Meg’s Adventure Roundup Part 4: George Town

It takes 10 hours, 3 vans, and 2 banana and peanut butter sandwiches to travel from Krabi to Malaysia on a budget.

Two weeks ago, I wasn’t planning to travel to Malaysia at all. I didn’t know anything about the country and couldn’t have named a single city there. (My public school education is really getting exposed out here.)

However, I heard one comment from travelers across Thailand that quickly put it on my radar: Malaysia has the best food in Asia.

George Town, an island city in the state of Penang, is known as Malaysia’s culinary capital. It also happens to be one of the cheapest and easiest cities to reach from Krabi. Sometimes life paves the next road for you, and all you have to do is book the van.

For me, the greatest surprise of George Town didn’t come on a plate. Cities, like people, come with unique personalities, and George Town was the first city whose personality seemed to align with mine. Thailand was spectacular to visit, but I couldn’t see myself actually living there. It’s like the friend who’s great at parties, but you wouldn’t want to be roommates.

George Town might not be the life of the party, but when you’re done at the disco with Thailand, it’s the city you want to come home to. It plays you a song on the guitar, gives you a big bowl of noodles, takes you for a walk on the riverside, and offers you a mug of ginger tea and banana roti. It’s the beach, the mountains, the city, and the rainforest all at your fingertips, and it moves at the pace of a street scooter: not too fast, but always in motion. I originally booked two nights in George Town and got my foot caught in the door for two weeks.

We have a lot to unpack today, so I hope you’ve brought your appetite: for culture, for connections, and for the food tour of a lifetime.

Welcome to George Town.

From the top of Penang Hill, you can see where the city meets the sea, the mountains, and the rainforest all at once.

A Food Tour through George Town

The word of the week is harmonious.

In Krabi, we learned what happens when you accidentally book the wrong hostel. Today we have a happier experiment: what happens when you book the right hostel.

I mentioned in Krabi that I was looking for hiking buddies. This was the first sign I saw when I walked into my new hostel.

I spent my entire stay at the Someplace Else hostel, and I couldn’t have designed a more fitting space for me if I tried. It seemed to be built for tea-loving writers who also enjoy karaoke, yoga, and mountain hikes. I made friends from all over the world, and friends especially come in handy in a food city; the more people at the table, the more dishes you can try.

Hiking buddies in action. The man in the front is a pro hiker from the Netherlands who has hiked to Mt. Everest's base camp. He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day to keep his lungs humble.

We enjoyed mornings with kaya toast and nasi lemak, afternoons with laksa, and evenings with char kway teow and chendul for dessert. If that sentence made as little sense to you as it did to me when I arrived, the pictures below can fill you in. Scroll through for a taste of George Town on a plate!

I was concerned that once I left Thailand, my banana binge would be over. But George Town introduced me to a whole new treasure: banana roti. Part flatbread and part fruit, it is the afternoon snack that dreams are made of.

If you only have a few days in George Town, you can try the famous Malaysian dishes and say you've had the experience. But these dishes alone aren’t actually what puts Penang at the top of the foodie lists. The real reason George Town’s food scene is unforgettable is the same reason the rest of the city is, too: George Town is a masterclass in what it means to be a cultural melting pot.

When the British declared George Town a major trading port in the late 1700s, immigrants from all over the world flocked here to set up shop. They brought their food, fashion, religions, and customs with them and had no choice but to learn to coexist with their diverse neighbors. Today you can find the old and the new from each culture still living side by side on the same few streets.

The "Big 3" cultural influences you'll notice are from Malaysia, China, and India, but you don’t have to look hard to see fingerprints from all over the world.

This means that a full food tour of George Town includes far more than Malaysian food; you have to try the Indian food, Chinese food, Malaysian food, and food from every hybrid culture that has emerged over the centuries (like Nyonya food, which was born when Chinese women married Malaysian and Indonesian men).

(Megan's favorite: a big plate of Nyonya kuih, a term for all kinds of Malay-Chinese steamed cakes!)

Many official food tours only have time to focus on one type of cuisine per tour. How long would it take to try every must-try dish? Nobody knows. It's an endeavor many have tried and failed, but you can't let that stop you from trying anyway.

