The Clan Jetties along the waterfront of George Town, Penang, represents a unique settlement. It was created by Chinese immmigrants who share common historical, geographical and lineage origin. Today there are still eight clan jetties along the waterfront, namely the Seh Lim Keo, Seh Chew Keo, Seh Tan Keo, Seh Lee Keo, Chap Seh Keo, Seh Yeoh Keo and Seh Koay Keo. Some of these clan jetties are in grave danger of being demolished for urban renewal.
Apart from Chap Seh Keo, with its mixed clanage, the rest used to be exclusively inhabited by its respective clansmen. Thus is the distinctive identity of the George Town jetty communities, including the Noordin Ghaut Jetty, Peng Arn Jetty and Ban Liaw Jetty , which are all located further south, along the Jelutong seafront. Collectively, they constitute Penang's waterfront society. There used to be more community jetties along the waterfront, including the Poh Lan/Lallang Jetty, Hup Choon Jetty, old Lee Jetty and the old Ong Jetty, all of which have been erased by time.
Clan jetties along the George Town waterfront.
Top: Main door of a clan jetty home. Right: View of Koay Jetty with the city of George Town in the background. Below: A less appealing perspective to jetty living.
Bridging the gap of time.
Penang Overview
Get to know Penang and explore its many fascinating sights!
Penang Travel Tips
A new website created to provide travel tips to people planning a visit to Penang!
Penang Travel Map
Detail map pointing out all the tourist attractions in Penang!
There are many heritage sites in Penang - indeed it has one of the densiest concentration of sites in Malaysia. Explore these many sites with AsiaExplorers.
Thank you, thank you, thank you, for the opportunity to explore the world, to document, to photograph, and to share the information with you. My name is Tim, I'm the writer of this website, and I want to tell you how grateful I am for your visit. This is one of over a dozen websites that I write - you can click my thumbnail photo above to randomly visit any one of them. All my photos are available for commercial printing - find out the photo usage rights here. If you wish to share you photos on this website, upload them to www.panoramio.com and send the URL to me for consideration. And, if you'd like to correspond with me, send your mails to my address as shown below:
About the Author: AsiaExplorers is researched and written by Timothy Tye. We take reasonable care to check and verify the accuracy of the content. However, we disclaim any responsibility for any inconvenience, mishap, injury or death resulting from following the advice provided directly or indirectly by AsiaExplorers and the comments on its pages. All the photographs in AsiaExplorers are available for publication. Please contact AsiaExplorers at the following email address for your enquiries: