship

Exploring the rest of Penang:

Penang is a big island (about the size of Langkawi) and having tired of the loudness of the area we were staying in we rented an AirBnB (Mickey Mouse themed) and moved outside of the old city. From here we explored some of the rest of the island by car taking in a hike to the top of a dam, a visit to a fruit plantation where we feasted on numerous delicious fruits and had some interesting fermented fruit drinks. We also escaped the frequent rain storms by visiting some of the many malls. Thus began Vince’s and my game of spot the H+M or Rollex store, and our belief that Malaysia’s unofficial name be MALLasia.