Villages on Penang Island

There are villages all around Penang Island that existed long before the sprawl of George Town brought urban development. Some of these villages have long been absorbed into George Town, continuing as streets rather than proper villages, even though the names remain. Villages such as Kampung Malabar and Kampung Deli have all disappeared, though the places still retain their names.

In Penang context, a village does not conjure the picture of wooden houses on stilts, with chicken running around the compound. Though this may be true on the few rural corners of the island, more often than not, what you have may be an urban village, with a busy street, and perhaps traditional shophouses on both sides, with five foot ways.

Further away from George Town, we can still find proper villages, particularly on the west coast of Penang Island. But even there, urban development has descended - and often rather unceremoniously. As a result, many traditional villages are uprooted to make way for housing estates. Occasionally, you will find modern houses standing side-by-side to rural houses, depending on the boundary of the housing project. The villages of Batu Maung and Kampung Buah Pala existed until just a few years ago, but have today been transformed into housing development.

On the other hand, within the city itself, there are pockets of rural settlements that continue to exist despite successive urban development swirling around them. There are still some Malay and Chinese villages in places such as Jelutong, Perak Road and Dato Kramat where time seems to have stood still. Many Malay villages survive intact because they occupy Malay reserve land that cannot be redeveloped. Along the waterfront, the clan jetties can also be considered villages, albeit waterborne ones.

On this page I list out the villages on Penang Island, particularly those whose name has the word "kampung" to it. For other places, check also the listing on Localities on Penang Island.

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About this website

Dear visitor, thank you so much for reading this page. My name is Timothy Tye and my hobby is to find out about places, write about them and share the information with you on this website. I have been writing this site since 5 January 2003. Originally (from 2003 until 2009, the site was called AsiaExplorers. I changed the name to Penang Travel Tips in 2009, even though I describe more than just Penang but everywhere I go (I often need to tell people that "Penang Travel Tips" is not just information about Penang, but information written in Penang), especially places in Malaysia and Singapore, and in all the years since 2003, I have described over 20,000 places.

While I try my best to provide you information as accurate as I can get it to be, I do apologize for any errors and for outdated information which I am unaware. Nevertheless, I hope that what I have described here will be useful to you.