Royal Museum

This guide to the Royal Museum in Kuala Lumpur begins with tin magnate Chan Wing, who spent his fortune building the grandest private mansion in Malaya in 1928 for his eight wives and twenty-six children. You'll hear how he was forced to flee when the Japanese occupation arrived in 1942, having secretly funded resistance fighters in China, and how the house passed from Japanese to British to Sultan's hands before the young nation bought it outright. Thirteen Malaysian kings were later installed inside its great ceremonial hall.