Loh Heoh, 78, sits forlornly, reflecting on how life and times have changed in the five decades since she arrived here from her hometown in Fujian, southern China.

Just 27 at the time, she arrived in post-war, colonial-ruled George Town, the capital of Penang, with her husband, an odd-job painter.

The couple moved into a cubicle-like room in a double-story shophouse along Noordin Street in the city's heart in the early 1950s. ''We paid just RM10 in monthly rental back then,'' recalls Loh Heoh.

As the family expanded, it moved into a double-storey house along Macalister Lane, also in the city. For 20 years, she continued to pay low rentals.

But when rent control was lifted in the late 1990s, Loh Heoh, who now sells cooked noodles, received a rude shock: her rent rose from RM100 to more than RM1,000.

In February, she was forced to move out into two rented rooms for herself and her children on the city outskirts, at a rental cost of RM125. ''I had no choice, my husband passed away 29 years ago,'' she says, with a distant look.

Loh Heoh is one of some 60,000 residents of George Town affected by the lifting of rent control in the traditional areas, which sent rentals soaring by up to 10 times. Many low-income tenants or sub-tenants have been forced out, leaving the inner city area almost deserted after nightfall.

It is a pale shadow of the George Town of old, which although ethnic Chinese-dominated, was a melting pot of east and west Asia.

The city bustled with merchants, money changers, coffee-shop proprietors, barbers, tailors, civil servants, roadside traders, street hawkers, temple caretakers, manual labourers, trishaw peddlers  all part of a vibrant urban culture that is steadily vanishing. Then there were the seedy bar managers and the gangsters.

Now, the city appears quieter with numerous shophouses vacated. Slowly sprouting instead are backpackers' hostels, budget hotels, trendy eateries, Internet cafes, offices and mobile phone shops.

Too little, too late

Ong Boon Keong, a tall pony-tailed activist with a wispy beard, leads a group called SOS! that highlights the plight of residents who have been forced to move out of the inner city area.

The state government, he says, has done little to relocate the tenants after rent control was lifted, except for resettling 300 families to "hardcore poor" housing outside the inner city area.

''But this is too little too late: many others have by now been dispersed in all directions  some 10,000 people at our last count,'' he laments.

But for Penang chief minister Dr Koh Tsu Koon, the process of resettling needy tenants has been very 'transparent'. Responding to an IPS query on the displacement of inner city residents, he claimed that many of the tenants were not all that poor but owned flashy cars while still enjoying low rents.

For sure, not all affected residents are desperately poor. ''I don't consider myself in that group,'' says Loke Saw Sim, who works as an accounts executive outside the city.

"But when they are raising the rental, which was just RM100, to RM600 to RM900 by mid-July, I thought I might as well pay the deposit for a house of my own in Perak Road (outside the inner city),'' she explains.

Many others have moved out to more affordable housing further away.

Until recently, Loke lived in the vicinity of the Khoo Kongsi, a temple belonging to the Khoo clan in Cannon Square. Walking after dark between in her now almost deserted former neighbourhood, she states the obvious: ''This place is now very quiet.''

A lone fluorescent light flickers upstairs in one of the houses. The rest of the houses are pitch dark inside, a couple of them still sublet to Bangladeshi migrant workers.

Pointing to the front doors of the recently vacated houses, she says, ''Notice how they are all padlocked now. In the old days, the familieswould sit outside and chatter away with their neighbours.''

Heritage conference

There are ambitious plans for this area now. There is talk of converting the ground floors of these houses to coffee houses, antique shops and souvenir stores, and turning the upper floors into tourist hostels  a gentrification process.

Property owners, some of whom are politically well connected, are rubbing their hands in anticipation.

But they could be disappointed as George Town turns into a shadow of its old self. The streets in some parts are now eerily quiet in the evenings, lined with buildings falling into disrepair, their plaster peeling and the concrete chipping off. More and more 'For Sale' and 'For Rent' signboards can be seen hanging on pillars outside.

Residents speak of fires gutting empty pre-war houses every now and then, or the roofs tumbling down. Street hawkers are complaining of a 60 percent drop in earnings, says Loke. Newspaper vendors, too.

Ironically, the Khoo Kongsi courtyard was the venue for the climax of the 'Penang Story' heritage conference on April 21, held at a local hotel. Sullen nearby residents, once so welcoming to visitors, kept their doors shut.

Organised by the Penang Heritage Trust and The Star newspaper, the conference brought some 60 international and local experts on Penang together in a ''celebration of Penang's historical cultural diversity''.

It provided much material to support Penang's desire to be listed as a World Heritage site.

On the last day of the conference, Loh Heoh and Loke were among a dozen inner city residents who created a stir when they unexpectedly turned up at the conference venue.

8 As confused hotel security personnel, surprised delegates and embarrassed state government officials looked on, an elderly displaced female tenant handed over a memorandum on their plight to Richard Engelhardt, UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) advisor for culture in Asia and the Pacific.

RM9 a day

Loh Heoh cannot understand heritage conservation that focuses mainly on buildings, while displacing the communities living in the area.

Where once in the city she could earn a profit of RM300-400 a month selling noodles, she now sells barely RM9 worth of noodles a day outside the city. This is hardly enough to support her son, a jobless construction worker, and her mentally disabled daughter.

''It is very difficult to do business along River Road,'' sighs the 78-year-old. ''I have to be more thrifty.''