Street art and delicious food

So turns out I'm much more of a small town girl than a big city one. From the moment our ferry docked into George Town on the island of Penang, I felt much more comfortable than I did in KL. And it also helps that the food here is amazing!

Despite the bus journey from KL being advertised as four hours, in reality once you take into account all the stoppages, it was more like five and a half hours. Luckily we had lots of things to entertain us, including blogging and quizzing so the journey went pretty quickly. Lucky too that we hadn’t prebooked the ferry, which runs every 20 minutes.

After dropping our bags at our hotel, we wandered out to get our bearings. Our guidebook had a short walking tour in it so we ended up following that, first to the sea front and then down to Little India. Part of George Town is a UNESCO World Heritage Site due to its many old style buildings and its a fascinating place to walk around.

We ended up at the Kapitan Keting Mosque in the heart of the city, where we met up with Lucas from our hostel in KL for dinner. You don’t realise how often Muslims pray until you’re in a Muslim country and hear the call to prayer five times a day. It’s incredible.

Dinner was particularly tasty and I’ll cover the great food we had in Penang in my food blog at the end of our time in Malaysia.

The following morning we took a Grab to the tropical spice garden on the north side of the island. This was really interesting to walk around and learn about all the different spices found in Malaysia and on Penang itself. We were a little bit concerned when the poisonous plants section was right next to the tea drinking station though!

Our next stop was to the top of Penang Hill. Our plan was to get a Grab to the top and then the funicular railway back down. Unfortunately our Grab driver didn’t explain that you can’t drive to the top, instead you have to pay RM160 (over £30) to hire a 4x4, which we weren’t interested in doing! So we got another Grab round to the funicular station and took that up instead. Luckily Grabs are extremely cheap here, with some of our journeys costing less than £1.

The funicular takes you up 712m to Penang Hill, where the air is noticeably cooler and the views over the town and back to the mainland are pretty good! Unfortunately the food at the top is not so good, so we were disappointed not to have eaten before we got there, although the ice cream wasn’t too bad!

After enjoying the views, we decided to take a walk along one of the trails and escape from the other tourists. We saw some amazing monkeys and a huge squirrel, as well as some giant butterflies. The timing for the walk was pretty generous though and we completed the supposedly 100 minute walk in less than an hour.

We descended back down on the funicular and returned to the hotel to rest before heading out for dinner. My favourite thing about George Town is the incredible amount of street art that decorates every street. There are two main types. Firstly there are steel rod sculptures that explain the history of each street through amusing caricatures. These form part of the “Marking George Town” initiative, introduced in response to George Town receiving UNESCO status in 2009. There are 52 of these and they really bring the streets to life.

The second type are 3D murals, where items have been stuck to walls and pictures painted around them. We spent a good hour or so wandering around all the little streets, learning about the history of the Indian and Chinese communities in George Town.

We also visited Chew jetty. Many Chinese clans settled in Penang, and to make the newcomers feel more at home, numerous clan houses were set up. Each clan also has its own jetty, with a shrine at each end. People live in small houses on the pier and sell food or souvenirs to the passing tourists. It was a very enjoyable evening.

We decided not to stay too long on Penang and continue our journey north. Despite this being the shortest time we’ve spent anywhere so far, I thoroughly enjoyed George Town and would definitely recommend people going there, if only for the food! The traffic is much more crazy than we’ve seen in other places, particularly from the scooters but it has a good vibe and you feel safe here.

I’ll leave you with a selection of some of the street art we saw. Our next stop, and last place in Malaysia, is Langkawi, where we’ll be for three nights.