..
This article has a pay wall, and I don’t have a subscription.
SCMP
Might a Malaysian ‘ghost town’ become a tourist attraction? Its elderly residents aren’t convinced
Papan was once a busy tin mining town and has a number of heritage buildings, such as the palace of founder and former ruler, Raja Bilah, and its mosque But moves to renovate and restore the buildings have been met with suspicion by descendants of the tin miners still living there, who fear change
Published: 12:45pm, 7 Jan, 2022
Updated: 4:02pm, 7 Jan, 2022
Off Malaysia’s North-South Expressway, two hours to the north of Kuala Lumpur, stands a former tin mining town that is at the centre of a half-hearted struggle between residents who would like to turn it into a tourist attraction and those who would prefer to let sleeping ghosts lie.
Papan – little more than a strip of crumbling heritage houses and two parallel alleys of humbler homes – may be ignored by guidebooks to Malaysia, but those who know of the place refer to it as a ghost town fit for Instagram.
“But calling Papan a ghost town is incorrect,” says Philippe Durant, a Belgian photographer who lives in nearby Ipoh and who has dedicated years of his life to photographing and spreading the word about this unique spot. “It is not a ghost town because there are still people living here,” he says.
..
The Smart Local
M’sian Finds Mysterious Abandoned Town In Perak On Google Maps, Netizens Help Sort Out Its History
Papan is a street of abandoned heritage buildings in Perak
27
Aug
2020 
Janet ChoCommunity News
It’s not hard to find heritage buildings in Malaysia. Wander down the busy streets of Kuala Lumpur and you’ll find them in 2 conditions – converted into cafes with old-school aesthetics or left unrenovated in a time warp. But rarely do we see a town of abandoned heritage buildings that looks straight out of a post-apocalyptic film.
This is what Twitter user @nizam_saroni uncovered on Google Maps when he decided to lepak and entertain himself by dropping Google’s “yellow man” on a random street in Malaysia. His discovery: A row of abandoned heritage buildings, in a town called Papan in Perak so tiny that it only had a single street. But that’s not all – there’s a historic clinic owned by a Malayan nurse there, and there’s even a mansion that is reportedly haunted in the vicinity.
A town of heritage buildings overgrown with trees
Image credit: @enjoythedecay
The discovery was shared on Twitter on 24th August 2020, where it has gained over 4,000 retweets at the time of writing, with netizens curious about the mysterious town of Papan flooding the thread. Many also came out to contribute what they knew about its history and other attractions in the now-abandoned town.
For more:
https://thesmartlocal.com/malaysia/papan-heritage-buildings/
..
https://twitter.com/dhillonkevin/status/1408691509986172928?s=19
..
..
..
weehingthong 