Three days in Penang: a mosque, two temples and a church on the same street

Two nights in George Town, with the heritage core on foot, the hill and the great temple by train and bus, and hawker food every night.

Copy this itinerary
Length
3 days, 2 nights
Where you stay
George Town (Malaysia)
Places
8 across 3 days
OpenFreeMap © OpenMapTiles Data from OpenStreetMap

Francis Light took Penang for the East India Company in 1786, making George Town the first British settlement in Southeast Asia, and then filled it with everybody who would come: Hokkien and Cantonese traders, Tamil Muslim merchants, Acehnese, Armenians, Burmese, Thais. Nobody was in charge of the culture and the result is a town where a mosque, a Chinese temple, a Hindu temple and an Anglican church stand within four hundred metres of each other on one road.

UNESCO listed the centre in 2008, which is what saved the shophouses, and the good news is that they are still shops. Behind the ochre and green facades are ironmongers, coffee roasters, tailors and clan associations, not boutique hotels, or at least not only boutique hotels.

Three days is the honest length. Two gets you the heritage core, and the third buys you the hill and the temple in the hills above Air Itam, which are the two things worth leaving town for.

Highlights

  • The Street of Harmony, four religions in four hundred metres, walkable in an afternoon
  • Khoo Kongsi, the most extravagant Chinese clan house in the country, hidden behind a granite gateway
  • Kek Lok Si stacked up a hillside, with a seven-storey pagoda that changes architectural style as it rises
  • The 1923 funicular up Penang Hill, 700 metres above the heat
  • Char kway teow and assam laksa on Chulia Street, cooked over charcoal by people who have made nothing else for thirty years

Where to stay

George Town, two nights

Sleep inside the heritage zone. The restored shophouse hotels around Armenian Street, Love Lane and Chulia Street put every temple, clan house and food stall within a ten minute walk, and a night in one of them costs what a chain hotel does outside it.

The other options are Gurney Drive, three kilometres west, which is malls and sea front and the big hawker centre, and Batu Ferringhi on the north coast, which is resorts and a mediocre beach and forty minutes from anything interesting. For three days, stay in town.

Day by day

Day 1 in George Town (Malaysia)

The Street of Harmony, end to end

One road runs from the sea back into the old town and the British called it Pitt Street. It now carries the name of the mosque halfway along it, and on its short length sit a Chinese temple from the very first years of the settlement, a Hindu temple, the Tamil Muslim mosque and, a street away, the oldest Anglican church in Southeast Asia. Colonial administration put each community's plot side by side and nobody has moved since.

Walk it in the late afternoon when the light is low and the incense smoke in the Chinese temple is thickest. It takes about two hours with stops, and it ends within two minutes of dinner.

  1. 15:30

    Goddess of Mercy Temple

    Religious

    The oldest Chinese temple on the island, dedicated to Kuan Yin and thick with smoke from the giant joss sticks outside. Busiest on the first and fifteenth of the lunar month, and worth timing for.

  2. 16:45

    Kapitan Keling Mosque

    Religious

    Built by Tamil Muslim traders at the start of the 1800s and rebuilt in Mughal style with a domed roof and a single tall minaret. The office by the gate lends robes and will walk you round.

  3. 18:00

    St. George's Church

    Religious

    White, Georgian and completely out of place, finished in 1818 by convict labour and the oldest Anglican church in the region. The little rotunda in the churchyard is a memorial to Francis Light.

  4. 19:00

    Dinner on Chulia Street

    Eat

    Stalls set up on the pavement after dark. The char kway teow man with the charcoal wok and the wan tan mee cart are both worth the wait, and a bowl is around eight ringgit.

With more time: Little India starts one street east and is loudest and best around six in the evening. Fort Cornwallis, on the sea front where Light landed in 1786, is a ten minute walk and takes twenty minutes to see.

Day 2 in George Town (Malaysia)

Kek Lok Si and Penang Hill, then a blue mansion

Air Itam is six kilometres inland and holds the two big excursions, which sit close enough together to do in one morning. Kek Lok Si is the largest Buddhist temple complex in Malaysia, begun in 1890 by a Chinese abbot and built upward ever since, and the pagoda at its centre is Chinese at the bottom, Thai in the middle and Burmese on top, because the funding came from all three communities.

The funicular up Penang Hill has been running since 1923 and climbs to 735 metres, where the air is five or six degrees cooler and the whole island lies below you. Go up before the afternoon haze. Then come back into town for the one house tour worth booking.

  1. 08:30

    Kek Lok Si

    Religious

    Take bus 204 from Komtar. The climb through the covered market stalls to the pagoda takes twenty minutes; the inclined lift up to the 30 metre bronze Kuan Yin above it costs a few ringgit and saves your legs.

  2. 11:30

    Penang Hill

    Nature

    The funicular leaves from Air Itam, a short ride from the temple, and takes about ten minutes. Buy the return ticket online to skip the queue, which is long at weekends and non-existent before nine.

  3. 14:30

    Late lunch at Air Itam market

    Eat

    The stall at the foot of the temple steps has been doing asam laksa since the 1950s and the locals queue for it.

  4. 15:30

    Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion

    Other

    The indigo-blue mansion of Cheong Fatt Tze, a coolie who became the richest man in the Straits. Interior access is by guided tour only, at set times in the late morning and afternoon, and the tour is the good part.

