I am a fan of cemetery walks, and was happy to discover @grindle founded Tombstone Tourism community. To support this initiative, I am sharing images from the Old Protestant Cemetery of George Town. It is located on wonderful Penang Island, Malaysia, where I stayed before heading to South Asia on a flight Penang - Kathmandu.

And, here, the story begins... 😀

Lush vegetation is a thing you can't help but enjoy in the Old Protestant Cemetery of George Town.

Trees are thickly draped with epiphytic ferns, aerial roots of banyan hanging from above like string curtains, and mosses with lichens cover trunks and stones like... just like mosses and lichens normally do this, lol.

Beyond the cemetery, everything is paved with stone and asphalt, with rows of houses lining the streets, and only the Old Protestant Cemetery keeps the mysterious emerald-green atmosphere of the island as it was when the first Brits arrived to found the glorious city...

Cemetery Satyr

Imagine me with a camera at this mysterious emerald-green cemetery, stepping left and right, back and forward, trying to find the best angle. And here we are, I found it at last:

However, there is something in the frame that breaks the stone harmony - right in the center, below the dome, something made of flesh:

That was a person sleeping with his little buddy being outdoors through the broken trousers... (It's probably obvious, and you don't need a crop of this photogragh, right?)

Weirdos are sometimes found at cemeteries...

I was walking softly around, taking images of this cemetery satyr, like a devoted collector of oddities and quirks, and then left the scene unnoticed.

The founder of George Town

Suddenly, a time for a history lesson! It's him:

Francis Light, a man with a fantastic destiny, worth shooting a movie.

A colonizer?

British colonies were different. Some were ruled in an authoritarian way, some were exploitative or corrupt, but others, like Penang, were examples of freedom of trade, religion, and migration.

Graves of Chinese protestants who were refugees from the Taiping Rebellion in China in the middle of the 19th century

That's not a surprise: George Town was established on an island with almost no population, so it wasn't a tool to exploit the locals in one way or another - it was a trade outpost in the Malacca Straits (preceding Singapore), welcoming immigrants of all races and religions. Besides, the founder wasn't a bureaucrat or military personnel but an entrepreneur himself.

That's probably why Francis Light's name is respected in George Town decades after Penang stopped being ruled by the British.

Love story?

They called Penang the White Man's Grave (one of many, actually). Too many died soon after arrival - malaria and not only. That's why George Town's cemetery has so many graves of young people.

Quintin, 26 years old - "after an illness of only two days"...

Eliza, 21 years old. "Rejoicing in hope".

William, 22 years old.

The word "mate" in the epitaph probably means he was buried by his colleagues, a ship crew. There are several graves of this "mate style" at George Town Cemetery. And now look at this:

Does it sound like an epitaph from a crew? "As a tribute of affection and a record of his amiable and manly virtue by a friend".

Sounds like a message of love and deep sorrow from a grieving woman who was only a friend...

What do you think?..

Psychotherapy in its purest form

The sun was low, and its orange rays were playing in the tree canopies.

A wonderful place of resting in Jesus - I was leaving it, filled with deep emotions, painful and at the same time cleansing, like a long-delayed cry. It happens each time I visit a cemetery - psychotherapy in its purest form...

Subscribe to c/Tombstone Tourism by @grindle and share your cemetery adventures there! 😎

The photos were taken with a Nikkor 50mm on a full-frame DSLR Nikon D750 by the author on June 23, 2025, in George Town, Penang, Malaysia