For anyone looking for Malaysia content on YouTube, the famous Dale Philip has returned. I have no idea what his plans are, where he is going to go, or how long he is going to stay. I have a feeling it is going to be just a short trip, but you never know. So far, he has posted two long videos. One video was posted about a month ago and is all about exploring the Setia Alam area of Shah Alam where he had a bunch of different food and snacks and went shopping. And nine days ago, he posted one video in which he visited Pulau Ketam – a small island off the coast of Port Klang.
I don’t know if he will be posting more videos from Malaysia. For all I know, he might not even be in Malaysia anymore. He could have just stopped by Malaysia briefly while in transit to somewhere else, and these might be the only two videos he is going to shoot and post. Or he could be travelling around to a bunch of places all over the country in the next little while. We’ll just have to wait and see.
I briefly looked over his YouTube channel, and as far as I can tell, he has been to Malaysia on three other occasions. He posted five videos from Penang about six years ago. Then he posted three videos from Sabah and four videos from Kuala Lumpur about three years ago. Then there is a single video from Kuala Lumpur just two years ago. And now we have two videos so far in 2026. There might be more Malaysia videos, but those are the ones that I found.
Dale doesn’t say much about the logistics of anything he does, so I never know the details of these trips. I don’t know where he was before Malaysia, how he got there, how he travelled around, why he went to this or that place, or where he’s going next. His videos tend to start right at a place – usually a restaurant – without showing how he got there or where he came from. That’s probably a smart YouTuber strategy – just dive right into the action without a lot of preamble or lead up. But I always wonder about the logistics. That’s an obsession of mine, I guess. I love the behind-the-scenes stories.
I posted a comment on Dale’s Pulau Ketam video, and I asked him which camera he was using. I remember watching some of his videos from Japan a while back, and he had just started using an Insta360 Ace Pro 2. I was curious if he was still using that camera. Dale replied to my comment, and he said that he was still using that camera. I was interested to know because the audio sounded good, and he didn’t appear to be using an external microphone. I’ve heard from a few people that the built-in mics on the Ace Pro 2 are very good. Near the beginning of this video, Dale comments about how he uses just this one camera, and he finds that difficult enough. So he wonders how other YouTubers manage to use several different cameras. I felt like he was talking directly to me with my habit of using two GoPros at the same time PLUS a 360 camera.
I’ve been to Pulau Ketam myself and I shot a video there. So I know the place relatively well. And I was amused to see that Dale accidentally went to the wrong port to take a boat out to the island. It’s an understandable mistake if you haven’t been there before. The Port Klang Cruise Terminal seems like the obvious place to start, and Dale hired a Grab to take him there. And then he found out that the Pulau Ketam boats don’t leave from there. They depart from the Southport Passenger Terminal, which is right across the street from the Port Klang KTMB Station about 15 kilometers away. It’s the easiest thing in the world to take a KTM train to the end of the line at the Port Klang KTMB station and then walk to the ferry terminal. But if you don’t know that, you can easily end up going to the wrong place. But Dale took it in stride, bought a premium ice cream bar, and just hired another car to take him to the right place. So he finally got there.
I was smiling to myself when I heard him talk about using just the one camera because when I went to Pulau Kelam, I tried using one of the crazier camera setups I’ve ever attempted. At the time, I had a Panasonic G85 mirrorless camera and a GoPro Hero 7. And I was experimenting with different ways to use both. And in typical Planet Doug fashion, I adopted a Frankenstein approach and mounted the GoPro on top of the G85 and tried to channel the Rode Wireless Go audio to both cameras simultaneously. The idea was to be able to film in both directions at the same time: ahead with the G85 and back towards me with the GoPro. It might have worked but I was never able to split the audio signal to go to both cameras. I tried every type of cable and adapter on the market, but I could never figure out how to do it.
This was a lot of camera gear to carry around. But I remember being glad that I had the Panasonic G85 with a telephoto lens. Having a camera like that makes you think about filming a bit differently, and I made the effort to get some video of the crabs crawling around on the mud flats. Those crabs are why the island is named Pulau Ketam, or “Crab Island”. And if all you have is a GoPro or an Ace Pro 2, you can’t get any video like that. So you end shooting a long video on Crab Island and never actually show the crabs.