From Langkawi to Penang, you can take an approximate three-hour ferry or a forty-minute flight. Since the flights were cheaper than the ferry at only 99 rm each ($25 USD), the flight was a no-brainer. We arrived at the airport about two hours before the flight, which was more than enough time. The Air Asia flight left early and arrived in Penang early – definitely the right transportation choice. Once in Penang, we took a Grab from the airport to Georgetown, which took about an hour due to all the traffic.
In Georgetown we stayed at a small homestay called The Vintage House, which has several rooms, most of which have a shared bathroom. Ours had its own bathroom, but it’s a bit goofy in that the bathroom is in the corner of the room with a raised platform and glass “walls” that extend up about six feet or so. It is run by Cheah, who is very nice and super helpful, offering plenty of suggestions for what to see and do in Georgetown. There is free tea and coffee in the common area, plus free laundry! The location is very convenient for exploring the town and at $25 per night, the price is unbeatable. We initially booked for three nights but extended our stay an additional night to spend more time in Georgetown.
This is apparently a foodie town, so we were determined to try all the Malaysian dishes that we could! Our favorites are summarized below. In addition, there was a lot of street art that made for fun self-led walking tours. The street art includes many wrought iron, 2D cartoon sculptures that depict some part of the history where it sits, as well as painted murals.
Our favorite Georgetown foods:
- Wan Tan Mee: Our favorite dish in Georgetown! And our favorite place to get it was a stall located at the northeast corner of Lebuh Melayu and Lovong Toh Aka. Order it with spicy sauce (if you like it spicy) and extra wontons.
- Char Koay Teow: Thick noodles with pork in a dark sauce. We tried this at the Jetty Food Court and enjoyed.
- Hokkein Mee: Featured on Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations episode so we had to try this! This dish was thick noodles in a soup with pork, baby shrimp, and an egg. We also tried this at the Jetty Food Court and enjoyed.
- Laksa: We tried several of these in Georgetown as we had heard the dish can vary in flavor depending on where you get it – and these claims were true!
- Chok Hor Fun: Not our favorite dish in Malaysia, but we had to try it as it is a common item around town!
- Ali Nasi Lemak: located in the Sri Weld Food Court and has good reviews. Here we tried a shrimp, egg/anchovy, and salted fish/egg nasi lemak served in bamboo leaves. Each was 2 rm – can’t beat the price!
- Cendol (spelled many different ways): A dessert consisting of ice, coconut milk, green rice flour jelly, and sweetened red zuki beans. Interesting and worth taste testing!
- Bocadillos: A new Indian restaurant that we stumbled into initially for an air conditioning/beer break. We ended up ordering food as well – the chicken wings and the chicken biryani. I don’t say this lightly when I say it was probably the best chicken biryani I have ever eaten. The prices were higher here, but totally worth it!
- Kapitan: A well-known Indian restaurant in town. Food was decent enough, but it looked like we should have ordered their tandoori chicken set rather than the chicken tikka masala.
- Deen Claypot: We stopped at this Indian restaurant for a late-night snack – Patrick enjoyed the chicken tikka biryani.
- China House: This spot pulled us in with their tempting cake/dessert signs. So many delicious looking cakes. We selected a large slice of the tiramisu cake with a cup of coffee one evening. Not cheap (18 rm for the cake and 11.80 rm for the coffee), but we did not regret it!
- Chulia Street hawker stalls: We ordered wan tan mee here from a stall (almost as delicious as the one mentioned above) as well as a couple of juices from a neighboring stall.
- Plenty of bars on Chulia Street with happy hours: We enjoyed live music Chulia Court and the seclusion, intimacy, and authenticity at Hong Kong Bar.
- Many food courts throughout town: While prices are a touch more expensive, it offers the ease and opportunity to eat several dishes at once!
On top of the street art and food scenes, some sight-seeing spots were also well worth our time.
