Travel Diary #8: A Day at George Town Penang, Malaysia Part 1

I’ve been to George Town Penang, Malaysia for maybe 4-5 times for a “business trip” but it was always for a short trip everytime. I usually only get to stay for 1 day and the trip was always tiring so I don’t get around much. Back in 2015 though, Katrina and I were able to go together on another trip. We decided this time to wander through George Town together.

On this post, I will be showing you what you can do and how you can enjoy your short visit in George Town. So let me start.

REMINDER: Please click on each image to view full screen.

George Town, the capital of the Malaysian state of Penang, is located at the northeastern tip of Penang Island. It is Malaysia’s second largest city, with 708,127 inhabitants as of 2010, while Greater Penang is the nation's second most populous conurbation with an estimated population of 2.5 million. - Source

After a 10 hour trip by Van from Phuket to Penang, we arrived at our hotel around 10am. We managed to finish everything we were set there to do and by lunch time we were ready to roam the streets. We just ate at a nearby local restaurant just to get our fill before our walk through tour.

While walking along the streets of the capital, we can observe the architecture stretching from the British colonial era to the present, as well as its many varied living cultures. Mostly, you will see old buildings that are still used as a commercial space. George Town is officially recognised as having a unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in East and Southeast Asia.

One thing that Katrina really wanted to see were the famous street art all over George Town. Aside from the street arts, they have these steel arts too. Armed with our map, I tried to navigate where these individual arts were. Good thing, I somehow managed to read the map since Katrina was no help at all. LOL

^{Me trying to read the map, not struggling at all. LOL}

Steel Arts

Here are a few of the steel arts we managed to find. The concept of the steel art is to relate the history or characteristic of the selected street. Each one is very witty and informative.

This particular steel art says that this street is the place where the famous shoe designer, Jimmy Choo, started his apprenticeship. Isn't that awesome?

Street Arts

Anyway, we learned from the map that the street art project started called Mirrors George Town by George Town festival 2012. Since then, street art has been popping up all over the inner city. These are a few that we have seen during our street art hunting.

Reaching Up

This is called Reaching Up. It is a painting of a little boy reaching for a hole in the wall. He appears to be standing on a chair (a real chair that is) and inching himself as high as he could.

Kids on Bicycle

Another one we saw was Kids on Bicycle or Little Children on a Bicycle which was on a wall of a shophouse on Armenian Street in George Town. It depicts a little girl taking maybe her younger brother on a bicycle ride. I later found out that Kids on Bicycle and Reaching Up were both work of arts by just 1 artist, a London-trained artist Ernest Zacharevic in conjunction with the 2012 George Town Festival.

The Giant Cat

“Skippy” or “Skippy Comes to Penang” which is often called as The Giant Cat. This mural was painted to create awareness of the need to protect animals and get people to foster a love for pets.

Brother and Sister on a Swing

Other Street Arts

There are still a lot more of these street arts spread out in the city. We just can’t get through all of them in the limited amount of time we had. Some of the locations are also challenging to find even with the help of a map. We found most of the art because of people flocking in the area and taking photos.

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Other than the street and steel art, there were also a few places we visited during our self-imposed walking tour.

George Town World Heritage

While on our search for the street arts, we came across the George Town World Heritage Incorporated Building. It is the Penang State Agency for Heritage, which manages, monitors and promotes the heritage of George Town and the city’s World Heritage Site.

Inside the site were a lot of information about the history of Penang, more maps and how the old houses actually looked like. We did not stay that long because we still wanted to see more street arts and we were still planning to go to the Camera Museum.

The Camera Museum

So, for our last stop of the walking tour, we visited The Camera Museum as planned.

Entrance fee for adults is around 20 RM. However, we arrived at the museum only half an hour before their closing time. Somehow, the staff at the counter just collected only 10 RM. He was very kind.

The main hall on the first floor houses a collection of camera from the 1800 - 1900. It is so interesting to see the vast collections of old cameras. There are also few cameras on display that you can play with, a very nice touch to the museum.

There are varieties of cameras seen here of course that’s why it is called the Camera Museum right? LOL From big cameras to spy cameras and a lot more.

You can as well read the history of cameras timeline on the wall. It was amazing to see the evolution of cameras! The museum also has different room set up for their visitors like an interactive activities such as visiting a dark room and going into the pinhole room.

Even though it was just quick stop, I had so much fun at this museum. I would recommend it to everyone specially those camera enthusiast. You will surely enjoy it.

It was tiring to do a walking tour around the city but I would say it was worth it. I believe I was able to enjoy and feel the vibe of the city better this way. I really suggest you to do a walking tour but if you are not up to it, Penang has their own hop on hop off tour bus. We wanted to ride one but we thought that it will not be worth it since it was already middle of the afternoon when we found out about it. Another alternative for touring the city is the presence of the rickshaw. We did not try it but instead I asked one local driver if I can take a photo with it and luckily, he agreed. I was one happy kid. So for those planning to go around the City, you can try one of these three options for your tour. :) Either way you will definitely love what George Town has to offer.

That is it for my Travel Diary today. I hope this can guide you on your future trip. We did go back to Penang a few months after and had another tour. I will be talking about it on the part two of this blog which I will be uploading soon.

See you on the next one,
@wincee