The Less-Touristy Georgetown Guide (Malaysia)

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Your complete Georgetown guide & all the not-quite-so-touristy attractions the city has to offer.

Georgetown is teeming with tourists. In recent years this small corner of Penang Island has exploded in popularity. & with that popularity comes the cheesy tourist traps. But here are some attractions actually worth doing & of course– some food worth eating during your visit to the UNESCO World Heritage city.

Malaysia is an odd country. It’s a complete mish-mash of cultures and traditions. Sometimes you’ll feel right at home surrounded by a seemingly modern cookie-cutter city and sometimes you’ll be served a steaming bowl of soup containing pig’s blood whilst packed shoulder to shoulder in an alleyway. You just never know what you’re gonna get. It’s a beautiful multicultural mosaic and in many ways, I wish more countries functioned this way…with one foot in the future and the other firmly rooted in tradition.

Malaysia, nicknamed “Mall-Asia” by many travelers, has clearly embraced modernization. There are more cars than motorbikes on the street and trendy cafes and speakeasies are commonplace. Much like Singapore, many parts of Malaysia are melding western culture and business with their pre-existing traditions. While roughly two-thirds of the country identify as Malay, there is also a huge population of Chinese and Indian residents who have lived within Malaysia for generations. This diversity creates an excellent food scene.

Personally, I liked Malaysia better than Singapore.

We have actually visited Malaysia twice now but both times (2019 + 2023) we stuck to Penang and the bustling capital of Kuala Lumpur. There are tons of other great destinations we want to visit one day– specifically the Malaysian portion of Borneo.

Your Ultimate Georgetown Guide (Penang, Malaysia)

Getting to Georgetown

Conveniently, Penang has its very own international airport. This means you could fly into Penang from Thailand, Singapore, or even locally from Kuala Lumpur. Personally though, if you’re on a budget I recommend a bus or trail from Kuala Lumpur.

The bus takes you about 6 hours ($8) and the train 4 hours ($30) with both arriving at Butterworth station. From there you can walk to the ferry terminal and take a 15-minute ferry across to the Georgetown Pier. It costs 20 cents and runs every 15-30 minutes.

Getting Around Georgetown

Penang has a very well-connected public transportation system. Bus Rides cost between 2-4RM ($0.50-$1) depending on the distance.

We traveled exclusively by bus and foot. Penang is a small island and everything in Georgetown is walkable.

There is also a limited-service CAT bus that is 100% free to the public. This connects many of the most popular sights and residential areas you might stay in around town.

Important Buses for Travelers

• 401: The airport shuttle. Runs from the airport to Georgetown.
• 101: Gets you from Georgetown to Penang National Park.
• 201, 203 or 204: Georgetown to Kek Lok Si Temple

Buses don’t have the ability to make change so be sure to have small bills readily available.

Best Place to Stay?: I rarely recommend accomadation because we just choose the cheapest place to stay in most cities. But We Love Guesthouse was the best! The rooms were simple but private and A/C, the owner was delightful, it was an easy walk to all attractions, and he gave us all the best recommendations on where to eat and drink in the city.

Accommodation in Georgetown is more expensive than elsewhere in Malaysia. This is partially due to its UNESCO-Heritage status and partially due to the high tourism taxes in the area. There is usually a $2.50 fee added to each guest’s stay.

2 Rules You Must Know for Eating in Georgetown

1. Food is not available at all hours. Most Dim Sum is closed Monday & Tuesday. And dinner is served late, so pretty much nowhere is open from the hours of 2:30 PM-6 PM. Learn to eat on a Malaysian schedule quickly.
2. You can’t sit unless you order a drink. This goes for hawker stalls, markets, street food, and many open-air restaurants. This rule is probably why so many Malaysians drink coffee all day long.

Best Places to Eat in Georgetown

The foodie Georgetown guide. Malaysians are passionate about food. They have combined Malay, Chinese, and Indian influences to create a menu of the most diverse and tasty smorgasbord of traditional dishes.

Don’t get distracted by all the flashy cafes and pricey tourist shops. The best food is (as usual) tucked into twisting alleyways & served to you on plastic chairs. There are a few restaurants we found PACKED with locals that made this list as well- for those who fancy a traditional table & chair experience.