- Visit the Clan Jetties: These historic jetties extend into the water along the southeast side of Georgetown. Each jetty housed a difference Chinese clan when they first immigrated to Malaysia – and people still live in these jetties today. Visitors are allowed during the daytime hours and gates to the narrow jetty platforms/walkways are locked in the evenings/nights. They extend a good way out into the water. It was low tide when we explored, so we watched the birds stalking their fish prey in the shallow pool pockets. We specifically walked along the Tan Jetty in the early evening, and it wasn’t too crowded.
- Blue Mansion, or Cheong Fatt Tze: There are three tours here daily (11 am, 2 pm, and 3:30 pm) for 25 rm per person, otherwise only guests of the hotel can enter. The tour took about 1.5 hours. Our tour guide spoke great English and had great information. The original proprietor of the mansion (Cheong Fatt Tze) arrived from China penniless, married into a wealthy family, and built enormous wealth from there through mining. He married eight times but lived with his favorite wife in this mansion (wife #7 – he was 70 years old and she was 17). In his will, he left the mansion to wife #7, saying it couldn’t be sold until his son with wife #7 died, which finally occurred in 1989. The buyers put an extensive effort and money to restore the dilapidated mansion to its original glory, which is how we see it today. We looked at prices to stay there and it surprisingly was only about $105 USD per night. Unfortunately, still out of our budget, but it would have been cool to stay here!
- Penang Hill: Located outside of Georgetown, it’s about a 15 to 20-minute Grab ride, which cost us 13 rm ($3 USD). We could also have taken the 204 bus for 2 rm per person, but the Grab was much quicker. And it was way too hot to walk the 1.5 hours one way. At the Penang Hill funicular lower station, we purchased round trip tickets to the top for 30 rm per person. Similar to our experiences with the SkyCab on Langkawi, this place was set up for large amounts of tourists. However, during our visit, we didn’t have to wait in any lines. The funicular ride to the top takes less than 5 minutes and gets steep in sections. The views from the top are quite spectacular – well worth the funicular ride alone. There are also several attractions at the top of Penang Hill – most require some sort of separate cost. The nature walks, however, are free! There is one main loop with turn-offs to make it as short or as long as you want. We elected to do Route D, the longest, which takes about 1.5 hours. There are Dusky Leaf Monkeys and Giant Black Squirrels on Penang Hill – we spotted two monkeys near the upper funicular station and then one giant black squirrel along our walk. We wished we had seen more wildlife, but the walk was shaded and empty, so it was a very pleasant stroll! Only one steep downhill and uphill section, the rest is flat. We also walked over to Monkey Cup, which is a café with a flower garden. It costs 12 rm per person to go in or coffees are about 12 rm as well. We decided not to go in because we were enjoying our nature stroll. When we got back to the upper station, we explored some of the other places at the top. There was an earthquake and tsunami simulation center (36 rm per person), a mosque and Hindu template (free to see), a playground, and apparently a jeep ride and botanical garden (we did not walk far enough to see these). There is also a café and cafeteria, but the food/drinks are a rip-off as to be expected (4 rm for a bottle of water). Overall, we spent a few hours at the top and enjoyed our time.
I will also mention that Georgetown is where we were finally able to remedy our computer problems (i.e., broken laptop back in Koh Lanta, Thailand) in case its helpful for others looking to purchase a computer. We visited the Prangin Mall, which was a short walk from our homestay. There are several laptop/electronics stores located on the fourth floor. We browsed our options and ultimately selected the HP Notebook 14-CM0119AU, a red laptop, for under $300 USD from a shop called SkyGate Technology. The promotion also included a free backpack and wireless mouse, so we thought this was a great deal! The computer was just what we needed for the remainder of our trip. There was a second shop, Gadget Zone, that was able to remove the hard drive from our old laptop so that we could transfer the data to the new laptop. And they helped us for free (i.e., removed the hard drive, let us use their in-store computer to download all of the data onto a new external hard drive that we purchased from them, and reinstalled the hard drive back into the old laptop). A wonderful, successful experience!
