The melting pot

The highway from Penang airport into George Town doesn’t prepare you for what’s coming. You pass sleek high-rise apartments winking in the sun, and slick billboards on which handsome Malays sport expensive watches and tout golf courses. What you see says that Penang – dubbed the Silicon Valley of Malaysia – is doing very well, thank you and enjoying the modern life.

Nothing wrong with that, but as a visitor you want colour and edge, the complications of history, and tumultuous, entertaining streets. And that’s just what you get in Penang’s little capital, where steel and glass and white billboard teeth are left behind. Arcaded houses, moody bars and street stalls piled with ziggurats of tropical fruit take over. Dragons squat on the rooflines of old Chinese mansions and from the dimness of Indian shops comes the glitter of sequined silks.

Penang, Malaysia’s second smallest state, is made up of a strip of northwest mainland and a significant island linked by two spectacular bridges. This fast-growing and dynamic state hasn’t abandoned its history nor, to judge from its numerous temples, its spiritual life. This is one of Southeast Asia’s most fascinating and rewarding destinations and George Town is packed with character and life. If you like travel for cultural collisions and terrific food, you’ve hit the jackpot.

George Town was founded in 1786 by British naval officer Sir Francis Light, whose son, Colonel William Light would later found Adelaide. Its oldest structure is the fragmented remains of Fort Cornwallis on the harbour front, today a rather half-hearted introduction to the town.

But more is to come – the whole of central George Town is World Heritage listed. Among imposing British buildings are a clock tower, the State Legislature and Southeast Asia’s oldest Anglican church.

Beside the latter stands another elegant Victorian building that now houses Penang Museum. Among its idiosyncratic displays are gruesome sepia photos of secret-society squabbles, a bullet-holed British governor’s limousine and the skull of an elephant that derailed a train. History here is as colourful as the pastel-painted streets.

The British brought George Town into being, the Chinese came to trade. One of the town’s most striking sights is Khoo Kongsi, a Chinese clan house laden with gilt, paintings and carved dragons, like something imagined in an opium dream.

In George Town’s streets you’re always passing household altars where fruit gleams and incense smoke curls. Cramped and shadowy shops still trade in odd things – mooncakes, traditional Chinese medicines, plastic buckets, pineapples.

These ubiquitous Anglo-Chinese shop-houses are narrow and tall, with higher floors built out over arcades that provide cool canyons against the tropical sun. From deep inside you hear the scrape and clang of woks and the clack of mahjong tiles.

Indians came to George Town too. Silks and saris hang outside shopfronts, giving streets a festive air and you can buy textiles and brass pots and curry powder in shops hung with posters depicting Hindu goddesses and Bollywood movie stars.

Every now and then you come across Hindu temples, which are splendid contrasts to the cool white austerity of British churches. Most notable is the 1883 Sri Mariamman Temple whose ornate gateway and roof are encrusted with statues of animals and multi-limbed gods in bright colours.

You can trace the history of another cultural and religious layer at Penang Islamic Museum, housed in the elegant former mansion of an Arab peppercorn baron whose architecture is a pastiche of European, Indian and Malay styles. Malay-run shops sell basket ware and batik, and perfumed objects made from sandalwood and agar imported from Myanmar.

Make your way to Kapitan Keling Mosque – white, domed, studded with Moorish arches – and then to Jamek Mosque, which has an Egyptian-style minaret whose circular window was a clever adaptation after a cannonball punched a hole in the wall.

George Town’s architectural blend is exhilaratingly eccentric. Perhaps the best example of its exuberance is the lime-green Penang Peranakan Mansion, an ornate, nineteenth-century private home displaying Malay and Chinese influences – with British wrought iron and floor tiles for good measure – and crammed with inlaid Chinese antiques, pottery and carved wooden screens.

The latest contribution to George Town’s colour? In 2009 an international street-art competition started a new craze that has given George Town another whole reputation in the Instagram age. Quirky murals, interactive installations and metal-rod sculptures blossom down alleys, many of them referencing aspects of Penang’s confused multicultural history.

You’d have to say confusion here is a good thing, no more so than when it comes to the cuisine. Malaysian food combines Malay, Chinese, Indian and European influences but Penang goes one further by adding flavours from neighbouring Thailand to the mix.

While you’ll find plenty of sophisticated restaurants, nothing beats the variety of food from George Town’s street stalls and hawker centres, where you can have a progressive multi-course dinner under lazily turning ceiling fans.

Beef rendang and spicy red sambal are common curries. Fish-head curry and laksa are well-known Nonya dishes, a cuisine that fuses Malay and Chinese flavours; Penang laksa comes in a distinctively spicy fish soup.

You can tuck into endless varieties of Chinese stir-fried noodles, Indian murtabak (a pancake folded over chicken and vegetables) and Malay rojak, a spicy chopped salad topped with crushed peanuts. Gas flares, woks sizzle and street life unfolds in this town of many flavours.

Certainly this is a place that never fails to surprise or impress and what should, on paper at least, create a discordant mix is in fact one of Penang’s greatest strengths. A thriving mix of cultures, religions, flavours and experiences rewarding the traveller who ventures to this thriving seaside city ringed by mountains. Although Penang doesn’t top many lists of places to visit in Asia, it certainly should.