• Jetty Hawker Stalls. This is the place to start for Malaysian food. A warehouse filled with 30 or so traditional Malaysian food stalls all serving some of the country’s most iconic dishes.
• Macallum Street Monday Night Market. The best street food market in Georgetown. If you happen to spend a Monday in the city it’s a perfect place to try some jackfruit or coconut pastries, pork dumplings, and a steaming pile of Char Koay Kak.
• Bee Hwa Cafe. Char Kway Teow is the dish to have here. I devoured this plate piled with prawns, fried rice noodles, and chilies. This dish is the heart of Penang.
• Tai Tong Dim Sum. I was most excited about Dim Sum when it came to Malaysian food culture. This unassuming cafeteria-looking restaurant is always packed with locals. Try to get there early before they run out of the best bites. Har Gow, BBQ pork buns, pork dim sum, and Lotus Paste Bao are the favorites.
• Hameediyah. If the street food stalls aren’t doing it for you, pick up some traditional Murtabak- (vegetables and meat layered into a fried dough dipped in curry) or some Tandoori chicken here. This joint has been around since 1907 and is the oldest restaurant in Penang. It’s also seriously busy. Expect to wait in a line out the door most often.
• Tek Sen Restaurant. Traditional Chinese food is at its best here. If this place is open, there’s a line out front. But the double-roasted pork with chili padi and Assam tumis with black pomfret (a bowl of spicy sour soup with fish) are worth the wait.
• New Lane Street Food Stalls. This outdoor street food market was definitely one of my favorites and it happens every single night. Lots of local specialties here.
• Auntie Gaik Lean’s Old School Eatery. We never made it here unfortunately but it comes HIGHLY recommended.
• Mugshot Cafe. I usually avoid western-style food like the plague but this cafe was so good I have to recommend it. Sometimes you just crave a REALLY good bagel and espresso.
• Lagenda House and Cafe. Smaller portions for the price but the place makes up for it in taste. It’s one of the few restaurants where you can get exceptional Malay cuisine as well.

These are also some food traditions you should indulge in.

• Pastries. Cakes and desserts are kind of a big deal here. You’ll find pastry shops of every corner serving Moon Cakes (a traditional Chinese pastry), Wife Cakes, Egg Tarts (the Malaysian staple), and Durian puffs.
• Little India. Curry chicken that falls off the bone, tasty breakfast roti (fried bread often with fruit or egg inside, potato & veggie samosas, murtabak, fresh-pressed star fruit juice, and Masala Chai-piping hot. We ate breakfast in Little India every day and never spent more than $4 dollars between us.
• Coffee. Specifically, White Coffee. Now I know powdered coffee is blasphemous to most coffee lovers but this stuff is tasty. And it was created here in Penang. All coffee in Malaysia is drank very sweet and this is no different. They roast the beans with palm oil margarine and then add condensed milk for a tasty pick-me-up Malaysians drink all day long.
• Street Food. It’s everywhere. Most notable are the wonton soups and various fried noodles and noodle soups.

Other Signature Malaysian Dishes to Try

• Nasi Lemak. Pale-blue tinted coconut rice often served for breakfast with crispy fried anchovies, peanuts, and sambal.
• Ais Kacang. Malaysian shaved ice served with rice jellies, peanuts, rose syrup, red beans, fresh fruit, and sweet corn. Surprisingly tasty and refreshing.
• Cendol. A coconut milk dessert with pandan sugar and bright green rice jellies.
• Hokkien Mie. Prawn and noodle soup. The most popular noodle dish in Penang.
• Curry Mie. A seafood-packed curry soup with noodles and usually some kind of blood sausage.
• Popiah. Like a fresh spring roll.
• Chee Cheong Fun. A rice noodle drizzled in a fishy curry.

Unfortunately for vegans and vegetarians…most everything in Malaysia has pork or seafood. Or a combination of both. I’m not saying it’s impossible but it’s going to be very difficult. Check out Miss Filatelista’s guide to Vegan Georgetown Guide.

Just a lot of Hype? China House Cafe. This “heritage cafe” is on every must-eat in Georgetown blog I could find. It’s a neat little space but unless you’re in the mood for some expensive cake, I wouldn’t recommend going out of your way.

Feeling Daring? Durian is beloved here. It’s grown all over Malaysia & they put it in everything. Pastries, ice cream, they even snack on it plain. If you’ve never smelled this putrid fruit you’re in for a surprise. The strong odor of hot garbage or rancid meat has encouraged most hostels & public transit areas to ban the fruit from being consumed on the premises.

Things to do in Georgetown

Although this is looking a bit more like a “foodie Georgetown guide” I promise there are other things to do in and around the city. Ever since Penang’s tourism boom in 2017, the streets have been loaded with tourists and with it has come the overrated tourist attractions.

But aside from eating your heart out here are some other neat things to do in Georgetown that will give you a real feel for the city.

Marvel at the Street Art & Colonial Architecture

You might be surprised to see this on my list because street art is one of Georgetown’s main tourist attractions. & you’ll see loads of people waiting in line to take photos of the more famous pieces. But the city is covered in designs from artists all over the world & you must spend a day admiring their work.

