[Travel] Penang, Touchdown at George Town

For a long holiday, I travel to Penang with my sister and her husband. We take the Malaysian airline and transit for a couple of hours in Kuala Lumpur before arriving at Penang International Airport in the afternoon. It’s quite easy from the airport to the city centre. Since we already have Grab (like Lyft and Uber), we opt to use the apps to take us to Le Dream Boutique hotel in George Town.

We have dinner at Queensbay Mall before hitting the sack and rest the night away. The next morning, we take a long, long stroll around George Town.

George Town is named after King George III, the British monarch at the time the British East India Company used it as a free port of trade along the Straights Settlement. After Malaysia independent and conservation of the architecture and cultural effort starting in 2011, George Town (and Malacca) achieved the UNESCO World Heritage Sight in 2008 for unique architectural and cultural townscape in SEA.

What pops up in my mind, this capital city of Penang state is known as a melting pot of culture from the remnants of the British names and architecture, to Malayan and especially the Baba Nyonya or Peranakan culture and heritage… and street food. Don’t forget the street food #hmmm.

George Town is also famous with its own street art gallery. There are sculptures made with metal from Sculpture at Work starting 2009. In 2012, a Lithuanian artist named Ernest Zacharevic created 6 wall paintings from local culture and lifestyle. These artistic endeavor spark local and international street artists to create exhibition on and off the street and mural paintings in the growing art spaces around the city.

More about these in later posts. For now, here are some teasers from my first hours of walking around George Town.