Georgetown, Pinang, Malaysia
March 18, 2014
The trip down from the Cameron Highlands was pretty cool. Our small coach snaked its way down from the highlands through a lush backdrop of steaming jungle and misty hills. It took several hours of twisting and turning until we had descended down through the clouds and onto a fast straight motorway bound for Penang.
We already had somewhere sorted to stay in Georgetown, Penang thanks to Narelle the Aussie resort owner of Bon Ton and Temple tree where I had done the voluntary work at the animal shelter in Langkawi. She also owned some properties in Penang and had said I could stay a couple of nights for helping out which was great of her and it would have been rude not to take her up on the offer of some free accommodation.
I had an address and a rough idea in my head on a map where the place was but we weren’t sure where the bus stopped in Penang and if it was close to Georgetown or not. The coach rolled over the bridge from the mainland and nicely hung a right and followed the coast all the way up to Georgetown and dropped us off a couple of hundred yards from where we needed to roughly be. This made it nice and easy and walkable so we saved some money on a taxi. After asking a few people we found the right area and after hopping from place to place we finally tracked down China House a really nice restaurant and bar that Narelle owns and the place where we could pick up the keys for the place we were staying.
The place we had was really smart. Georgetown is another old colonial town a little like Melaka but in a much grander and also genuine and authentic way. The property is an old Penang house with typical painted colourful walls and bright coloured shutters and it was huge inside. A nice living room downstairs and a kitchen area followed by a double height space chill out area at the back. Upstairs had a couple of bedrooms, a bathroom and a half outdoor space. The place was very nice to stay in and it was a welcome and free treat after sleeping in far more modest places and dorms.
Georgetown is really nice and bursting with character. There is a huge area that is a maze of streets that makes up the old town to the North East of the island and it is crammed with amazing food and some brilliant art among the stunning backdrop of beautifully restored colonial buildings.
I had heard from a few people that the food here is something else and it’s true. There is good food everywhere. The old town is dripping with Chinese and Indian cuisine that smacks you in the face and makes you dribble a little from the corner of your mouth. It really is that good. We ate in so many different places and every single meal was devoured. From Chinese steam boat soup where you pick out your own ingredients to the best Tandoori chicken with roti and sauce you will ever sample, it is all here.
As well as food Penang is known for its street art that is hiding around every corner and tucked away down many a back alley. A lot of it follows the typified Banksy style, clean good stencils and some hand painted finishing touches. It brings the streets to life. You walk past a dozen beautifully restored, individual, colourful buildings then hit a rough brick wall with a few chunks of plaster left on which is adorned by a brilliant and quite often playful work of art. I really loved the work that incorporated real world objects to add to the effect. The girl and boy playing basketball at the hoop. The young kids on their swing set against a wall. The boy on the motorbike looking back on the old wooden doors. I looked that one up and he was riding away from the kid behind who was walking his pet dinosaur! It’s a massive art gallery spread across an old historic town in a seamless way. A lot of the work is done by a Croatian lad, at least the more life-like stenciled work is and he is very good at what he does.
The combination of food, art and chilled style kept us in Penang for longer than we planned, it was hard to get leave. We started to look for somewhere else to stay but Narelle was very generous and gave us another two nights in the lovely old house as there were no reservations for it for the next couple of days so the eating and general wandering and exploring continued. Every day was a very lazy chilled affair.
There are no such landmarks or places that you must visit but it’s a great place to kick back and enjoy everything that the town has to offer. After our lucky extra two nights we stayed on at another place in a different area of the town and went off in search for even more art and different food to try to generally just got ourselves lost all over the place in a very pleasant way. Eventually though we had to concede that we needed to move on as there are so many more places we need to see so reluctantly we bought our ferry tickets to take us from Penang the next morning back to Langkawi and the four-legged critters that I left behind over two months ago.
I’m quite excited about seeing the dogs again that I left behind as they are all great characters and I wonder if they will remember me or not. It will also be good to catch up with the people there that I now know and it’s nice to have friends in places where you know you can go back to and fit straight in. To be fair I think I need to leave Penang now anyway as I doubt I’ll be too proud of my waist line if I stay any longer.
