The first cultural world heritage site of Malaysia is the historic areas of two port cities in the famous straits of Malacca, Melaka and George Town, in my opinion, these two cities are the true examples of global cities influenced by almost every great maritime country in the history: Malay, Indian, Portuguese, Dutch, Chinese and English. I only visited George Town, the capital city of the State of Penang, in October 2008 as a day trip from Kuala Lumpur by plane. At first glance, Penang Island was very busy island with lots of traffic, high rise buildings which was a typical image of normal large Asian city, but in the historic quarter, the atmosphere was totally different.

The old area of George Town can easily be divided into two parts, the small colonial district and the very large shop houses area that include China town and little India districts. For the colonial area, there are some nice British colonial buildings, but to be honest, these buildings cannot be considered to be outstanding especially if you compared with Singapore's colonial area or other beautiful colonial building of French Hanoi or Thai-adopt colonial style in Bangkok. The real major draw card for George Town is the shop house area; the shop house buildings can be considered a unique style of architecture in Southern China and Southeast Asia with interesting mix of Portuguese and Chinese and using typical European and Malay arts as decorative motif. For me this is not my first time to encounter this mix and match building style, I have seen such buildings in other Asian cities, so to consider George Town as a unique city is totally impossible.

Interestingly that in ICOMOS document, Singapore and Phuket are used for comparative study since they are both important port cities in the Malacca Straits, and from my experience, the shop houses in those cities are much nicer, more colorful and in good shape than the buildings I saw in George Town. The fact that George Town is able to preserve its very large historic area quite intact making George Town to jump out the pages from others in this particular region. However, the old quarter of George Town cannot be regarded as being a nice old city, restoration is urgently required and the traffic and sanitary standard need to be reorganized especially for the road and pavements in China town area. The harmonious of old city is also a big problem, there always have modern building that located in the middle of old shop houses row, I hardly find an area that is pure 100% of old buildings, and you will notice this problem easily when you watch the old city from observation deck of the KOMTAR building.

All in all, George Town is a good example of quite well preserve of bygone colonial era in Asia and need to be visited by all tourists to understand the result of cultural exchange via maritime trade. The real treasure of George Town is not the old town or its history, but it is the unity of different culture and colorful people that make this city a place to remember and do not try to forget tasting the famous Tam Bun Biscuit, a local delicious delicacy, before you say goodbye to George Town.