Sri Mahamariamman Temple

This guide to Sri Mahamariamman Temple in Penang Island opens in 1801, when the British handed a muddy plot on Queen Street to Betty Lingam Chetty, the headman tasked with organizing thousands of arriving Tamil and South Indian dockworkers. It follows how that modest shrine grew by 1833 into the island's oldest Hindu temple, and traces the yearly festival of Chithra Pournami, when priests lift a statue of Lord Subramaniam onto a wooden chariot hauled by hand through George Town. Stand at the entrance and look up at the tower crowded with painted statues.