This chapter introduces an unexpected analogy between marriage and anthropology, both being encounters with difference that have transformative capacities – themes that are returned to throughout the book. Research on marriage in Penang recalls the author’s earlier fieldwork on kinship and domestic relations on the island of Langkawi in Malaysia in the 1980s. The chapter reflects on the author’s decades-long anthropological engagement with Malaysia and traces some of the major changes that have occurred there. It considers the very different contexts of research – rural and urban – over these years and the concomitants of a long-term anthropological commitment.