Old George Town: wharves, Armenian street and street-art
From the book "Penang Island. Island which is palm's namesake", episode 4.
13 Jan 2017
The 101 bus from Batu Ferringhi beach does to the city piers. There are three of them here at least and perched pile constructions around each, Chinese live in them, and almost every house is a small shop, mainly gift-shop, and rarely snackbars. Local people around too busy with their own affairs and don't care about many tourists who constantly hustling under the windows - children play, elders fix their bikes or fishing nets, work in the shops.. And there are drawings on the walls of buildings - contemporary urban street-art. However, we didn't see all that were mentioned in the guidebooks, but we are not particularly looking for all, we just took some pictures by the way.
There are many places in the old quarters of George Town where you can find street-art. It looks like a children's game: tourists with cameras running around with maps in hands (which almost at every corner for free with marked all the pictures on), looking for another piece of art... Most of them are concentrated in the area of Armenian street, it is two blocks walk along the coast to the South from the bus terminal. Here, perhaps in times of persecution in Turkey, Armenians settled, the first hotel was built by Sarkisian brothers. Then they gone out – gone but the name remains.
They write that first street-art picture was painted by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zakharevich. Other artists come after him.. People liked it up, and so on :). The City authorities liked up the idea like an opportunity to attract more tourists! In addition to the graffiti, there are metal wall sculptures appeared here..
There is an encrypted story of urban life in every picture or metal installation, and people fascinated by the unraveling of the story and meaning behind each one – please, surf the Internet, there is a lot of relative information there.
On narrow streets pedestrians dodge cars and motorcycles, there is so hot here and you are thirsty and you would like to hide in a shadow. A lot of decorated trishaw that will offer you their tour guide services on wheels for just 40 ringgits per hour and they try to drive you around the whole Chinatown to kill time... Everyone wants to make money! :) But that way you haven't to look for art at random – nothing less than bonus :)
The buildings around were built in nineteenth century or even older, living history, modern buildings are rare. And there are many small restaurants here and you can taste the most various food. Local Chinese cuisine is dominate, but they offer also Singapore, Hong Kong, Thai and Malay dishes.. All are delicious and very spicy, and you will remember for long a snack eaten here :)
Мы тут много наснимали, больше вы увидите в нашем фильме. Надеемся, он даст первое представление об этом богатом историей городе торговцев и мореходов. We have taken a lot photos here, you will see more in our movie. We hope it will give you the first glimpse of this historic city of traders and sailors.
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