Eastern & Oriental Hotel

The Eastern & Oriental Hotel dominates the seafront end of Jln Penang. Originally built in 1884 as the Eastern Hotel, it became so popular that the following year it was expanded and renamed the Eastern & Oriental Hotel. The stylish E&O was the archetypal 19th-century colonial grand hotel, established by two of the famous Armenian Sarkies brothers, Tigram and Martin, the most famous hoteliers in the East, who later founded Raffles Hotel in Singapore.

In the 1920s the Sarkies promoted the E&O as 'The Premier Hotel East of Suez' (a catchy phrase the brothers later used to advertise all their hotels) which supposedly had the 'longest seafront of any hotel' in the world, at 842ft. High-ranking colonial officials and wealthy planters and merchants filed through its grand lobby, and the E&O became firmly established as a centre for Penang's social elite. Rudyard Kipling, Noel Coward and Somerset Maugham were just some of the famous faces who passed through its doors.

The Sarkies almost closed the E&O due to rent increases, but Arshak Sarkies, a third brother (a gambler by nature), convinced the family to open the Raffles Hotel instead. Arshak's generosity was legendary: he often paid passage back to England for broken-hearted (and empty-pocketed) rubber planters and tin miners. Some observers said that Arshak ran the E&O not to make money, but to entertain: he seemed more keen on waltzing around the ballroom with a whisky-and-soda balanced on his head than in adding up a balance sheet. Shortly before his death, Arshak began lavish renovations to the E&O. This expense, coupled with loans to friends that were conveniently forgotten, finally bankrupted the family business in 1931. Still, Arshak's funeral was one of the grandest Penang had ever seen.

In the 1990s the E&O closed and fell into disrepair, but a huge renovation programme was begun to rescue it and in 2001 it once again opened for business, as a luxury, all-suite grand hotel with elegant, spacious rooms decorated with the best of colonial style. Today, the E&O offers some fine dining, and the colonial Penang experience isn't complete until you've taken tiffin on its grand lawn.

The E&O features in several stories by Somerset Maugham, who was a regular (and often difficult) guest. For more on dashing Arshak Sarkies, read George Bilainikin's entertaining Hail Penang! Being the Narrative of Comedies and Tragedies in a Tropical Outpost Among Europeans, Chinese, Malays and Indians.