Welcome to Penang Insider, the smart guide for traveling and living in Penang, the pride of Northeastern Malaysia! This Penang blog brings you first-hand living experience from a real Penang Insider who made this blessed multi-ethnic, tropical island his love nest since 2009.
That would be me, Marco Ferrarese. I help people figure out how to get to the heart of Penang, showing them the best the island has to offer. And if you don’t trust my insider knowledge because I am a foreigner, please consider that many of the world’s best magazines and newspapers, such as Nikkei Asia , South China Morning Post and the CNN, have asked me to write about Penang 🙂
Some Malaysians would tell you that I know their country better than any of them — they are probably right, as I have been multiple times to every Malaysian state… not counting all the other cpuntries I have visited and written about. Since 2016, I have co-authored guidebooks for the likes of Rough Guides, Fodor’s and Lonely Planet. I am the author of the Penang, Kedah, Perlis, Pahang and Johor chapters in Lonely Planet’s latest guidebook to Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei.
You can see a list of my other books on my Amazon Author Page and some of my journalism and author pages on Al Jazeera | South China Morning Post| Nikkei Asia | Lonely Planet.
If you are visiting this site, you are probably a Penang lover, like me; or you may just be looking around the web planning your first visit, on the hunt for a good Penang blog to read what you need to know to get started — and there’s nothing wrong with that. With the suggestions contained in this blog, you’ll not only arrive in Penang hitting the ground running, but you’ll get to the very heart of an incredible Malaysian destination that, because of a lack of real insider knowledge, is most often only experienced superficially.
Penang Insider‘s suggestions are all honed by a decade and a half spent living and studying on these shores. We are helped by locals to constantly update these pages. More important, we don’t simply try to promote a dying heritage using gentrification to lure in more tourist dollars. On the contrary, we try to describe Penang as it really is, with pure honesty, and a no bulls**t attitude.
Why You Should Trust Penang Insider
I am many things, but mostly a travel writer. Besides calling Penang home, I have visited more than 80 countries on three continents and have crossed Asia overland to my native Europe twice. I am the author of Nazi Goreng: Young Malay Fanatic Skinheads — a bestseller in Malaysia, that was translated to Bahasa Malaysia before being banned by Malaysia’s Ministry of Home Affairs (yes, like Anthony Burgess) — and Banana Punk Rawk Trails, a non-fiction book about my involvement with a Penang-based punk band and the larger underground music scene in the region.
I published short fiction in Malaysia and written book chapters on Malaysia for the world’s leading academic publishers. Since 2016, I have updated the Malaysian and Brunei chapters of their guidebook Southeast Asia on a Budget, and worked on their guides to Malaysia, Singapore & Brunei, Thailand, Thailand Beaches & Islands, and India. I also updated chapters on Laos and Cambodia for the Fodor’s Guide to Thailand. I am now working for Lonely Planet, for which I co-authored guides to Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia, Bali, China, Italy, Korea, Costa Rica, Central America (Honduras) and Belize.
If you really want to know more about me, you can read interviews in the South China Morning Post and Travel Writing 2.0 and Eksentrika.
You can follow me on Facebook, LinkedIn or reach me by e-mail.
And please don’t forget to sign up to Penang Insider mailing list. I will send you a monthly recap of the best stuff we published, plus exclusive tips and materials, only for those loyal subscribers.