Penang in 3 days

Streets laid out from 1786, with around 1,700 protected buildings, mostly shophouses: a shop downstairs, a home above, narrow fronts and inner courtyards for air.

It began with murals by Lithuanian artist Ernest Zacharevic for the 2012 George Town Festival, including two children on a real bicycle on Armenian Street.

The Blue Mansion, with 38 rooms, five courtyards and 220 windows, built in the late 19th century by one of Southeast Asia's richest merchants.

Stilt villages founded in the late 19th century by Chinese families from Fujian, one clan per jetty, with wooden houses along a walkway.

Around a hundred seafront stalls around shared tables: order from several, sit anywhere, and try char kway teow, assam laksa, rojak and cendol.

An 833-metre ridge where the British came to escape the heat, reached by a steep funicular first opened in 1923 and rebuilt in 2011.

Malaysia's largest Buddhist temple complex, begun in 1891, its seven-tier pagoda Chinese at the base, Thai in the middle and Burmese on top.

One of the world's smallest national parks, with trails to Monkey Beach and the 1883 Muka Head lighthouse, or to Kerachut's meromictic lake.