Penang is an island on the east coast of peninsular Malaysia. It's kind of like Phuket: famous beach resort island. But, it has a much more interesting history: it's mostly populated by Chinese, but was a British colony for a long time. It's mix of historic architecture is A-Mazing. I loved it! I also loved spending a full day next to the pool at our hotel. And, the food: the island has attracted people from all over the world and has some of the best indian and middle eastern food.
Malaysia has some really nice examples of sino-portugese shophouses. or, chinese shophouses. or just shophouses. Thailand is full of buildings like these but i haven't seen as many interesting ones as I did in Penang. I took a bunch of photos of the front of these buildings and I want to arrange them into a large poster and print it out and frame it (kind of like those posters of various doors in cities). These shophouses are pretty self-explanatory: shop on the ground floor, owner lives above. They usually have porch-areas in the front and doors can vary from regular-sized to the entire front face.
Another nice shophouse.
You can see why I'd describe it as "Charleston meets China"
