The Malaysian island of Penang and its main city, Georgetown, are famous for their multicultural food and society. And, after the big big city of Kuala Lumpur, we relished the prospect of a less urban, more seaside break.
Georgetown
George Town on Penang began as a British East India Company trading post in 1786 and grew into a multicultural port city whose historic core was inscribed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 for its unique architectural and cultural townscape.
In 1786 Captain Francis Light established a free-port settlement for the British East India Company on Penang Island, naming the town after King George III and creating the first British foothold in Southeast Asia. Its position on the Strait of Malacca attracted traders and migrants from China, India, the Malay world, and beyond, and by the early 19th century it was a busy entrepôt, at one point serving as capital of the Straits Settlements (with Melaka and Singapore). Through the 19th and early 20th centuries, communities built temples, mosques, churches, clan houses and shophouses in a dense urban fabric that blended local, Chinese, Indian, Malay and European influences.
The UNESCO listing recognizes over two centuries of continuous trading activity that produced an exceptional blend of British colonial urban planning with Southeast Asian shophouses, religious buildings of many faiths, and Peranakan (Straits Chinese) townhouses. UNESCO also emphasised its role as a living multicultural city, where Chinese, Malay, Indian, Peranakan and other communities still inhabit and use the historic fabric, preserving both tangible architecture and intangible traditions such as languages, festivals and foodways. *
Chew Jetty is very popular with Youtube travelers, so we had to check it out. Before the age of tourists, houses and shops of different Chinese clans clustered on piers over the water to create little villages.
Chew Jetty emerged in the mid–late 19th century, when Chinese (Hokkien) immigrants working the port built wooden landing stages and houses on stilts over the water along Weld Quay. The settlement was established by members of the Chew clan, one of several surname-based communities that each developed its own jetty; these formed the Weld Quay Waterfront Settlement, later known collectively as the Clan Jetties. Building over the sea had a practical and fiscal logic: residents were close to their work as boatmen, coolies and lightermen, and stilt houses could avoid certain colonial land taxes. Over time Chew Jetty evolved into a compact “water village” with wooden boardwalks, family houses, small shrines and community spaces extending out from the shore. *
Today, these are still residences, but much of the frontage has become dedicated to souvenir shops.
The red, heavily decorated temple at the entrance to Chew Jetty is the Chao Yuan Kong Temple, sometimes described in English as the “Temple of Good Health.”
It is a Taoist temple dedicated to Baosheng Dadi, a deity associated with medicine, life, and protection from illness, and it functions as the spiritual focus for the Chew clan community at the jetty, especially during major festivals such as the Jade Emperor’s birthday when a very long outdoor altar is set up in front of the temple. *
Driver & Tour Guide
We used Grab, which follows the Uber model, to get around in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. Always an efficient and well-organized service.
Our driver for our ride from our hotel to the Penang Airport was, unlike almost all the others, interested in talking with us. It was quickly apparent that he was much more than simply a driver; he was a guide too, full of information about Penang and Georgetown.
His first observation was that Penang’s multicultural heritage is visible in little things. Take street names, such as Ceylon Street, Burma Street, Siam Street, Armenian Street, Chulia Street (South-Indian Tamils are known as Chulia), and Malay Street. There’s a Gurney Street for Sir Henry Lovell Goldsworthy Gurney, a senior British colonial official in Malaya in the mid‑twentieth century. These aren’t arbitrary street names. They reflect specific communities from the past and in some cases up to today.
Peranakan culture is a central part of Penang. Peranakan culture in Malaysia refers to the locally born, mixed-heritage communities that arose when mainly Chinese traders settled in the Malay world and intermarried with local women, creating a distinct Sino-Malay hybrid culture often called Baba-Nyonya. The word Peranakan comes from Malay and broadly means “locally born,” referring to descendants of immigrants who assimilated with local populations in the Malay world. *
Our driver explained: In earlier times, say a relatively wealthy Chinese woman married a Malay man; they retained the traditions of both cultures. That’s how Peranakan culture developed.
