Where to Go in 2026: Malaysia’s Most Overlooked Island Is a Feast for Every Sense

It’s a shiny new year, so this month on Unpacked, we’re diving into Afar’s ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Where to Go list⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. In 2026, we want to lessen the burden on overtouristed destinations and expand visitation to other parts of the world. So our editors carefully selected 24 emerging regions and overlooked locales that will inspire your next great adventure.

Places like Penang, Malaysia, a small island with one of Southeast Asia’s most fascinating and underrated food and cultural scenes.

In this episode, host Aislyn Greene talks with Kathryn Romeyn, a Bali-based journalist who explored Penang for the first time last year. Kathryn shares what it’s like to wander the UNESCO-listed streets of Georgetown. She digs into the food—from char kway teow to laksa to the elaborate Malaysian breakfast culture that UNESCO recently recognized—and shares what’s new on the island, including boutique hotels and a weekend art market that’s become a creative hub for locals and travelers alike.

Transcript

Aislyn Greene: I’m Aislyn Greene and this is Unpacked, the podcast that unpacks the world’s most interesting destinations and the deeper stories behind travel. Happy New Year, everyone, and welcome back. I, for one, am still wearing my holiday slippers even as I record this, but I’m also looking ahead to where I want to travel in 2026. So this month we’re wrapping up our exploration of Afar’s annual Where to Go list.

If you’ve been listening, you’ve heard all about it. And this year is a little different because in 2026, we want to lessen the burden of overtouristed destinations and help expand visitation to other parts of the world. We released our full list of 24 Emerging Regions and Overlooked Cities in December, as well as 8 Unpacked episodes featuring the writers who traveled to and shared our favorite new places.

In this first month of the new year, already a dizzying and newsworthy time, we have 7 final episodes for you, and today I’m talking with journalist Kathryn Romeyn. Kathryn is based in Bali, where she has built two homes and now lives with her husband and two daughters, who are also her frequent travel companions. And that location makes it pretty easy for her to travel throughout Southeast Asia. But until last year, she’d never spent time on the Malaysian island of Penang, a place I fell in love with many years ago. So today, Kathryn shares what brought her to the island, the ways she explored its diverse and intriguing food and cultural scene, and what is on the horizon for 2026.

Kathryn, welcome to Unpacked. It’s so nice to meet you.

Kathryn Romeyn: Thank you so much. It’s great to see your face.

Aislyn: Yes, absolutely. Can you tell me a little bit about where you are now? Because you are, you know, a traveler and you live in a different part of the world.

Kathryn: So, yes, I’m at home in Bali, Indonesia. And so there could be chickens or motorbikes or things running around outside.

Aislyn: And how long have you lived in Bali?

Kathryn: Full time for about three and a half years. Um, but I built our house here back in 2018, So I’ve been in Southeast Asia for a while.

Aislyn: Okay. And you built a house.

Kathryn: Yeah, it’s a journey.

Aislyn: Yes. Uh, well, we’re here today to talk about a different part of Asia, Penang, Malaysia, where I spent some time back in 2019. I loved it. I really would love to go back. So I’m curious to know what brought you there in the first place and why did you pitch it for Where to Go 2026?

Kathryn: Well, being in Southeast Asia and so close to Malaysia, I had been told by a few fellow travel writers over the years about Penang, which also people around here say Penang. But in Penang they say Penang as maybe you remember, which one should I say? Um, and so I was really kind of, you know, I would hear about this amazing food scene. I would hear about it being this interesting island in Malaysia. I had only been to Kuala Lumpur and it sounded intriguing.

And then there was a new hotel coming on the radar, which still hasn’t opened quite yet, but that kind of got me reinvigorated to look into actually going there and checking it out. And I started seeing there were more hotels opening, some new restaurant things happening, and it just sounded really fascinating. Once I got a bit into the culture of it being so multicultural, so cosmopolitan, so it seemed like a perfect place, since I think most Americans don’t really have Malaysia on their radar so much. And maybe if they do, it’s Langkawi or an island destination that’s more tropical beach driven. So this just seemed really fascinating from a cultural standpoint.

