Ipoh, Malaysia

Ipoh is the capital of Perak state in Malaysia, sitting roughly 180 km north of Kuala Lumpur with around 660,000 residents. The city began in the 1880s as a tin-mining camp, and the Great Fire of 1892 reshaped its commercial centre. Its Old Town and New Town districts together hold about 700 colonial-era shophouses, while the 1914 Birch Memorial Clock Tower honours the first British Resident of Perak. The 1920 railway station, with its Moghul-style domes, is sometimes called the Taj Mahal of Ipoh. Thirty kilometres south stands Kellie's Castle, an unfinished Scottish baronial mansion left abandoned in 1926.