PJ Old Town

The original heart of Petaling Jaya, a tight grid of two-storey shophouses around the Jalan Pasar wet market. The architecture is unfussy 1950s utilitarian, but it is the only part of PJ that feels like an old Malaysian town rather than a freeway-stitched suburb.

Come early for the wet market — fish, vegetables, and the kueh stalls that set up before dawn — or in the late afternoon for the kopitiam coffee shops and the noodle hawkers around the central square. The Kwan Inn Teng Buddhist temple is a few blocks east.

things to do sight neighbourhood
A story
PJ Old Town was Malaysia's first satellite township, laid out in 1952 by the British colonial government to rehouse Chinese squatters cleared from Kuala Lumpur during the Malayan Emergency. The grid of low-rise shophouses and the original numbering scheme — Section 1, Section 2 — survive almost unchanged.