Aislyn: It surprises me still after all these years that Malaysia isn’t a bigger destination, at least for Western travelers. You mentioned the multicultural aspect of Penang. Can you tell me a little bit more about that, about the history? What are the factors that went into making this place so incredible? Because it’s not that big, right?

Kathryn: It’s about the size of Lanai, which is interesting to think about because it’s very small. But Penang is on the Straits of Malacca, which is an ancient trading route, part of the Silk Road, and has historically had centuries and centuries of trade with different countries. So there’s Arabic influences. There are many Chinese who have come actually, currently, more than half of the population is Chinese, ethnically in Penang. And there are people from Armenia, there are people from Thailand, there are people from Burma, there are people from the UK. Because then the British, British East India Company came in the late 18th century and it became, they sort of set that up as a free trading port. Um, and it got even more multi-ethnic. Lots of Indians came. People were coming from all over the world, really, and staying there and kind of setting up homes, intermarrying, um, the Peranakan culture are the Chinese who emigrated or migrated there, who married into indigenous Malay families and has become a whole new kind of culture. That’s really interesting there.

And so the other part of it that’s fascinating, I think, is that not only did all these cultures come and make this their home, but they happily and harmoniously live together, respecting each other’s cultures, retaining them, not losing their backgrounds, but like celebrating them still very actively in a very supportive, safe, tolerant, open minded environment.

Aislyn: It’s funny how the more diversity there is, the more people tend to respect one another.

Kathryn: Yeah. And, you know, it’s just like this is a great sort of model for how it could be in other places like back home.

Aislyn: Well, and George Town in particular is quite unique because it tends to be where I think travelers, you know, if they do go, they spend a lot of their time there. And so I’m curious if what your experience was like there, because I remember just being kind of, I don’t know, like I would stop in my tracks to look at these buildings and the colors and smell the smells, and it’s also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Kathryn: Yeah, it’s very multi-sensory. You know, as you said, there’s like lots of smells because there’s food being cooked everywhere of all different types. There are Chinese medicine shops, there’s incense burning all over because there are, you know, temples or various houses of worship.

There are all the people, you know, every different skin color, every different style of dress, every different religion you can see walking around. Just kind of it’s a full sensory experience, just standing on the street and watching, and music and you know, it’s so captivating and you really don’t have to go anywhere.

You can almost just sort of park yourself on Armenian Street or one of the other little roads and just kind of like, watch it all go by and be taking it all in. There’s trishaws going by, which are like bicycle rickshaws. Some of them are kind of decorated by their drivers with like fake flowers. And there’s a little bit of like a Wes Anderson vibe. I feel like with some of the colors and some of the, visuals. And it’s so interesting to have this colonial architecture mixed in with like a Chinese Taoist temple that’s so colorful and ornate and carved and gilded and so gorgeous. Uh, so just a feast for the senses.

Aislyn: I remember we rented this little Airbnb, and it felt like one of those places where you could spend an entire week just exploring a couple of blocks. You know, there was such richness there. Um, and then there, of course, there’s the food, which, you know, is as diverse and kind of fascinating as the people who create it. Can you tell me a little bit more about some of your favorite things? I have very fond memories of a bowl of laksa on a very rainy day.

Kathryn: Um, yeah. The laksa is so good. And actually it was so fun. Oh. We stayed at this new hotel, the Millen, which is an autograph collection hotel on Millionaire’s Row, and they even gave us, like, laksa cookies.

Aislyn: Oh, interesting.

Kathryn: There were these, like, delicious Savory. Really, you know, it was. It was like all of the spices from laksa put into a little cookie. It was so fascinating because I love the flavors of laksa. It was interesting to try it and like a slightly sweet thing.

