Three cuisines in one country, rainforest older than the Amazon, and a capital where you can eat at a street stall under the world's tallest twin towers. Underrated by almost everyone.
Malaysia is split in two: peninsular Malaysia between Thailand and Singapore, and Malaysian Borneo — Sabah and Sarawak — across the sea, with orangutans, Mount Kinabalu and some of the best diving in the world.
It is also three cultures living alongside each other. Malay, Chinese and Indian communities each have their own food, festivals and neighbourhoods, which is why Penang is one of the great eating destinations on earth and why the public holiday calendar is enormous.
Most trips do the peninsula: Kuala Lumpur, Penang for food, the Cameron Highlands for tea and cool air, and Langkawi or the Perhentians for beaches. Borneo is a separate trip and worth planning for on its own — flights from KL are cheap and take a couple of hours.
Buses are cheap and cover the peninsula. Borneo needs a flight.
The capital: the Petronas Towers, street food, colonial architecture and the best transport hub in the region.
Kuala Lumpur is a great city with amazing food and a really interesting mix of cultures. There’s so much variety, from Malay and Chinese to Indian influences, which makes exploring the city and trying different foods really fun. Definitely worth visiting once!
A traveller, on Hostelworld
Penang's capital: UNESCO shophouses, street art, and the best street food in Malaysia by common consent.
A trading port with Portuguese, Dutch and British layers, and a famous night market.
Great place, our favourite spot in Malaysia. Lovely food options and bars, and a walkable city to see all you need to see. Highly recommend
A traveller, on Hostelworld
Limestone caves around a colonial town, white coffee, and the best value food in the country.
Sarawak's capital on the river, with orangutan rehabilitation and longhouse trips upriver from it.
A duty-free island of beaches, jungle and a cable car, near the Thai border.
Tea plantations at 1,500 metres, strawberry farms and cool evenings.
Good for hiking, sight seeing Day tour available there
A traveller, on Hostelworld
Malaysia does food better than almost anywhere, and has rainforest and islands alongside it.
Malay, Chinese and Indian cooking in the same street.
Rainforest older than the Amazon, and Borneo.
Islands on both coasts, on opposite seasons.
KL and Penang, both easy and both cheap.
Cheap food, cheap flights and good infrastructure.
Three cultures, and colonial layers on top.
Penang is the highlight for most people and the reason is food. George Town's hawker centres and street stalls serve Malay, Chinese and Indian dishes at €1.50 to €3 a plate, and the UNESCO-listed shophouse streets are covered in murals that make walking the town an activity in itself.
Kuala Lumpur is easy and underrated: the Petronas Towers, Batu Caves with its 272 coloured steps and macaques, Jalan Alor's food street, and one of the best public transport systems in southeast Asia.
Borneo is the other trip. Mount Kinabalu at 4,095 metres is a two-day climb needing permits booked months ahead, Sepilok rehabilitates orangutans, and Sipadan is one of the world's great dive sites with a strict daily permit limit that requires booking far in advance.
This is one of the great eating countries. Nasi lemak — coconut rice with sambal, anchovies and egg — is the national breakfast at about a euro. Char kway teow, laksa, roti canai, satay and banana leaf curry all come from different communities and all sit on the same street.
Hawker centres are the format: a covered area of individual stalls where you order from several and pay each one. Nothing costs more than €3 and the best stalls have queues.
Penang laksa, Ipoh bean sprout chicken, Melaka's Nyonya cooking and Sarawak laksa are regional specialities worth travelling for. Fruit is exceptional, and durian is genuinely banned from hotels and public transport, which tells you what you need to know.
Malaysia is Muslim-majority and alcohol is taxed heavily, so a beer costs €3 to €5 — expensive against €2 meals. That shapes the evening more than any curfew does.
Kuala Lumpur has rooftop bars, a club scene around Changkat and Bukit Bintang, and a growing craft beer culture. Penang has bars along the George Town waterfront and in the old shophouses.
Elsewhere, the night is about food: night markets, hawker centres and mamak stalls that stay open until the early hours serving roti and teh tarik. Some states, notably Kelantan and Terengganu, are considerably more conservative and alcohol is hard to find there.
The peninsula is easy. Long-distance buses are cheap and comfortable, the ETS train from KL north towards Penang and Ipoh is fast and modern, and AirAsia flies everywhere for very little from its KL hub.
Kuala Lumpur has an integrated network of LRT, MRT, monorail and commuter trains that reaches Batu Caves and the airport, and Grab works throughout the country for cars and bikes.
Borneo needs a flight from KL — two to three hours to Kota Kinabalu or Kuching — and distances within it are large. Ferries link the islands, and the Perhentians close entirely during the northeast monsoon from roughly November to February.
Malaysia is cheap for what you get: dorms from €8, hawker meals at €1.50 to €3, and a modern transport network that costs almost nothing to use.
A comfortable day is €25 to €40. Alcohol is the exception that skews budgets, at €3 to €5 a beer, and Borneo runs higher than the peninsula across the board — flights, park fees and dive packages add up quickly.
The ringgit has been weak against European currencies in recent years, which makes Malaysia noticeably better value than it was, particularly compared with Thailand's more visited spots.
Malaysia is safe for travellers with low violent crime. Bag snatching from motorbikes happens in Kuala Lumpur and Penang, so keep bags on the inside shoulder.
Drug laws are the serious point and they are not a formality: Malaysia retains the death penalty for trafficking, and quantities that would be treated as personal possession elsewhere can meet that threshold. There is no ambiguity and no leniency for foreigners.
Otherwise, the risks are environmental: strong currents on the east coast, jungle trekking that needs a guide and leech socks, and haze from regional fires that occasionally affects air quality for weeks at a time.
Most Western nationalities enter visa-free for 90 days, which is generous, and the process is quick.
Malaysia requires a digital arrival card completed online shortly before you land — check the official immigration site, as the requirement and the window for submitting it have changed since introduction.
Passports need six months' validity from entry. Note that Sabah and Sarawak in Borneo operate their own immigration controls, so you pass through immigration again when flying there from the peninsula, even though it is the same country.
Malaysia is hot and humid year-round with two monsoons on opposite coasts. The west coast is best December to March, the east coast April to September.
Average highs for Kuala Lumpur, which barely varies. The variable is rain: the east coast and its islands shut down roughly November to February, while the west coast is at its best then.
Pick how you travel and how long for. Per night, for one person, in euro equivalents of ringgit.
Borneo runs higher — flights from KL, national park fees and dive packages are all extra and can double a daily figure.
Three religious calendars overlap here, which means a lot of public holidays and some spectacular festivals.
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