Soft clay soils are commonly found in many parts of the Asia Pacific. This paper will first provide a literature review of the problematic soils in several regions in the Asia Pacific with the aim for gathering geotechnical knowledge for road foundation design. The main objective of this paper is to study the characteristics of marine clay in Northwestern Peninsular Malaysia based on field and laboratory test data gathered from the ground investigations. The sub-soils in the Northwestern Peninsular Malaysia consist of sedimentary soil deposits which form alternate layers of clay and sand. New empirical relations between the soil index properties and compressibility properties are presented. Regression analyses and statistical t test method are conducted on the empirical relationships for predicting the compressibility behaviors of marine clay in the study area. The statistical t test conducted for Cc and Cr data shows significant and non-significant deviation between the predicted and the actual field data respectively.