The food is so fun because, you know, there’s everything from like Michelin star, very fine dining restaurants to all the hawker stalls and the street stalls and the thing that everyone kept saying that we had to try, which we did try and that was absolutely delicious, was the Char Kway Teow. It’s like these flat rice noodles that are kind of like stir fried over charcoal flames with prawns and cockles and sausage and bean sprouts and eaten any time of day.

And I think that’s the other thing that’s so fun. One of the things that I love also about kind of Southeast Asia generally is like breakfast is not pancakes and omelets. It’s like the food you would eat at dinner too, or lunch. And it’s savory and really richly, deeply flavored.

We went to a restaurant, which is like the women, Peranakan women, I guess, called Mum’s, which is kind of this beloved, really home cooking kind of restaurant. And they just sort of brought us out like a dozen different little dishes, all in little bowls, and, you know, you eat it with rice. And we had this super tender, amazing beef rendang. And being in Indonesia, there’s beef rendang here, but it’s slightly different flavors there. It was so spiced and amazing. And like all of the food, just feels almost like heartwarming in a way. It kind of warms you from the inside out. There’s heat to it. There’s crunch.

I remember this really delicious rice that also at that restaurant Mum’s we ate that, the owner, she kind of was like, I don’t know if you’ll like this. It’s all the raw vegetables. It’s really green. It’s almost like the rice is almost green color, because it’s got all these things chopped up in it and had wing beans and chilies and shallots, and it was like crunchy and delicious and just so textured. And we love it.

There’s just a lot of surprising things you wouldn’t really expect to see. You know, like these little kind of pastry cups that look like chef’s hats upside down, filled with, like, sauteed jicama. And, you know, I’ve never had jicama cooked. Usually you eat it raw. Things like that. That’ll have them French beans with it. And then the tiny dried shrimps and chili paste. There’s just really interesting, intriguing foods I had some amazing chicken that was super crispy, with like, a soy ginger sauce that I could have eaten with a spoon if I had the opportunity.

Aislyn: Did you bring any spices or foodstuffs home with you? Do you do that when you travel?

Kathryn: I don’t because I don’t cook so much. I sometimes bring my husband. He’s the cook, so I sometimes bring him back things, but more so I bring him back incense and I got him some great nutmeg incense. Since nutmeg is kind of this Penang thing.

Aislyn: Oh, interesting. Yeah.

Kathryn: I didn’t know before going that you have more than just the ground spice nutmeg, I associate it with Christmas and holidays and, you know, winter and apple cider or something. But nutmeg is a really big ingredient there. They use the fruit. They drink nutmeg juice, which is delicious. They make nutmeg slushes. They’ll use the oil for massages. They pickle the fruit. It’s really good.

Aislyn: Incredible.

Kathryn: So nutmeg was a whole revelation there for me. Durian was one I did not enjoy, but I tried it still because they, you know, they say it’s the king of all fruits. Very proud of their durian there.

Aislyn: You got to try it.

Kathryn: And then it stays with you.

Aislyn: That also has stayed with me. I like the ice cream. We had the durian ice cream and I thought that was quite good for me. That was like, I think maybe the, the, I don’t know, the light way in. I don’t know if it’s considered cheating. Yes, exactly. I’m like, okay, I can handle that. Maybe I’ll work my way up. Back to the fruit.

Kathryn: Right.

Aislyn: Well, you had mentioned breakfast, and in your story you mentioned that in 2024, UNESCO added Malaysia’s breakfast culture as an intangible cultural heritage. So I’m curious to know what that means and how you would describe that breakfast culture.

Kathryn: Someone told me maybe it was one of our guides that people don’t cook a lot there and at home, actually. And so the culture really is about going out, perusing, wandering, going to your favorite stalls for things, whether it’s breakfast or dinner.

And I think breakfast in Malaysia has very ritualistic types of foods and drinks that are, you know, enjoyed. Nasi lemak is one of the main breakfast items, which is like a coconut milk rice. And at our hotel it was turned blue because they used butterfly pea flower as well. So was this really striking like electric blue color rice. And then it has, you know, like fried anchovies and spicy sambal and hard boiled egg and cucumber, maybe some peanuts.

