Penang & George Town
Penang is an island that eats: George Town, at its north-eastern tip, is a UNESCO grid of shophouses — Chinese clan houses with roofs like dragons, a mansion painted indigo, a Little India that smells of jasmine and ghee, mosques and churches on the same street — and its walls have become the canvas of a street-art movement that started with a Lithuanian and a bicycle in 2012, and its streets the kitchen of the country: char kway teow at a stall with a queue, assam laksa from a cart, cendol under a tree, nasi kandar at three in the morning. Behind the town a hill rises with a funicular and a temple of ten thousand Buddhas at its foot; the north coast has beaches; the west has durians; and two bridges tie the island to the mainland, where the ferry still crosses for those who prefer the old way.
The traveller walks George Town early, Armenian Street for the murals before the selfies, the Khoo Kongsi for the roofs, the Blue Mansion for the story of the man who built it, the clan jetties for a village on stilts in the middle of a city; eats where the queue is local and never in a hotel; rides the funicular up Penang Hill at dusk for the town lit below and the bridge like a thread; visits Kek Lok Si for the giant bronze Kuan Yin and, at Chinese New Year, the lights; swims at Batu Ferringhi if the sea is calm; and, if it is the season, eats a durian in Balik Pulau with someone who knows the varieties by name.
The Guide's honesty: George Town is loved and lived-in — the murals are on the walls of people's houses and the trishaw men are working, not posing —; the food is the reason to come and the reason to stay a day longer, and it costs almost nothing at a stall and a great deal at a hotel; the heat and the humidity are constant and the afternoon storm is on time — the five-foot ways exist for it; the beaches are pleasant, not the country's best — Langkawi is a ferry away for that —; the ferry to Butterworth is a fifteen-minute ride and a century of history for two ringgit; and Penang's argument between the old and the new, the wall and the plate, is the whole point — do not settle it, taste it.