Exploring the Clan Jetties of George Town, Malaysia: Houses on stilts on the Penang Strait

This video showcases the Clan Jetties in George Town, Penang, Malaysia; specifically, the Lim and Chew clan jetties. These jetties are essentially wooden villages that were largely built Hokkien Chinese-speaking immigrants from Fujian as land was reclaimed along the coast. Rather than streets, houses are joined by wooden boardwalks that run over the water, though you'll still catch brave people trying to ride motorcycles between businesses and homes toward (or away) from the strait.

They're called clan jetties as historically the jetties were inhabited by people who were from the same Chinese clan. Members of the Lim and Chew clans typically worked as boatmen, and you can still see that heritage today in the form of street art and the sorts of businesses that people still run from the jetties themselves.

The jetties are a beneficiary of the city's listing as UNESCO World Heritage site: where once the future of the jetties was in doubt, the city's listing by the UN has prevented redevelopment that would destroy the intangible heritage embodied by the structures.

This walk starts on the Lim jetty and transitions to the Chew jetty at around the halfway point. The latter is more well-developed, but all of them are well worth a visit, and you could very easily spend an afternoon (or more!) exploring the coastal settlements you see here.

Locations featured:
00:00 Intro
00:16 Lim jetty
09:52 Chew jetty
24:38 Outro

Filmed on Panasonic GH5S with a DJI Ronin RS4 Mini stabilizer in May 2025. If you enjoyed this video, please consider supporting the channel by subscribing. Every sub helps, and I do my best to avoid intrusively asking for you to like or comment in the video so you can focus on the content.