And, you know, it’s really so far away from a Western breakfast, but all these different elements come together in just such exciting ways in your mouth. I feel like, you know, it’s savory and sweet and spicy and crunchy and soft and there’s refreshing stuff. And then you, you know, there’s cucumber to take the spice away, kind of.

And the tea, which they call teh tarik is something I loved. I don’t know if you tried that when you were there and the way they like pour it reminded me of Morocco where they, you know, they go really high to pour the tea from really high to make it, like frothy a bit. It’s like a roasted sort of black tea with condensed milk and sugar. So it’s super sweet, super milky. That’s sort of like the dessert. You’re like, this is the pancakes. Um, in tea form. Or I also really liked this, uh, Kopi C, which is roasted coffee with a really nice, kind of, like, roasty flavor, um, that they that’s with evaporated milk. I don’t do black coffee.

So those things really appeal to me because I was like, you know, it’s sweet and creamy and, you know, the Indian influence comes in and this kind of like fluffy roti. That is another option for breakfast that’s fried. And you have that with curry. And then there’s, you know, Kaya toast which people get in Singapore too, just like a coconut jam that you put on bread. And here it’s usually served with like soft boiled eggs or half boiled eggs with like soy sauce and pepper. There’s just so many, it pulls in different cultures but makes it its own, which is so interesting about the Malaysian breakfast.

Aislyn: You also, I don’t know if this was in the story, but you mentioned a weekend market that you visited and you spent some time with the founder, and it sounded like such a neat mix of kind of art, food, culture.

Kathryn: Yes. Um, Hin Bus Depot is this really amazing art gallery that has sort of morphed. It opened in 2014, and it’s in a 1940s Art Deco kind of bus depot. That was the bus depot where all of their kind of official buses started moving from back in the 40s, 50s. Eventually it fell into disrepair, was derelict, and a local businessman ended up buying it and kind of trying to see what he could do with it.

And then this Lithuanian artist, who now is based in Penang and has done the most, I would say, iconic street art in George Town. There’s this mural he did on a building that is constantly filled with people waiting in line to take pictures with it. It’s of children on a bicycle. So he, at the time in 2014, was looking for a place to do his first kind of solo show. So the owner was like, okay, well, I have this space. Why don’t you try to do it here? And this took off. And basically he rolled that into more art exhibits, more local artists. And in a way, it has kind of sparked the artistic side and artistic scene in Penang, by getting more young people interested in art and making art and going to art school, because now there have become more places to show it and it’s more kind of respected.

And then a couple of years ago, during Covid or right before Covid, they started doing this marketplace on the weekends. And it started really small, just a few kind of stalls, people selling things that they made. And then people started getting a bit emboldened by saying, oh, my friend is selling this thing that they made. Maybe I have something that I can actually do that would be worth people buying or that I could sell. And now there are hundreds of stalls. There’s everything from like people live painting what they call ridiculous portraits, like very funny, absurd ones to you can buy vintage film cameras. There’s tarot card readings, there are tiny crocheted characters, crocheted flowers. You can buy incense, handmade soaps, Malaysian knives. I mean, there’s just this wonderful array, and the people selling and making things are range from like 20 years old up to about 80 years old. And it’s on the weekends.

There’s a thrift market too, so you can buy used clothes. There are places to buy food. Everything from like Japanese tapas to oysters and beer to kombucha. Really elaborate coffees being made out of a pop up van. And then there’s live music too. And it feels. I don’t know if you’ve been to Cape Town, but in Woodstock, the neighborhood’s market has this similar kind of vibe. It’s just like everyone, it feels like everyone from Penang is there right now. You know, the tourists too. Um, but there’s so much to see and taste and experience and look at ceramics, textiles and it’s so exciting. I could have spent all day there. And he’s just really, I think, inspiring in the way he has helped develop the art scene and creative scene in Penang and kind of empowered people to be part of it, who were a little bit shy or a little bit nervous about whether they had something to contribute.

