The island of Penang is a noted tourist destination owing to its beaches, Old World charm and vibrant food scene.  Penang Island is renowned for temples, lush parks and forest reserves, flea markets and the grand colonial mansions on Penang Hill. George Town, the capital, is an ethnically diverse city — its population is chiefly of Malay, Chinese and Indian heritage — which helps to explain its conspicuous vitality. Located at the northern entrance to the strategically crucial Strait of Malacca, George Town, unlike Singapore, still evokes an age of travel by steamship among storied ports and their grand hotels, an era that began with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869