All About Penang!!

Let me tell you all about Penang! As you probably already know, Penang is an island off the west coast of Peninsular Malaysia. It is located at a Latitude of 5°22'8.37"N and Longitude of 100°15'40.00"E (key in the location on Google Earth to find it).

Penang Island is one of the components of Penang State. Although is the second smallest state in Malaysia, it is also the most densely populated. Penang state comprises Penang Island (293 sq km) and Penang Mainland, or Province Wellesley (760 sq km, nowadays called Seberang Perai in Malay), which is on the mainland of Peninsular Malaysia. Although Seberang Perai is two-and-a-half times bigger than Penang Island in size, its population (54%) is only slightly more than that of the island.

                     

The sea, consisting of the North Channel and the South Channel, separates Penang Island from Seberang Perai. These two halves of Penang are connected by the 8-mile (13.4km) long Penang Bridge, the longest bridge in Malaysia and one of the longest in Asia. Since its completion over twenty years ago, the Penang Bridge has seen traffic volume exceeding capacity, resulting in regular jams and necessitating the planning for the Second Penang Bridge, even longer than the present one. This second bridge will one day connect Batu Maung on the island and Batu Kawan on the mainland.

The name "Penang" itself comes from the colonial (we were under the British until 1957) pronunciation of the original Malay name of the island, Pulau Pinang. Today the locals still call it Penang when speaking in English, though you may find that outside the English-speaking world, the island is often known and appear on maps as "Pinang", (among the Thais, for example) not even "Pulau Pinang". In a similar sense, the island is known in Hokkien as Pi₃Nang₃ Su₃.

The capital of Penang is Georgetown (location: 5°25'8.59"N, 100°20'36.54"E). That's the correct way of writing it, even though the locals often misspell it as Georgetown.