Colonial-style shop houses in Penang, with portico-like covered walkways, known throughout Malaysia and Singapore as kaki lima, i.e. ‘five footers’, due to the fact that they were initially about five foot wide, although many are nowadays wider.

These portico-like walkways are either sunken into the ground or elevated from the road, yet in either case leveled with the ground floor of a building, and provides a corridor to shield pedestrians from the sun and rain by the over-hanging upper floors of that building.