Penang, the Beautiful Digital Nomad island of Malaysia!
What is this Penang island to a Digital nomad?
Penang the island of beautiful beaches! It has its own airport and a jungle (national park). The island is essentially located just a few kilometers off the coast of north Malaysia and it is very famous among Digital Nomads for its english speaking population and great weather. To drive across the island would probably take an hour or so in normal traffic, quite a small island indeed.
So why would you wanna go to this remote island? Well I would like to start with some history, a few hundred years ago Malacca was occupied and ruled by The United Kingdom. And they chose Penang to be a strategic location for their government base and there fore built George town. Fun fact, one of the generals thought the progress of building the town was slow so he ordered his men to fire cannons filled with silver coins and jewelry into the jungle. This indeed got the workers motivated to work faster! Anyway this leaves Penang today with many historical buildings in the Renaissance era architecture. Imagine that architecture and then packed with a population of 3 million people of mixed race (60% Chinese). Very interesting indeed!
Who am I, why listen to me?
The short story is: I was raised in Sweden but for as long as I can remember my family traveled to new places around the world every year. I even have pictures where you can see me in a stroller next to the Big Ben in London. No memories from this trip though…
Anyway, this have allowed me a lot of perspective at an young age and I decided quite early that I wanted to work in another country than Sweden. A check list was created containing what I wanted from the city of choice and at the top; Warm weather, good internet connection and close to the sea. Moved to Malta after finishing my Master degree in Computer Science and from there researched and started living the location independent lifestyle with some newly found friends.
Our number one focus when traveling is on being effective with our work where ever we go. Currently traveling around in all the beauties Asia has to offer! Sooo back to the point, is Penang, Malaysia a good location to work from?
Culture
The population of Malaysia consists of 30 million people and the majority are muslims, Kristians, Buddhists or Hindu. This allows the country to be multi cultural and has been for many centuries. You as a tourist will have the chance to visit a Mosque then walk one block and pop into St Johns church after that another block and you might find a Hindu temple! It is worth mentioning that they do indeed have a Islamic government but the structure is democratic in its nature. They have many benefits and policies in place like child support and good university loans for students, but these are only available if you are a “Malay” which requires you to be a Muslim or of the old generation of Malays.
The people of Penang are super friendly, for example we had a Airbnb host bringing us out to dinner and showing us around in George Town.
Weather
It is basically around 30 degrees celsius during the whole year, so bring your swimwear and come over when ever you feel like! The rainy season in Penang is around May — June and it gets very humid, so you might want to dodge that.
Digital Nomadness
There are a lot of Co-working spaces available around George Town area. We ended up in @Cat which had very good internet speedzz (around 70mbits) and all the office accessories you would ever need as a Digital Nomad! We also found great networking opportunities here at @Cat. They hosted regular event like lectures, Hackathon, guest speakers etc etc.
Side note: I readjusted a shirt at FOX custom tailor in north of George town for 15 euros, so you might want to check that out if you want to custom tailor a suit or something like that.
Play
Activities on the Penang island include Hiking in the jungle (National park), Sailing, wind surfing, kite surfing, swimming, a lot of water activities are available. I wouldn't recommend snorkling or diving around here as the water is not clear at all. For that the locals here repeatedly refer me to Sabah, Malaysia (another state).
The Food in Penang is of a wide variety since Malaysia is very diverse and has a mix of Chinese, Muslims and Indians living “together”. In Penang there are many Chinese especially so it is easy to find many places where this specific cuisine is offered.
Stay
Malaysia has a great visa on arrival going on where many nationalities can enter the country for three months.
If you are into the flag theory from Nomad Capitalist, Malaysia might be very interesting to you. You can get the residency by investing 400 000 dollars into a house or 200 000 dollars into an apartment. If this is above your price point there is also another alternative to get a VISA by depositing a fixed amount of around 30 000 dollars converted into MYR (local currency) into a Malay bank account. That is the Malaysia’s My Second Home program — often called MM2H. You also need to pass a medical test, and purchase health insurance, and thats about it.
This will buy you a Permanent residence status with a ten year, multiple-entry visa that is renewable at the end of the ten year period. There is no laws on minimum residency, so you are free to come and go as you wish. You can find a link to Andrew Hendersons blog post regarding this topic in the source list in the end of this post.
Regarding housing we did only Airbnb and rented entire places, apartments just north of George town. This way we got away with paying around 40 Euros and got 100 sqm, with two bedrooms, two toilets, kitchen and the appreciated sea view! :) Also a pool in the common area! We heard from other digital nomads that you could rent a room in hostels for around 10 euros so if you are on a tight budget you might want to look into that as well.
Transportation in Penang is very cheap, you can use the local bus system which is surprisingly good for how little the locals use it. You might have to wait up to 20 minutes sometimes though as the traffic is quite unreliable here. But you only have to pay 1 RM which is 0.2 Euros for a one way ticket. What we ended up doing mostly was to use GRAB, since with this alternative we got Air condition and the drivers were pretty good at avoiding traffic jams. Also here we payed around 2 euros for a 20 minute ride.
Other
The average monthly income in Malaysia is around 400 euros.
If you have a University diploma in for example engineering the average salary is around 800 euros.
It is also worth mentioning that it is very common for the average person to have multiple income streams. Salary, other business, airbnb (let a room), multiple properties and land.
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The responsible Authors
Simon Irengård Gullstrand
Sources:
https://nomadlist.com/george-town-penang-malaysia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malaysia
https://www.quora.com/What-are-the-notable-benefits-of-being-a-Bumiputra-Malay-in-Malaysia?share=1