But George Town's melting pot masterclass offers so much more than fantastic food. What stood out to me most is the city’s remarkable and truly unique interfaith culture. Immigrants built their communities around houses of worship; today, Hindus, Buddhists, Taoists, Catholics, Protestants, and many more still worship beside one another on the same road, known as George Town’s Street of Harmony.

In the U.S., it often feels like we can barely sustain different types of Christianity without sincere division. In Malaysia, an array of religious communities have lived together for centuries with relatively minimal friction.

My project for this city was clear: I wanted to explore what interfaith and intercultural harmony actually looks like in daily practice. What does it mean to love your neighbors? I took a walk down Harmony Street to find out.

A Sunday on Harmony Street

I began my Sunday on Harmony Street by attending a church service at the oldest Anglican church in Asia, St. George’s. 

St. George's Church. I thought the service would be filled with church-going tourists, but I was one of only two guests in a congregation of about two dozen. So much for stealthy observation.

The sermon began like many I’ve heard at home. Then, halfway through, I heard the sound of gunshots and jumped in my seat.

The shots lasted for nearly a minute, though I seemed to be the only one concerned. The speaker and congregation continued as though there was no noise at all. I later learned we had heard a cascade of firecrackers from the Chinese Buddhist temple down the street. I was visiting at the intersection of Ramadan, Lent, and Lunar New Year, which are observed in tandem on the streets of George Town. Firecrackers and calls to prayer rang through the city several times each day.

After service, the entire congregation was invited to a weekly lunch that families take turns providing. I got the chance to talk with several members of St. George’s and eat what has been the best curry of my life from an Indian nana and her disposable aluminum tray (another microlesson on why George Town's food scene is unmissable). The church's worship pastor, Michael, was generous enough to spend over an hour with me sharing his insights on how different religious groups coexist here.

If I had to boil my conversations in George Town down to just one sentence, it would be this: lasting change only happens when people and policies are working together. Changing a law isn’t enough to change a culture; you have to change people’s hearts. On the other side, when people are working toward a goal, they need policies that support them and set the standard for the next generation.

One of the biggest reasons George Town has succeeded in creating a culture of harmony is that it was established at the start: Captain Francis (who was in charge of George Town) set a policy that every immigrant was welcome to practice their unique culture, religion included. It was enforced by both the government and communities to set a standard of tolerance from the get-go.

In practice, harmony is a culture of give and take; people make concessions and deal with inconveniences to allow others to express their cultures. In turn, others show similar grace towards them.

Michael summarized how it works in seven words:

"People deal with it. And nobody complains."

No one complains when firecrackers erupt during the 15 days of Lunar New Year. Or when calls to prayer are projected across the city five times a day during Ramadan. Or when Christians display nativity scenes and prepare for Christmas the entire month of December.

This comes with small costs (like being woken up by a 5 a.m. call to prayer, which happened once or twice during my stay). But harmony requires compromise, and compromise requires small acts of sacrifice and letting things go. It's a useful skill for any personal relationship, but I never thought about the need to apply it with our global relationships, too.

Beyond the personal level, Michael also explained the role governments play in encouraging peace in their countries. For example, while Malaysia is officially an Islamic nation, its Muslim leaders openly support everyone’s right to practice their own religion. What fascinated me most were the examples Michael offered of faith-related policies that still benefit everyone.

For example, during the Hari Raya holiday, Muslims travel across the country to celebrate the end of Ramadan with family and friends. It’s similar to how we travel to be with loved ones for Thanksgiving. 

To make sure everyone who celebrates can afford to travel, the government subsidizes the price of gas around the holiday. Everyone, whether Muslim or not, benefits from discounted gas and fills their tanks. As a result, it's easier to accept the inconveniences of a mass-travel holiday, and cheap gas helps keep the peace.

(It was surprising enough to hear of a government lowering gas prices for a holiday. In America, how many times has someone reminded you to get gas before prices skyrocket for a holiday weekend?) 

While this only scratches the surface of what George Town had to share with me, the main idea is that ultimately, you can only build a truly loving culture when you have people and policy working toward the same goal. Everyone makes small concessions with willing hearts, and everyone shares in the greater benefits. It has been an uplifting pastime to imagine all the ways this kind of cooperation could take shape in the States if we will allow it.

Below you can glimpse the rest of the Harmony Street tour. While I didn't have a chance to speak with any other leaders, I visited each site and walked away with about a pound of pamphlets that kept me busy for the rest of my stay.

