Off to Malaysia as part of 6 months of travelling. Don’t know much about the place, but it seems interesting. Flying into Singapore and travelling up to Thailand.

What does the panel suggest?

Cheers,

Jez

kl, perinthean islands (spelling?), and the cameron highlands were the highlights for me. Oh and the Jungle, teman nagra i think its called, very good.

Food in Penang

Oh, also try to avoid following the lonely planet / rough guide too closely, or you’ll be travelling with the same group for 6 months

+1 Cameron highlands. Train from Sing to KL worth the effort.

Lady Boys?

What time of year? The weather makes a massive difference. Lots of places completely shut down during rainy season.

Our highlights were the Orangutan Sanctuary at Sepilok and the Sea Turtle Sanctuary (Sarawak I think). If you can make it over to Langkawi then that’s lovely too (away from the tourist bits).

Batu caves, KL city, Mount Kinabulu on Borneo, loads to see, and as said above stay away fro LP guides

You going to peninsular Malaysia only, or Sabah Sarawak too?

Get yourself over to Sumatera on a boat from Penang (Georgetown). It’ll be a real eye opener after the luxuries of Singapore and Malaysia. No doubt have changed since I was there in 1998 but as soon as we got off the boat in Medan it was a different world, far more exiting than the sterile Malaysia/Thai places. Ended up going overland all the way down Sumatera, through Java and over to Bali, Lombok and the Gilis. Fantastic few months. Volcanoes, surf, weird animals, lovely people.

Mind you, you’ll have fun anywhere off the beaten track in Asia.

Oh, yeah, if you do cross to sumatra, go to toba

Avoid Southern Thailand if possible due to insurgent. 😯

Cheers guys

Visit Sky bar at night and look out on to the towers and seat in one of the glass booths by the open air swimming pool on top of the hotel!!

Fly out to Tioman an island of the east coast just for the landing and taking off in a prop plane!!!!

I didn’t spend much time there, but we took a boat down from Koh Lipe to Langkawi, then on to Penang, Cameron Highlands, bus to KL, then an overnight train to Singapore.

Cameron Highlands were lovely – and a nice break from the heat. Go on a jungle trek from Tanah Rata with a guide (one of the hotels does a daily walk with a local guide for a small fee), and have a cream tea at one of the plantations. The food in Penang is sensational – it has the best Chinese, Indian and Malay food.

Don’t know much about the place

What does the panel suggest?

A little reading perhaps. Here’s two to get you started.
Wiki
Amnesty International

Kota Kinabalu is a nice place. The hotels are quite cheap. Last time I went I stayed in two different hotels one of the beach resort ones and one of the town centre ones. The beach resorts are pretty nice, they have tennis courts, cinemas, water sports..etc Then you can climb mount Kinabalu for Sunrise and the view is meant to be spectacular.

2nd Skybar. I was there for Grand Prix weekend (saturday night) and looking out at the Petronas Towers & firework display at midnight was awesome.

Apart from that, I wasn’t that fussed with KL

We’d read too many complaints about Sepilok Oragutan sanctuary, namely you were unable to get up close. Instead we tried Rasa Ria sanctuary – could almost touch them. When all the other tourists buggered off early the Rangers enticed one or two down to sit on them next to us.

Though there can be problems with getting too close – transmission of diseases etc.

Though there can be problems with getting too close – transmission of diseases etc.

It can happen with humans too

It can happen with humans too

Aye, but there are plenty of us left!

Definintely do Mt Kinabalu at sunrise, its excellent. Its a struggle getting yourself out of bed at 3 in the morning to get to the summit but its definitely worth it. there are some nice spa type hotels to ease tired legs after the walk down as well.

We’d read too many complaints about Sepilok Oragutan sanctuary, namely you were unable to get up close.

Yep. It’s a sanctuary, not a zoo. They are wild(ish) animals. You’re on fixed walkways through the jungle that they roam free in, so it’s up to them how close they get.

As it happens we had an orang walk down the walkway with us, leading the way like a tour guide. And another came down to say hello once we got to the view of the feeding station. 🙂

But I would have been happy enough just watching the big female feeding bananas to her baby while try to fend off the cheeky macaques.

If you want close experiences then at the turtle sanctuary we stayed up at night so we could go to the beach and watch a turtle come in and lay her eggs (at 3am). About 6 of us plus guide stood around this beautiful turtle as she plopped her eggs into the hole she dug. They go into a little trance as they lay, so she was oblivious to us quietly cooing, stroking her shell and the guide grabbing the eggs for the incubators.

Then afterwards we got to hold some freshly hatched turtle babies and release them to the sea! A very special and emotional moment for us. 😥

Just got back from 2 weeks in Malaysia, did Redang Island off the east coast, Penang and KL. Not too fussed on the cities, Penang was the better of the two, Redang was good. Beer is expensive with sin tax.

PS there are some MTB events, KL MTB festival 2 weeks ago and there is a 5 day stage race in Langkawi in Oct.