Aislyn: Yeah, that’s so interesting. I wonder if they found that it’s also been a way to keep like, younger people there?

Kathryn: Yeah, I think so too. I think there’s students enrolling in art school there, and I think it’s giving opportunities to young people in Penang.

Aislyn: What’s the founder’s name?

Kathryn: Shih Thoe. Yeah. Such a great sense of community there. And it feels very friendly. People are really just enjoying themselves and, like, expressing themselves and having fun.

Aislyn: I love it. Well, I would like to close with your advice for anyone who’s planning a trip in the future. I know you mentioned that there’s this hotel news on the horizon. I think you’re planning a trip back there. So what do you wish you’d known, perhaps before you visited for the first time?

Kathryn: I don’t think I would have not gone, but it was very, very hot. Ah, yes.

Aislyn: Because when were you there?

Kathryn: I was there in late September, which is kind of right in the middle of the most rainy, humid, thickly hot time. And we were doing, you know, we were walking around a lot outside and through the clan jetties and just sweating, sweating, sweating. So I would not recommend going in September, October if you can avoid it, unless you like oppressive heat.

Aislyn: Yes.

Kathryn: But I still loved it. But you know, you can tell how much I loved it, that I’m, you know, would still go back. I would say November to March, November to February-March is really ideal. It’s a lot cooler, less humidity, more pleasant temperatures, and probably try, unless you really want to be all right in the middle of it, avoid Chinese New Year as it’s just really busy there.

But there are also lots of really cool festivals that happen throughout the year there. There’s a literary festival, there’s Chinese Lantern Festival, there’s Indian New Year, there’s this hungry ghost festival, there’s a marathon. There are just tons and tons of happenings all the time. So finding time to intersect with one of those festivals would be, I think, really fun to experience.

And there has been a kind of influx of hotels opening in Penang lately, and the hotel I stayed in September was stunning. Really gorgeous. Called the Millen and they have this amazing pool that is a lap pool that looks out over the water with one clear side. It’s just this like epic perch from which to appreciate some of the old Chinese mansions down below. See the water the Soori Penang is a new boutique hotel coming in January that I’m going to return to visit and write about for Afar. It’s a 15-room boutique hotel that is in very, very carefully, meticulously restored shophouses in the Khoo Kongsi, which is, I would say, the most grand kind of prominent of the clan houses, which is a thing in Penang, that’s also really interesting.

In former times with lots of Chinese migrants, they would set up these clan houses that are like the kind of first point of arrival for immigrants of the same family. So if you share this family name, Khoo, then you come to the kongsi first. And this is where you kind of live. Get your feet under, you get the lay of the land, start working in this family business, and then you can kind of eventually move out and more people will come in.

So these are collections of shophouses with a Chinese Taoist temple, usually at the heart of it in the Unesco site. So this hotel is going to be right in the middle of George Town, right in the heart of it. And an architect is the owner who did the renovation, and he’s actually born in Penang, based in Singapore now. But he did the renovation with a lot of kind of memories of how he felt living in these spaces, living in the shophouses, the light, the water and different elements and kind of wanting to bring that back to life.

Aislyn: It sounds like he’s really honoring the past and taking it into the future and introducing new people to it. Would you recommend that people base themselves in George Town, do you think?

Kathryn: Yeah, I think it depends on your style of travel. If you really like to be able to just walk out your door and be in the middle of things of the action? Then yes, probably in the middle of George Town would be great.

I did enjoy being in our location, which is on what they call Millionaire’s Row. It’s a very short couple minute drive to Georgetown, but I love to see the water from our room and you can take Grab, which is like Uber there. Grab taxis are readily available. Very cheap way to get around. You can go up, you know, to go up the funicular. The island is like it’s not so small that it takes 5 minutes to get everywhere, but it’s not huge. But I think it was about a 30 minute drive to go to this incredible temple I fell in love with called Kek Lok Si. See, they have this pagoda of 10,000 Buddhas. And each sort of level of it is a different style of architecture. One is Chinese, one is Thai, one is Burmese, and it’s spectacular.

