As gaudy as it gets

The Pinang Peranakan Mansion

The upstairs, above, looking down to the courtyard below:

According to the blurb Peranakan Mansion is one of the most ornate private homes in Penang. It once belonged to Kapitan Chung Keng Kwee, a colourful personality in the C19th. Currently it is a museum showcasing the Peranakan/Baba Nyoyian community.

The rather sedate and neoclassical building in the first picture, if somewhat unusually coloured, gives way to the most vulgar over-the-top glitz of which a Middle Eastern interior designer would be immensely proud. It's so vulgar, it's almost kitch, becoming a caricature of itself.

That notwithstanding, this building is one of many within the World Heritage Site of George Town, Penang, founded in the C18th by the British, as Prince of Wales Island, and subsequently named George Town, (or Georgetown), after King George III.

Architecture in Georgetown includes a mélange of different styles, reflecting the variety of peoples who have settled over the last 200 years: Chinese, Indians, Arabs, local Malays, Achehnese from Indonesia, Siamese, Burmese and Europeans.

This house featured in the current edition of The Amazing Race, for those of you, (like me), who watch this programme.