As we looked back over the past few months, we were struck by how many great photos we had of street art in Malaysia and Singapore. We decided they deserved a blog post of their own.

Street art in Penang became famous in 2012 when Ernest Zacharevicm, a Lithuanian artist, painted six murals as part of the George Town Annual Art Festival in Malaysia. Two years later, new artists’ creations started to blossom. There is now an interactive street map where you can look for murals like hunting for buried treasure. The most famous one is the kids on the bicycle (center, top-left and top-right), where visitors queue up to get their photos taken. Top-right shows the original mural, while Evelyn poses with the art in top-left.

Our first day in Penang, we walked along the waterfront. Across the street is a construction site that takes up an entire block. The images above decorated the construction wall, with a new silhouette graphic every few feet.

A later form of street art in Penang were created using comic-style wire sculptures. There are 52 placed around George Town, with each sharing some history not found in guidebooks. This style of mural virtually assures that they will last decades with minimal deterioration, and all of them were interesting enough to stop and spend some time studying. Each wire sculpture has a QR code posted on the wall next to it, where you can scan and read about the history and story of that particular piece of art.

In George Town, we also found street art at Chew Jetty and some fun ones around town, where different artists have been invited over the years. Even storefronts are colorful in this part of town.

Sadly, most of the murals are not being cared for, and over time, are starting to fall apart. Surprisingly, we did not see tagging or destroying other artists’ creations. It was mostly just deterioration of the walls over time, and the art with them.

Singapore had a very different mural style than Malaysia. The art here told entire stories, with complex scenes unfolding in each piece of art. This set of images illustrated life in local homes. These were very well maintained, and most looked as though they had been painted in the last couple years.

These additional story-telling scenes focused on outdoor life in typical local streets.

More street art can be found around Chinatown and Little India in Singapore. There are strict laws against vandalism, so you almost never see graffiti tags.