  5. 19:00

    Gurney Drive

    Other

    The big sea front hawker centre, three kilometres from the old town. Rojak, oyster omelette and cendol; go after seven when the whole city turns up.

With more time: The Habitat, at the top of Penang Hill, is a rainforest trail with a canopy walkway and is an easy extra hour while you are up there. The Penang Botanic Gardens, on the road back down, were laid out in 1884 around a waterfall.

Day 3 in George Town (Malaysia)

The clan house, the murals, and a last bowl of noodles

The Khoo were one of five Hokkien clans who effectively ran George Town in the nineteenth century, and their clan house is the single most extravagant building on the island: carved granite, gilded beams, and a roof so ornate that when the first one burned down not long after it was finished, the family took it as a warning and built the replacement slightly less grand.

Then walk the lanes around Armenian Street. The murals that everyone photographs were painted for the 2012 George Town Festival by a Lithuanian artist, and the wrought-iron cartoons on the walls between them were commissioned to explain the street names. It is a good hour before a taxi to the airport.

  1. 09:00

    Leong San Tong Khoo Kongsi

    Religious

    Enter through the granite gate off Cannon Square, which is easy to walk past. The carving on the beams and the theatre facing the temple are what the entrance fee buys; allow an hour.

  2. 10:45

    Armenian Street

    Other

    The old Armenian merchants' street, now craft shops, coffee and the best of the murals. The children on a bicycle are on the wall at the Lebuh Armenian end and there is usually a queue to stand in front of them.

  3. 12:30

    Last noodles, then out

    Eat

    Nasi kandar for a big lunch or a final bowl of assam laksa for a light one. Grab to the airport takes 30 minutes; the Butterworth ferry for the train takes ten plus the walk.

With more time: With a later flight, the Pinang Peranakan Mansion two streets away is a Straits Chinese tycoon's house crammed with a thousand objects, and the Sun Yat-sen Museum on Armenian Street is the small house where the 1911 Chinese revolution was partly planned.

Before you go

Getting there and around

Penang International Airport is 16 kilometres south of George Town and Grab from it costs about 30 ringgit. Coming by train, you arrive at Butterworth on the mainland and cross on the ferry, which takes ten minutes, costs almost nothing and drops you at the edge of the old town.

The heritage core is walkable end to end in half an hour. For everything else there is the free Central Area Transit bus loop, the 204 to Air Itam for Kek Lok Si and the hill, and Grab, which is cheap. Do not rent a car; the one-way system in the old town is a punishment.

Eating, which is the point

Penang is where Malaysians go to eat, and the format is the coffee shop with rented stalls in it. Char kway teow is the flat noodle fried over charcoal with prawns and cockles; assam laksa is the sour fish and tamarind soup that has nothing to do with the coconut laksa elsewhere; nasi kandar is rice with several curries ladled over it, an Indian Muslim invention.

Stalls keep unpredictable hours and many close on a rotating day off. If a place has a queue at an odd hour, that is why. Cendol, shaved ice with green noodles, coconut milk and palm sugar, is the reward for walking around in 33 degrees.

Heat, temples and dress

It is hot and humid all year and rains hardest between September and November. Walk the old town before eleven or after four.

Shoulders and knees covered for the mosque, and shoes off at the Chinese and Hindu temples. Kapitan Keling Mosque runs free guided visits from the office by the gate and they are worth taking; it is one of the few mosques in Malaysia that actively welcomes non-Muslim visitors inside.

Penang is a town people keep going back to, and what brings them back is rarely a monument. It is the coffee shop that has been frying the same noodle since the sixties, the clan house with nobody else in it at nine in the morning, and the fact that four religions have shared one street for two hundred years without anyone making a fuss about it.

Give it three days, eat six times a day, and take the train back rather than flying.

Or make it a longer trip

These trips pass through here on the way somewhere else.

Make it your trip

Every stop, day and place here lands in your account as an editable trip. Move the days around, swap a city, add your own bookings and costs, and share it with whoever is coming.

Copy to my trips

Common questions

Is three days enough for Penang?
For George Town, yes. Two days covers the heritage core and the third gets you Kek Lok Si and the hill without rushing. If you want beach time at Batu Ferringhi or the national park at the northwest tip, add two more nights, though neither is why people come here.
George Town or Penang, which is which?
Penang is the island and the state; George Town is the city on its northeast corner, and it is where you stay. Almost everything on this plan is in George Town or within eight kilometres of it.
What should I eat in Penang?
Char kway teow, assam laksa, nasi kandar, hokkien mee, oyster omelette and cendol, roughly in that order. Eat at stalls rather than restaurants. Chulia Street, Kimberley Street and the Gurney Drive hawker centre are the three easiest places to start, and nothing costs more than ten ringgit.
How do I get to Penang from Kuala Lumpur?
The ETS train takes four hours to Butterworth and the ferry across takes another ten minutes, which is the pleasant way to do it. Flights take an hour and are often cheaper. Buses take five hours and are the least comfortable of the three.
Is it worth booking anything ahead?
The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion tours and the Penang Hill funicular both benefit from an online ticket, and shophouse hotels in the heritage zone fill up on weekends and Malaysian public holidays. Everything else takes walk-ups. Copy the three days into the planner and shuffle them if your flight lands late.