Our first impression of Georgetown was certainly that the street art scene was going to be excellent! On the walk to our hostel we saw so many amazing street art pieces!

Checking into our hostel was a real pain. Before we arrived, we were aware that there was both a tourism tax for Malaysia and for Penang that you had to pay per night, but we ended up paying over $100 CAD dollars in extra charges. We were annoyed, but paid the extra fee because we didn’t want to lose our deposit. Once we got our key though, we trudged up three flights of stairs to find that the lock on our door was broken and we could not enter our room. We went back down stairs and asked for help, and after much convincing we got someone to accompany us up to the room to try to unlock it. The door would not open for the staff either. They asked another member of staff to try and open the door, but by this point we were really wondering if it would matter if they could open it, because we might end up locked inside…. After standing in the sweaty hallway for half an hour, we were given a different room… needless to say, we were pretty unimpressed by the whole experience (we remained as nice as humanly possible through the whole thing because we want to maintain the stereotype that Canadians are nice).

After this rough check-in, we left the hostel in search of food and beers to wash away our discomfort. Along the way we found some more amazing street art!!

We decided to try some Chinese food at a place called Cowboy Street Cafe! Georgetown is famous for it’s diverse and authentic food from all over the world. Our spicy noodle soup did not disappoint!!! (and I hear from a credible source that their ice coffee is amazing!!!)

From here we decided to explore Chew jetty, because it was a few minute walk away from the restaurant. Chew Jetty is a boardwalk that has houses built up along the sides. People still live on the jetty and there are many shops and snack places to explore along the way.

After Chew Jetty we decided to head towards Little India and explore some temples and mosques. An interesting thing about George town is how close together you can see different religious buildings. We saw a Hindu temple, a Chinese temple and a Mosque all within a two minute walk!

We enjoyed a few more street beers and some street art before calling it a night and heading back to our hostel!

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