A Short Walk Through Historic George Town

We spent the first day of our Penang holiday (get caught up here, here, and here) exploring the streets of historic George Town. It's where you can see how a mishmash of English, Malay, Indian, Chinese, and other settlers all lived and worked and worshipped in the charming row houses and temples that still stand today. Unlike Hong Kong (where real estate is too valuable), Penang has maintained and renovated many of its historic buildings. I think it's wonderful how history is preserved here. Apparently, other people agree, as it's now a UNESCO world heritage site.

Here's a typical old George Town street. Most of the buildings are two stories, with a commercial space on the ground floor that's generally open to the outside like a garage. However, since we walked around on a Sunday, most of the shops and restaurants were closed.

This following street view shows some motorbikes lined up out front. Although cars are very affordable in Malaysia (nearly everyone has one, which partly explains the traffic problem), many people ride motorbikes to save on petrol. Special lanes on some of the highways are designated just for motorbikes. To protect against the wind, riders wear a jacket backward, like a smock.

Ladies ride motorbikes too, no matter what they're wearing. I saw a young woman riding on the back of a bike wearing a strapless satin dress, skirt hiked up around her knees, stiletto heels delicately perched over the footrests. And since she was wearing a helmet too, she was going to arrive at her party with a very bad case of hat head.

Malaysia is famous for its pewter, as it's a huge source of the world's tin. Pewter shops are scattered throughout town.

Just a short walk from our hotel, past the Catholic and Anglican churches, is Pitt Street (official Malay name: Jalan Masjid Kapitan Keling). It's the main road that takes you past most of George Town's historic sites. First is this old temple, built in 1800 to Kuan Yin, the Chinese goddess of mercy.

This is one very busy temple, so it doesn't really have a very sacred or reverent feel about it. The atmosphere feels more... festive. The small plaza in front is lined with stalls selling joss sticks, lotus-shaped candles, and other artifacts, hawkers calling loudly for your attention. In the street, some salesmen hand out samples of a yogurt drink from the trunk of their car.

Inside the temple, the air is choked with incense as dozens of worshippers wave around bundles of joss sticks so big they need to be gripped with both hands. In front of the altar, a large table is buried under votive candles and colored joss stick wrappers. More wrappers litter the floor. Yellow squares of paper (fake money? prayers?) are rolled up and stuffed into crevices of the pillars, or wrapped and burned with the incense.

Outside the temple stand some of biggest, brightest joss sticks I've ever seen. They're as tall as a man, so you can imagine the amount of smoke they generate.

As I walked out of the temple, feeling like I had emerged out of a barbeque smoker, I had to conclude that if Kwan Yin likes the smell of incense, then she must be very pleased with the residents of George Town. And if she likes money, she will have no cause for complaint -- between the donation box and the incense and candle sales, she does very well on any given day.

Just across the street from the temple is the edge of Little India, and a couple of blocks to the south is the Sri Maha Mariamman temple, a Hindu temple consecrated in 1833. I wish I could post a better photo here, but the narrow street and parked cars severely limited my shooting angles. I also wish I could have posted an interior photo, but the temple was closed.

More or less around the corner is the Kapitan Keling mosque. The guide map we got from the hotel says it was founded in 1801 by the Tamil Muslim community. Sadly, the visitor's center was also closed today.

Continuing southward along the street, you run into Lebuh Armenian (Armenian Street), named after the Armenians who used to have such a presence here. This street was used in some scenes of the Jodie Foster/Chow Yun-Fat film, "Anna And The King."

At this intersection is the Khoo Kongsi, an extreme Chinese architecture fantasy. It was so odd to see this standing next to the more conventional colonial building on the right.

This is a detail of the roof decoration:

You think this is a temple, right? It's really a sort of clubhouse -- that is, a Chinese clan house. It was established by members of the Khoo clan as a sort of family community center, where clan members could meet each other and worship their patron gods. Newly-arrived immigrant clan members could come here to make connections and get help from their more established fellow members. There are several such clan houses in the area, but this one is the most elaborate, and therefore, the most well-known.

There were many more great buildings to see along this walk, as well as museums, that I want to come back to see another day. Everything gave me a real sense of the ethnic salad bowl that is Penang, and Malaysia generally. You see it in the signs, and hear it in the various languages -- Malay, English, Chinese, Tamil. And then there's the food, a delicous parade of rice dishes, noodle dishes, and curries. It must be the American in me that loves the idea of all these different cultures mixing it up in such a fun and beautiful way.