We head to Georgetown which has a number of fun museums for the Instagram crowd including the Upside Down Museum and the Wonderfood Museum. When you want to take a longer trip you can hire a driver or get a rental car through SOCAR for the number of hours you need. Ruth suggests taking a cab from the airport but after that, you can get around on foot or call a car with the Grab App. Because of its British history, English has been taught in schools for generations in Penang. The museum is a rich merchant’s house.įrom there Ruth guides us to Fort Cornwallis and the Jubilee Clock Tower which date back to when the area was a British colony from 1867 – 1957. The Peranakans came to the area between the 15th and 17th century, mostly as traders. Ruth starts us with the Pinang Peranakan Mansion which is a museum dedicated to that part of the Chinese population which is known as Peranakans, Straits-Chinese, or Baba-Nyonya. Penang gives you that old feel of what Singapore would have been like.” “I like to think of Penang as sort of Singapore before Lee Kuan You came in and modernized and sanitized everything. For people who have been to Singapore, Penang is about a third the size of Singapore and only has about 15% of the population.” So you really do have these distinct areas and distinct foods and distant ways of living and languages and you can do it all in a very small space. It’s a very eclectic group of different ethnicities and different cultures and they do not intermix very much. So quite a few people have actually retired. In particular, there is one large group of expats that reside in Malaysia because of their MM2H program which is Malaysia My Second Home. Then you have 40% Malay and about 9% Indians who are mostly Tamal speakers. There’s the Chinese that make up 50% which is more than most of Malaysia. You have 3 distinct people, ethnicities that make up Penang. It is the only one that has an island plus mainland components. Penang is one of the 13 states of Malaysia. Ruth says, “Penang is a very interesting piece of Asia. Hear about travel to Penang, Malaysia as the Amateur Traveler talks to Ruth about things to do in Penang, the city she called home for about a year.
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