So it’s worth kind of making your way around the island, but you can very easily do that either with a tour guide if you have one or driver, or by taking a Grab taxi around to go see some of the beaches. Get up into some of the hills. Maybe hike.

Aislyn: Yeah, absolutely. And that’s a great tip about using or downloading the Grab app. Is there anything else that you think that people should know in terms of etiquette, currency, any of those kind of very practical traveler tips?

Kathryn: The currency is really easy to use. It’s the Ringgit. And I feel like it was like 4 Ringgit to a dollar. So it was pretty easy to do the math on that because it is so cosmopolitan. It’s not like there are any strict dress codes to adhere to. People really wear, you know, you see every different type of dress.

Always nice to be respectful. Of course, if you’re going into temples and things like that, you do want to cover your knees. And yeah, the language is also an interesting kind of aspect of it since it is so multicultural. Most people speak English, I would say on a general sort of, you know, in a store or restaurant, Chinese is widely used as well, as is Malay. And then there’s a billion other languages. It feels like being spoken. But me living in Indonesia, a lot of the language is the same as Malay, so I can kind of use some of my Bahasa Indonesia, which is similar to Bahasa Malaysia. But I said thank you, terima kasih, which is what I would have assumed was the way to say thank you in Malay. But actually in Penang most people xièxiè, which is Mandarin.

So you can use a lot of different languages and people will happily talk to you in whatever, you know, whether it’s Mandarin, Malay, English. I’m sure you could also speak some other languages there and be just fine. There’s a big Indian presence too, so.

Aislyn: All right, well, Kathryn, is there anything else that you, we haven’t covered that you want to share with listeners?

Kathryn: I didn’t do it personally, but the hiking is a really cool thing. I think that I mentioned in the story, Penang Hill is a really famous high peak on the island, with the oldest funicular in Southeast Asia that opened in 1923. It’s currently being renovated, and there’s a really active hiking scene that I also learned, has a great kind of voluntourism aspect to it, where there’s a Facebook group called Hiking Trails in Penang that has like almost 50,000 members and people are constantly posting about like, wildlife they’ve spotted on their hikes. We’re going to start a women’s group hiking. I’m coming to Penang. Who wants to hike with me? It’s really, really open. Check out the Facebook page because you might find people to hike with, and you would find some really cool trails that people are into creating that are in the shape of animals. So there’s yeah, there’s um, there’s an elephant trail. There’s a mermaid trail.

Aislyn: I mean, you would only see this from like, Google Maps or like a GPS system, right? Like, that’s amazing.

Kathryn: Yes. So they, like, map it out on GPS, they map out with the coordinates, and people are so into it. I was just looking at the Facebook page. There’s a Pokemon character apparently called like Charizard or something, and they made a trail in that shape. It’s really kind of funny. There’s a unicorn trail. So if you’re into interesting hiking, I mean, it’s also super scenic because you’re surrounded by water. The hills are this kind of like thing that going down the middle of the island. And so I think when I’m not with my 20 month old daughter, I will definitely be going on a hike. I don’t know which animal I’ll go for yet, but they sound really cool. And you might run into like tortoises or people who are just using their own personal saw from home to like, clear the path if a tree fell or something. So it’s a nice kind of another aspect of just how warm and welcoming and open the kind of culture and community are there.

Aislyn: All right. Well, Kathryn, thank you so much for your time.

Kathryn: Thank you.

Aislyn: We’ll talk to you soon. Thank you so much for joining this special Where to Go episode. In the show notes, we’ve included links to all the places that Kathryn recommended, as well as to her website and social handles. We’ve also included links to all past Where to Go episodes. So happy listening! Happy planning and happy travels. We’ll see you in the next episode.