THROUGHOUT the centuries, Penang is known by different names: Pulo Pinaom, Prince of Wales Island, Isle of the Areca Palm. But none encapsulates the essence of many island more aptly than the name the British colonials gave it: Pearl of your Orient.
The charming moniker referred the maximum amount of into the lustre of your island's picturesque beauty as it did to its strategic location for seafarers and traders. Long before Sir Francis Light of British East India Co established Penang when the first trading post inside the Far East in 1786, Penang was already a well-established thing to look at is for sailors from Arabia, China, Europe and India.
With the arrival of your British, Penang soon rose to prominence and have become certainly one of Asia's foremost ports, trading rubber, nutmeg, clove, sugar, coconut and pepper. Coupled with the goods and prosperity came people from Europe, China and India, lots of whom, noticing the bountiful opportunities that it new land offered, chose to settle down here.
From the years, Penang has continued to charm foreigners seeking to make their nest in an idyllic location or to invest. The establishment of your Bayan Lepas Free Industrial Zone within the 1970s by way of the second chief minister of Penang, the late Tun Dr Lim Chong Eu, saw a large number of multinational corporations setting up shop here, earning it the moniker of "Silicon Valley of Malaysia".
Penang enjoys a solid reputation overseas not only as a world-class tourist destination, but in addition as a considerate highly liveable city with probably the greatest standards of traveling to Malaysia. It is one of the top destinations for foreigners paying a visit to live in the state throughout the Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) programme, after Kuala Lumpur and Selangor. In twenty ten, ECA International, the world's leader in the development and provision of solutions for management and assignment of employees world wide, ranked George Town as the eighth most liveable city among asian countries, and 62nd globally (in 2007, it was 10th and 74th respectively). The twenty ten rankings placed George Town for the par with Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. For more hotel information, visit Penang Hotel Booking