A TOWN stuck in the past, with old shophouses lining the main street and overgrown vegetation against a hilly landscape, aptly describes Papan in Perak.
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.