Maps.me (if you’re a traveler this app is an absolute must) has many of the works of art labeled pretty clearly & my personal favorites were the steel sculptures depicting the history of Georgetown (52 in total) & the art done by Ernest Zacharevic.

As for its colonial history, Georgetown was the first British Settlement in Southeast Asia. The British may be long gone now but many of the traditional colorful colonial-style buildings remain.

Overall, just wandering the streets and admiring the unique contrasts of East & West or traditional & modern is undoubtedly one of the best things to do in Georgetown.

Kek Lok Si Temple

Kek Lok Si is the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia & its unique style of construction, climbable tower, and 30 meter (90 ft) tall stone Guanyin Statue make it worth the visit. We thought we would explore for an hour or so & ended up wandering the grounds for several hours.

Budget Tip: Visiting the temple itself is almost free. There is a small entrance fee to climb up the main tower. To reach the statue of Guanyin they have constructed a cable car that is about $3 to ride up & another $3 to ride down. But you CAN walk. There is a walking route up the back of the compound. As a perk the cable car is air-conditioned but it doesn’t give you a view of the temples around you.

Pay a Visit to Penang National Park

Hop on the city bus & head to Penang’s beachy, jungly national park. The hiking trails are easy– I recommend turtle beach instead of monkey beach to escape the crowds. The hike is very moderate and takes about an hour each way. You’ll pass jungle streams and one of the world’s only meromictic lakes (it means saltwater & freshwater are present & they don’t mix).

The best part is the beach. Normally empty aside from a few monkeys & a turtle sanctuary you can lounge on the rocks & work on your tan. We were even lucky enough to get up close to a group of endangered Dusky Leaf Monkeys.

The turtle sanctuary is small & the beach only houses eggs during a very specific time of year but it’s worth a visit. They usually have a few newly hatched turtles & some rescued turtles recovering from various ailments swimming in the tanks out front. Everything they rescue will be later released once they have recooperated.

Save yourself time & energy and skip the Botanical Gardens & Penang Hill.

If you have all the time in the world and want to do EVERYTHING there is to do around Georgetown–sure, go ahead and give them a go. But otherwise, the gardens are nice for a walk but there is very little actual garden visible. & while Penang Hill offers great views of the city, we preferred the views at Kek Lok Si without all the crowds.

If you do decide to hike Penang Hill, be sure to check out this Penang Hill guide.

Georgetown Guide to Going Out

The typical tourist watering hole is Love Lane. Expensive trashy bars with pushy touts begging you to join the 20-year-olds drinking shitty cocktails. If I’m going to spend $10 on a drink it’s going to be a craft cocktail, not a fishbowl filled with blue curacao.

Drinking in Malaysia is not very popular considering the vast majority of the population is Malay and Muslim. Bars will typically be in areas populated with a lot of Chinese heritage, or in some cases Indian.

No one really knows where ‘Love Lane‘ got its name. Some say it’s where the rich Chinese men of past generations used to house their mistresses, some say it used to be a brothel street for soldiers and sailors. It’s all legend and lore now.

Here are our top picks for a night out in Georgetown.

• Backdoor Bodega. This classy cocktail lounge made the list of Top 100 bars in Asia in 2022. Well worth a splurge if you’re not planning on visiting the other bars in Kuala Lumpur that made this list.
• Betel Nut Cafe. Admittedly, a very casual dive bar. Sitting at the foot of love lane this bar is run by the kindest Thai couple & has all the deals. Beer here was a quarter the price of everywhere else in town. An absolute must for budget travelers.
• Junkbar. Not as budget-friendly as Betel Nut but a super quirky reggae bar worth a stop in on any night out. Try their local Malaysian hard cider by the bottle.

Other Useful Things to Know

Here are a few helpful insights to help you hit the ground running in Georgetown.

• The rainy season does indeed mean lots of rain. From April to October, the island of Penang experiences its rainy season and it will without fail rain every afternoon– no matter how hot & beautiful the morning may look. Lots of hostels have umbrellas you can borrow. Take advantage of it.

• Remember for street food markets & any roadside snacks, you will have to purchase a beverage for the privilege of sitting. It doesn’t matter if you have already purchased food from them–without a drink, you get to stand & eat or pay an additional fee. It’s a very weird custom & we never did find out exactly why but it’s good to be aware of just the same.

That about wraps it up. I highly recommend a visit. Georgetown made us fall in love with Malaysia & ensured we will one day be making a return trip to see what the rest of the country is all about.

Did you know that Sumatra is just a 45-min flight away from Penang? Check out my guide on trekking with wild orangutans in Sumatra to get inspired.

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