Penang island was a free port in the 50’s and 60’s, but then lost its free trade status. (At about the same time, Langkawi was designated a free port. I don’t understand the politics of this at all.) That means that Georgetown (the main city on Penang) looks a bit run down, as there hasn’t been a lot of recent investment. It feels like a boomtown that’s in between booms.
The population of Penang is overwhelmingly southern Chinese. This makes it another great food city, much like Singapore. There seems to be a fair amount of tension between Chinese-dominated Penang and Malay-dominated Malaysia (of which Penang is a part) but I have no idea how that plays out in practice.
Here are a bunch of skyline photos that I took on the way into town.
Everyone blames the haze on ‘Indonesian forest fires’. I don’t quite understand what that would mean — we’re a long way from Indonesia.