In our previous article we showed you how to travel to Penang and where to stay, and in this article we will share our experience about exploring Penang.
A great way to explore Penang is by car. If you are not confident to drive yourself or you just want to sit back and relax, you can hire a private driver. You arrange a price and tell him/her what you would like to see and he/she will get you there. Plus the drivers are mostly locals so they can show you some nice spots! Note that if you want to explore Penang yourself, this is perfectly doable with a rental car as the roads are good and Penang is only a small Island, so you can’t really get lost.
We charted a driver for a day and went for a drive around George Town. We got a great impression of the city, which is an Unesco world heritage site and the driver told us a lot about the history, which was pretty interesting! There is so much to see, historical buildings, colourful houses, street art. We went out at the Wat Chayamankalaram to see the big reclining Buddha and the Darmikharama Burmese temple which is across the road of the Wat Chayamankalaram, which makes it easy to combine those 2. We got told, that the special thing about the Darmikharama Temple is that this temple was the only Burmese Buddhist temple located outside Myanmar. If you walk around you come across some tranquil gardens, colourful statues and a massive big globe with 2 animals above it, which are a combination of a lion, an elephant, horse, dear, and fish. It stands for protecting and guarding the world. Really awesome!
Penang National Park
After our daily intake of Culture it was time for some nature, so our driver took us up to Penang National Park, which is the smallest in Malaysia and one of the smallest in the world. It`s more a huge city park then a Malaysian jungle kinda national park, but definitely worth a visit. There are some trails through the jungle ending at quiet beaches ( if you walk far enough and the trails can be challenging ) We had a walk around and checked out some waterfalls and monkey business.
Penang Butterfly Garden
The driver also took us to a butterfly garden, according to him it was a must see. First we were a bit hesitant but we decided to give it a go and he was right, it was for sure a nice thing to see, lots of colours, different kinds of butterflies and nice surroundings.
We explored this all in 1 long day, but you might decide to do one of the activity’s in the morning and chill out in the afternoon, and spread it over the amount of time you have or want to spent in Penang. We decided to spent more time in Langkawi, Check out our post about Langkawi here
Have you been to Penang and Langkawi? Which one did you like more? Let us know in the comments
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