However, now, when one person of Chinese heritage marries another of Malay identity, they follow one tradition or the other, but not join them together. Especially when a Chinese person adopts Malay identity, including converting to Islam, the Chinese family name ends. So, the mixing of Peranakan culture doesn’t develop in the same way any more.
We asked about who are the visitors these days to Penang. We had been taken aback by how many high-rise residential buildings flank low-rise Georgetown. Our driver’s perspective: Many visitors come from mainland China. They come because of a longing to experience their own past in ways that are no longer possible on the mainland. They are looking for remnants of their own pre-revolution culture. Our driver is from a third-generation Chinese Penang family, first settling in Penang in the 1920s. His family continued their traditions, rituals, and foods simply because that’s who they are. Contemporaneously, mainland Chinese went through the communist revolution and the cultural revolution and the rest, so that today, most if not all of the older traditions have been lost. Our driver said that the Chinese today have work and consumerism, but not the other parts of their traditional culture. Many come to Penang in search of those traditional experiences, such as the famous Dragon Dance. Our driver said that his family wasn’t particularly trying to preserve their heritage; they were just living life.
We asked about the peoples who first lived here, before Chinese or Indian or Malay arrivals. He said all that didn’t matter. Chinese claim that they’ve been here for more than 2000 years. Indians claim Sanskrit evidence from before that. Indonesians claim first inhabitants since they are physically and ethnically closest. Probably there were clans or tribes here long ago, like the clans that remain intact in East Malaysia (Borneo). But, for him, the question isn’t particularly relevant. What’s important is today’s mixture of cultures and peoples. We realized we were asking the question from the perspective of Hawaiians and Aboriginal peoples of Australia. That tension doesn’t seem to exist here.
But he did comment that while the clans and tribes in East Malaysia may still live in longhouses and practice their heritage, they have iPhones too!
More and more tourists are coming to Penang. Recently, daily nonstop flights from about 7 major Chinese cities opened up so it’s easy for lots of mainland Chinese to come visit for a long weekend to enjoy the nature, culture, and food. There is a lot of development going on, including expanding the island. A few developers have owned parcels for a long time and are currently developing condo towers, especially for second-home buyers. Our driver is concerned about the possibility of Penang’s losing its particular multicultural culture. But at least many people come here specifically for that.
Our driver’s perception is that young people today in Singapore and China live with their heads in their smartphones. In Penang, there’s more effort to provide some no-screen-time rules so that the kids participate in their family’s culture. In some of the villages and towns outside of the primary urban area, families prioritize educating their kids in their culture.
Hawker stall center: New World Park Food City
After walking around a little bit in historic Georgetown, we went in search of a well-reviewed neighborhood Hawker center. In this part of the world, a hawker center is a permanent or semi‑permanent open‑air or covered complex that groups many street‑food stalls together, with shared seating in the middle. We’d been introduced to some of the hawker centers in Singapore and really liked the huge range of local food choices.
The New World Park Food City hawker center is only about 16 years old. It offers over 50 different food stalls. We were impressed by the variety of options, as well as by the tidy organization and ease of access. It seemed that most of the customers were local, which is always a great endorsement.
We chose relatively simple dishes, and enjoyed them all!
Post script
We visited Penang during the first days of the American-Israeli-Iran war. We had planned on visiting Penang for four or five days, and then flying to Singapore and on to London. We were traveling standby, thanks to Mike’s career at Hawaiian Airlines. This meant that we would normally choose our ongoing flights only a couple days before departure, based on available seats. Once the war started, thousands of flights between Asia and Europe that connected through the Middle East were cancelled. A few days into the war, over 10,000 flights had been cancelled. That must have translated to over a million travelers needing to find alternative non-stop flights that avoided the Middle East on the way back to Europe. Which meant that all the flights going west were instantly fully booked or exorbitantly priced. As we realized that all this was happening, we decided to shorten our stay in Penang in order to give us more days to find our way home, and to choose a nice tropical resort in which to figure out our agenda.
A few dips in this pool soothed our anxiety away.
We figured out a route back home, going east instead of west. We are thankful to have access to standby travel and the flexibility of schedule. We feel so much for all the other travelers and innocent people who are being so deeply impacted by the war.
February 2026