Colonial George Town

Penang is an island state located half way up Malaysia’s west coast, its capital is George Town, the former colonial capital for the pesky invading British. It is Malaysia’s second biggest city and purportedly home to the country’s finest food.

Accommodation has been a constant thorn in our side since we crossed into Malaysia and in George Town we found out why: we’re currently in school holiday period for Malaysian children, the big six week holiday which English children have in the summer, meaning everywhere is astonishingly expensive.

While we’ve found food and transport to be comparatively priced here compared to other countries in South East Asia, the accommodation is triple the cost and half the quality. A room that we would pay £6/$10 for in Vietnam costs in excess of £20/$32 here.

In our efforts to find decent, reasonably priced accommodation in George Town we ended up staying in three different hotels during our four night stay:

The first place, Muntri Inn, was £14 (71ringit) a night for a tiny cell-like room with no window and a shared bathroom. The walls were paper thin and the included breakfast was merely a loaf of bread and a toaster.

Next we checked into the Wai Han Hotel, which was in an appalling state of disrepair but was undeniably cheap at just £5 (25ringit) per night. Unfortunately, while during the daytime it was bad, during the night it was by far worse; we came home after a night drinking with friends to find the reception area full of prostitutes, and were kept awake all night by the noises that resulted from their business.

The winning hotel was 54 Love Lane Inn, which appeared to be the busiest place in town and we could see why, the room was nice, breakfast was included and it only cost £11 (55ringit).

Colonial George Town.

George Town is really nice, albeit a little hectic with bus loads of tourists swarming around frantically photographing everything in sight. The city has retained a lot of its colonial heritage (it’s a UNSECO site) and the old white buildings with their shuttered windows are completely at odds with the Korean-style skyscrapers found further out on the island.

There’s a lot of pleasant street art around George Town and many art galleries, shops and trendy cafes. We enjoyed wandering around the town, mainly in the evening when the heat was bearable, looking at the art, watching the funny Asian tourists with their matching t-shirts, listening to live music out on the street and generally soaking up the atmosphere.

Metal work depicts the history of the town.

Street art.

To the north of George Town, Penang has some good beaches with warm clear water and coarse white sand. With some difficulty we managed to find an un-crowded beach and settled in the shade of a tree to enjoy the warm breeze. Little by little fruit started rolling onto the beach, brought in by the tide: oranges, bananas, flowers and, believe it or not, money, began to litter the beach. We think the strange collection must have come from an offering table that Asian people lay out to honour their ancestors, often containing money, flowers and fruit, perhaps fallen into the ocean from a boat. Did we eat the free fruit and take the money? Of course we did!

As for boasting Malaysia’s finest food I can confirm that the food we ate in Penang was indeed better than anything else we’ve had thus far. We tried Bak Kut Teh, a delicious pork rib soup, Nasi Kandar which is basically Indian Food served on a banana leaf, Poh Piah a type of fishy egg roll, and Roti Gangnam Style which has nothing to do with Psy or Gangnam and is simply half boiled eggs on toast with a lot of pepper.

The best food we’ve eaten in Malaysia has been in the hawker centres (or food courts), which are always packed to the rafters with local people. As in Singapore, there is an infinite amount of food on offer, however here there’s more of a party atmosphere, beer is served to your table and there is often live entertainment on a central stage.

How To Get To…

The Beach: We took the bus #101 to …, cost 2.70ringit one way. The journey takes about 45minutes or longer during heavy traffic periods.