September 2020 - Penang Monthly

Surveying the Lower Slopes of Penang Hill

6 min read

AFTER THREE MONTHS of the many MCO phases, Penang Chief Minister Chow Kon Yeow finally announced that recreational parks and hiking spots were to be reopened on...

ESCAPE – Making Tourism Sustainable by Maintaining High Standards

4 min read

TUCKED DEEP IN Teluk Bahang is the kampung-concept theme park ESCAPE, the brainchild of chief ESCAPE officer Sim Choo Kheng. Inspired by his childhood adventure...

Helping George Town Businesses Go Digital

3 min read

A LIFESTYLE SWITCH can be difficult, which is why the “George Town in the New Normal” project was introduced. To cope with the economic toll brought...

Esther Ping Dominic

Penang’s Tourism Players Needing All the Resourcefulness They Can Muster

4 min read

“PIVOT” is a fashionable term in tourism these days. It suggests a need for recalibration as local players scramble to appeal to a different market...

Hungry Ghost Celebrations Hugely Downsized

4 min read

THE SEVENTH MONTH of the Lunar calendar is often referred to as the month of the “Hungry Ghost”. Believers hold rituals and ceremonies to pay respec...

Pan Yi Chieh

Don’t Miss Them! Art Exhibitions are Back

6 min read

READY BUT POSTPONED Or Cancelled.A litany of woes of short-circuited, still-born and miscarried exhibitions brought about by the protracted Coronavirus pandem...

Flying into Malaysia during the Pandemic

5 min read

FLYING DURING COVID-19 can be an intimidating affair. The overall experience is fraught with uncertainties: what are the odds of catching the virus inflight? Ca...

Enzo Sim

Are Our Trishaws Doomed?

3 min read

THE END OF World War II introduced trishaws to Penang, and between the late 1960s and the early 1970s, more than 2,500 of these vehicles plied the streets of Ge...

Suffering the MCO in the Services Sector

5 min read

PENANG’S SERVICES SECTOR is a shadow of its former self. On top of an already flailing entertainment industry and a row of F&B outlets biting the dust...

Nursyazana Khidir Neoh

Tourism in Numbers

3 min read

MALAYSIA’S TOP VISITING country is Singapore, followed by Indonesia, China and Thailand. In 2019 Malaysia received more than 10 million tourists from the...

Tourism Development is Now Everyone’s Business – and Responsibility

8 min read

COVID-19 HAS TURNED the tourism industry on its head. The concept Responsible Tourism previously only focused on people mitigating negative economic, environmen...

Pan Yi Chieh

Upgrading Penang’s Shopping Possibilities

5 min read

THE SHOPPING MALLS Gurney Plaza and Gurney Paragon along the popular Gurney Drive seafront promenade form the backbone of Penang’s luxury tourism. They ca...