The Kapitan Keling Mosque

Sri Mahamariamman Temple (oldest Hindu temple in Georgetown)

Goddess of Mercy Temple (oldest Taoist-Chinese temple in Georgetown)

Church of the Assumption

Acheen Street Malay Mosque (right next to the Street of Harmony)

The George Town Experience

In between mealtimes (which is how we measure time now), I had plenty of opportunities to explore the sites of George Town with some hiking buddies that have quickly become friends for life. We hiked through the rainforest, trekked through Penang’s national park, frolicked through the botanical gardens, soaked in the sun, and saw the first baby turtles of the year at Turtle Beach and Conservatory.

Shoutout to Christian for capturing my new favorite photo of me mid-frolic

After sharing my affinity for pickleball, I was invited to try the European alternative - padel! Think pickleball meets tennis meets playing off the walls.

One highlight was hiking the famous Penang Hill (which felt more like a mountain). At the top, we were able to see another Hindu temple and mosque sitting side by side. You can also walk several trails and, if you’re lucky, glimpse Malaysia’s dusky monkeys.

My first time on Penang Hill, I was remarkably lucky — a family of dusky monkeys came to enjoy lunch right next to me, as unbothered by me as I was by them. Even the monkeys here know how to coexist.

Now a word from the inner tourist: if you only have time to see one thing in George Town, make it the Kek Lok Si Temple — and that’s coming from someone who’s seen a whole lot of temples this past month. Kek Lok Si is a change of pace from the Theravada Buddhist temples of Thailand. It was my introduction to Chinese Buddhism, which integrates culture and theology from Chinese folk religions and Taoism, a unique melting pot in its own right. 

We were able to witness something extra special during our visit: the entire grounds remained open after dark, lit up in celebration of Lunar New Year.

The temple boasted the most unique Buddha images I’ve seen so far, including Fat and Happy Buddhas, and the payoff at the top of the temple is a stunning pagoda that stands at nearly 220 feet tall. Inside the pagoda is a 120-foot tall statue of Guan Yin, the Bodhisattva (female Buddha) of compassion and mercy who hears the cries of the world. This is both the tallest Buddha figure I have seen so far and the first female Buddha featured as a temple’s main icon. In terms of jaw-dropping awe, she really gives Reclining Buddha in Bangkok a run for his money.

We also joined in on the holiday celebrations. On the last night of Chinese New Year, we attended a community celebration with traditional music, costumes, and even a lion dance. Inside each lion were two small children doing flips and acrobatics on stilts.

I believe an important step to achieving inner harmony is accepting that there will always be small children who are more talented than you will ever be. Dance on, little friends.

We also had a chance to join the annual orange-tossing ceremony. As the tradition goes, single women wrote their names (and eventually phone numbers) on oranges and threw them into the river. If a man was interested in a woman, he would jump in the river, retrieve her orange, and present it back or give her a call as a token of courtship.

George Town is really raising the standard for men over here. Forget tall, dark, and handsome: is he willing to jump in the river and get my orange?

In modern days, women now write their Instagram handles, and everyone is invited to throw an orange in the river and wait for their soulmates to find them. No potential suitors have followed me yet, but I’ll keep you posted if anything changes.

Lastly, this was also the first city where I connected with a few locals. For example, what started as a morning tea became an afternoon sharing coffee and kaya toast with a retired man and his friends at their favorite café. I also befriended a tea seller at the Ramadan Market in Little India named Suki. Suki invited me to break fast with her the following night, where we shared dosais, stories, and plenty of tea. She even showed me her home kitchen and let me help her make some of the teas she learned from her grandmother.

Trun invited me to a table with him and his friends at their favorite café. His son lives in the U.S., and we spent the day sharing cultures, coffee, and kaya toast.

Suki!

As sad as it is to say goodbye to this city, there is more world to see. Besides, I have to get back to the United States and buy a couch at some point; I’ve promised a lot of people they could sleep on it if they ever come to Austin.

Just a few hours from George Town is Malaysia’s actual capital, Kuala Lumpur. I’m spending a few days under the lights of Malaysia’s biggest city before saying farewell to kaya toast and laksa for good.

Okay, I’m finally ready — carry me out on a bed of banana roti.

Love,

Megan

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