Penang Ubah Trip – Day 02 Georgetown Streetscape

15/05/2013

Having breakfast in the hotel

After a nice rest, we began our second day in Penang by trying to complete our mission #2 – WALL PAINTING HUNTING!

Apparently there are two types of art pieces available in the heritage zone at Penang now. One is the famous wall paintings or known as murals by the young Ernest Zacharevic. Thanks to his creative masterpieces, the old antique streets of Georgetown have never feel so lively! There are about 8 pieces of murals created during the Georgetown Festival 2012 consisted of Boat, Kids on Bicycle, Old Motorcycle, Boy on Chair, Old Man, Broken Heart, Kungfu Girl and Trishaw Man. Among these 8, the one that draw most fanatic crowd is none other than Kids on Bicycle! The expression of the two little kids are so vivid and cheerful that it make sense to me now that how much attention it had stirred from tourists, even the local Peningites, to queue up just to pose with the painting!

Frankly speaking, it is not easy to spot all these 8 paintings at all even though I have a map from the Penang Tourism Board because there are no landmarks marked on the map and even the friendly Peningites directed us, we still couldn’t find it! We were told that Kungfu Girl located right at the street behind our hotel but we just couldn’t find it! From 9a.m till 11.30a.m, we decided to head back to hotel and took a rest before hunting them again. Of course, in the end we figure out that we were directed wrongly! From Banana Boutique Hotel, instead of turning to right as informed, turning to the left is the easiest and quickest way to find it!

Everybody watch KungFu fighting…HIAK! HIAK! Took us 3 days to find her. She should change her name to Ninja Girl..phew~

Super happy when I manage to find them

Vroom~ vroom~

Boy: WHY ARE YOU TOUCHING MY BUTT?

I only manage to trace 4 of them. Lol…..

Joining the murals in the streetscape of Georgetown is the other type of art pieces known as the welded iron wall caricatures. Mixture of humour and historical values, these iconic metal sculptures have symbolised the lifestyles of Peningites back in the olden days. The state government had planned to install approximately 54 pieces of these metal arts around Georgetown but up to now, only 30 of them are placed randomly on the streets. I really love how creative they blended the history of Malaysia into the historical old streets through these hilarious solid wall sculptures. I am really amazed and fascinated!  Now these sculptures not just only serve as a hotspot for the tourists, or even locals, to pose and snap funny pictures but most important of all, it also preserved the nearly forgotten memories of the citizens there.

First sculpture found near Jalan Sg. Ujong. The shop owner of this building belonged to a pair of middle aged couple who sold baby stuffs. We had bought a cute rattan chair for baby Danish here and the lady was so nice enough to show me what’s installed on her shop’s wall. Been walking and searching under the hot sun for 2 hours by then.

This sculpture was placed right opposite of the one found at Jln Sg. Ujong.

Me with the cute rattan chair for baby Danish. This is a new sculpture and you can’t find its description on the official brochure. It is placed on a wall of a cafe and there were plenty visitors eating and drinking while I was there jumping and screaming: I FOUND ANOTHER ONE! lol..

I can lift the tiger too!

This one is really cute~

hint; It is located on a wall opposite to fire station

Snapshot from the car

Jimmy Choo!

A chak!

Dear and I found lots of these metal sculptures but owing that we are driving and there are cars behind us, we are not able to capture all of them into the camera. Overall, if you are very interested in looking for these sculptures or even the wall painting, you can either get their locations through Google or simply request a piece of map from your hotel. The state government had printed a map to mark their locations but as they are adding more new pieces, the map is not up to date yet. But all of them are centralized around the heritage zone, it is very easy to spot them! Good luck in streetscape hunting~