The walls of the Hong Kong Bar, Penang's oldest watering hole, are plastered with 1960s and 70s memorabilia - flags, amateur sporting plaques and sepia-tinged photographs of red-faced drinkers, sleeves rolled up and fists clenching oversized glasses of beer.
Despite the name of this George Town bar, the faces beaming out from the past are not Chinese or Malay - nor are they British or Indian, as you may have expected in these parts in colonial times. They're mostly Australian, a hangover from the days when the Royal Australian Air Force was based here.
Ask any drinking Penangite and they'll likely tell you that due to this small contingent of Australians, Penang has more pubs - of a sort - than anywhere else in Malaysia - not much of a boast, perhaps, in an Islamic country, but it's a fitting illustration of how the character of Penang, an island state in the Straits of Malacca, has been shaped by the ebb and flow of recent history.
In 1786, the British East India Company established George Town, named after Britain's King George III, as a port settlement. It soon became a trading hub and the population grew with the volume of traffic. During the late 18th and 19th centuries, Weld Quay was one of the world's busiest ports. Its industry supplemented an influx of immigrants, including ethnic Indians, Chinese and Peranakans, descend- ants of Hokkien Chinese, who emigrated from Fujian province in the 15th and 16th centuries.
Today the population is divided roughly into 40 per cent Chinese, 40 per cent Malay, 10 per cent Indian and 10 per cent others. The Peranakans have mostly been absorbed into other groups but their Baba- Nyonya cuisine and traditions are a notable aspect of the cultural landscape.
In the streets around the Hong Kong Bar, there is the most visible evidence of Penang's ethnic diversity. Thanks to strict controls over the decades, the city has retained much of its colonial-era architecture and, in 2008, an area covering less than 110 hectares was recognised as a Unesco World Heritage site.