Penang Weekend Trip: Street Art Hunting at Georgetown
Everytime there is someone that I know (or follow after Instagram was invented), that particular someone always post picture of the famous street art in Penang. Since this kind of art seems to be something unique and can only be found in Penang (well, I did not see any in Malacca so yeah maybe it's really unique to Penang), my travel buddy was so inspired to find all the popular wall mural. But we did not have time to research where are the location of these wall mural so with our guts feeling, we made our way to the area near to our destination, China House.
And right on the way to China House, we passed through a street called Lebuh Armenian (note: lebuh means road). If you don't know where to find these wall murals, you should start your search from this street because this long stretch of road is filled with many wall murals. Some of these wall murals are very funny to see.
If you are using Google Map, this area should be shown as Georgetown World Heritage Site. Otherwise, you can go search for Armenian Street. The wall mural can be informative as well other than funny. There was a Tua Pek Kong procession at the nearby temple for tourists to watch. It was quite fun to watch really and if you like to enjoy cultural ceremony, you should really make your way to the temple located near to this area. More on that later.
Other than the street art, what else can we do around Lebuh Armenian? Turns out this stretch of road is also filled with shophouses. The Penang's version of shophouses look slightly different from Singapore's shophouses at let's say Telok Ayer Street but they are pretty interesting to check out. You can buy all kind of souvenirs from t-shirt (I Love Penang t-shirt, anyone?), keychains, fans, postcards (the postcards are cool), umbrella, etc.
This souvenir store/ bicycle rental store seems to be quite popular with the tourists. We came in for a while and it is interesting to see a lot of vintage stuff which were probably created during our parents' time. I don't really fancy cycling because I love walking so much so I did not really check how much does it cost to rent the bicycle. There's a free alternative of using LinkBike too (see my first post above?). You can just download the application and then sign up for it. Scan the barcode provided by the apps to unlock the bike and ride the bike for free for 30 minutes. There's a RM 1 charge per hour after that 30 minutes. You can just return the bike anywhere where the dock is available.
Cycling seems to be a very popular way of commuting amongst the local and the tourists. They even have street art with a bicycle as the prop. This wall mural is located at the most crowded area of Lebuh Armenian so if you want to take picture with these kids on the wall, you have to wait patiently for your turn during busy time.
While we were passing the vintage souvenir store/ bike rental earlier, there were many bikes not rented yet so we did not really pay attention to the locker behind the bikes. Turns out there is one mural painted on the locker, so interesting. My travel buddy was pretty happy with her so far photo collection of the wall murals in Penang.
