What exactly is a "trishaw"?

Good question. All the literature we saw about Malaysia, especially about the island of Penang, mentions "trishaws," which obviously led me to ask the above question. After we got there, I found out:

The town of Georgetown, on Penang Island, is trishaw heaven

They were, indeed, everywhere, and they were exquisitely decorated. However, we never took one while we were there because: a) it was raining much of the time, and b) haggling over price just isn't our thing, so we mostly walked.

This looks totally normal, right?

We may have missed out on a glorious adventure.

Trishaws are so popular, in fact, that they even appear conspicuously in murals around town. Pretty awesome, I'd say.