Houses painted like jewelry

The Straits Chinese, or Peranakan, houses of George Town are the buildings people stop walking to look at. Indigo walls, pink floral tiles, gold on a carved door, a name in Chinese and English over the lintel. They were merchant houses. They are now museums, hotels, cafes, and a few homes that still belong to a family.

The Cheong Fatt Tze mansion, the one called blue, is the famous example and worth the ticket if you want to see what the inside of that taste looked like: courtyards, timber, a coolness the street does not have. The rows around it are the free version. You get the facade and the walkway and the pleasure of a city that did not paint everything beige.

Pretty here is maintenance. Tiles crack. Timber swells. A heritage listing can protect a front and complicate a repair. If you dream of living in one, price the carpenter and the monsoon, not just the photograph. Visit as a guest first. The street will still be beautiful if you sleep somewhere plainer.