About Small Towns Malaysia

Malaysia has hundreds of towns that never make it into a guidebook. Most of them are a few streets, a wet market, a river, and a handful of families who have been there for generations. We have spent years filming in places like that, and the pattern repeats. There is far more going on than anyone outside the town realises, and almost none of it is written down anywhere you can actually find.

This directory is our attempt to write it down. Every town gets the same treatment: where the name came from, how to get there, what to eat, and who to ask for when you arrive.

We publish a town once we have been there, or once we can point to the person who told us. Anything that came from desk research is labelled as desk research, so you know which parts have been walked and which have not.

The directory grows one town at a time because that is how the filming works. We would rather cover a small number of towns properly than fill the map with entries copied off the internet.

Browse the directory →