Malaysia - anyone been?

[rookiemere]

I'm looking at changing holiday dates because of a new jobs holiday period, we have Avios free BA flights and Kuala Lumpur has come up as a possibility.
It would be last week of March/first week April ( to straddle holiday leave year ).
We would like to do a bit of exploring- particularly like wildlife, nature and historical sights. It would just be two adults as DS is off to university now.
Ideally don't want to hire a car.
Has anyone been ? Any thoughts please?

It’s one of my favourite places in the world for food. Wildlife-wise, visiting orang utans in Borneo is once-in-a-lifetime, but you’d need an internal flight as a separate island.

Georgetown (Penang) and Malacca are fascinating historical places. Beaches at Langkawi.

Decent infrastructure and lovely people.

It’s a great mix. I’d go in a heartbeat.

I've spent a lot of time in Malaysia. KL is a cool capital, Penang is a fascinating Island and Langkawi has lovely beaches and mangroves. Ipoh is quite a typical Malay town and over the other side you have islands fabulous for snorkelling such as Rawa and Tioman. If you get a chance to go to Borneo the orangutans are an incredible experience

Great responses thank you .

Is it easy enough to organise ourselves do you think? What's the best way to get to different places if we don't want to hire a car ?

And we would definitely consider a flight to Borneo.

I loved Borneo. Great mix of culture, beaches, nature. I also really enjoyed a day trip we did from KL to see the fireflies and the visit to the Cameron Highlands (mainly because it was cooler!). Never done the main beach resorts but friends have enjoyed those.

Transport wise, I went a while ago but pretty sure it was easy enough getting buses everywhere. We didn't have a car. I was travelling on a budget though but pretty sure we went in air conditioned coaches mostly.

Look on BBC iPlayer at the last series of Race Across The World (one before the celeb one currently showing). They cross Malaysia in that one, near the end. The buses are excellent.

Air Asia local flights are great and cheap as chips.

We had a few days in KL, got a train to Penang for a week (took all day but a 1h flight) and finished up by flying to Singapore for a few dahs and flying home from there

a great hol. KL not that interesting but fun for 2-3 days.
Penang was great though the beaches were disappointing. Fascinating city (Georgetown) and lots of nature/jungle type stuff to do (impressive Iguanas just hanging out)

We went KL and Langkawi this year . Thoroughly enjoyed .
You don't need that much time in KL as quite a small city . We flew to Langkawi .
I would have added in another place as well really for 2 weeks stay as Langkawi is just beaches really.
Ask trailfinders to plan it out .

Thank you everyone sounds very promising as we would like a mixture of activity and beach.

Unfortunately because we have the flights we are restricted to local travel agencies I think.

You could go old school, do they still publish Lonely Planet?

I am planning to take the kids in 2026. You Tube has tons of video's on KL, Penang and Langkawi. Penhentian islands on the east coast look absolutely amazing as well but abit out of the way for us. We are planning 3 nights KL, 5 nights in Penang (still debating on stopping in Ipoh on the way) and then 6 nights in Langkawi. Probably bus or train from KL to Penang so we can see some of the countryside and then flights from Penang to Langkawi and flight back to KL to return home.
We will be going Easter hols so don't want to plan too much and do Borneo as well - think that will be a separate trip for us.

My DD and I went to Borneo this June and loved it (flights to KL then onto Sandakan using AirAsia) - booked direct and was fine.

Sepilok was great - stayed in Sepilok Nature Resort though there are two with very similar names - the one next the orangutans with tropical gardens and a lake, and loved it. Visited orangutan sanctuary, sunbears and rainforest discovery centre and Agnes Newton Keith's house in Sandakan and tea gardens, went at 10am and had whole gardens to ourselves. Kinabatangan River was amazing for wildlife spotting - stayed at Last Frontier Boutique Resort and loved it, does have 600 wooden steps up which you need to do a few times a day - boat trips there on which we saw pygmy elephants, orangutan, crocodile, probiscis monkeys, various other monkeys and lots of beautiful birds. Only thing is don't know how that time of year compares weather and wildlife wise. Much better value to book directly. The jungle hotel did transfers very cheaply.

PPs have mentioned my highlights, so just to add weight to the fact that Malaysia is a great place to visit. Been a few times and loved it. The buses are super easy (much of the public transport system is based on the UK's so very easy to understand).

If you're off to Borneo, I'd recommend staying in Kuching and doing an orangutan trip from there and also a mangrove river tour. Kuching is a lovely little city too with loads of colonial history.

You could also easily visit Singapore too if you wanted to while over there. 3-4 days would be plenty in Singapore and 2-3 in KL. For living in, I'd 100% choose KL, but there's not as much for tourists to visit as in Singapore. Depends if you wanted to weight your visit to more cities.

Cameron Highlands and Perhentian Islands (for diving) are on my bucket list. Langkawi is a lovely beach resort with luxury hotels, but not much else. Georgetown in Penang great. An amazing food culture (best food in Malaysia imo) and art everywhere (shops, galleries, wall murals). Make sure to visit the Chinese jetties and the botanical garden is worth seeing too

Malaysia is a great place to go on holiday, me and DH went about 10 years ago. I really liked KL, we ate a lot of extremely hot noodles from hole in the wall places. I still think of the food we ate now, that's how good it was.

I struggled in the heat because of the humidity, I'd never been anywhere like that before - i ended up with heatstroke and had to have a day in bed in the hotel. I was fine after that!

Langkawi is lovely. This thread is thinking maybe we need to go back and see orangutans in Borneo!

We loved Malaysia. We travelled between KL, Malacca, Ipoh and the Perhentian islands using the trains and night buses plus a little boat for the last leg to the islands. The food was delicious, the people were friendly, the scenery was beautiful, and the transport system was cheap and efficient. We stayed in a mixture of hotels, hostels and beach huts, and received a great level of hospitality at all, although the hostels were the best. We sadly didn't have time to visit Borneo or Singapore, but the areas we did visit were so incredibly different from each other.
DH is black and we have had holidays in the past where he experienced overt racism, he's been stared at wherever he's gone, or we have had unpleasant treatment from being a mixed couple, but we had no issues at all in Malaysia.
I agree with PPs that KL is good for a couple of days but not a whole holiday. We had a couple of nights in KL at each end of the holiday, which felt like plenty.

If somebody offered me tickets to return, I'd go back in a heartbeat.

Malaysia has some of my very favourite places! KL is such an easy capital to visit - compact, affordable and easy to get around.
The train system is excellent- if you stay on the peninsula there really is no need to fly anywhere. Late March/early April will be very hot on the west coast and just coming out of the monsoon on the east.
If I was going for a couple of weeks I’d spend 3 nights in KL, 5 nights in Penang and 5 nights in Langkawi or Tioman (if I wanted to go to the beach and collapse in a big heap) or head into Taman Negara via Ipoh if I wanted to do more stuff.
Then get the train back to KL and stay a night at one of the hotels at Sentral station before getting the train back to the airport.

Lots to do in Penang but I wouldn’t stay at Batu Ferringhi as it’s far from the historical/culture of Georgetown and the beach has been swept away. Either choose a colonial property in Georgetown or a modern affair at Gurney.

Have fun!

Borneo is amazing. I went there on honeymoon and it was just the best. The wildlife is fantastic.

I'm from Malaysia originally. Family from Penang although I grew up in KL, so both are places I know extremely well. Others have already given you lots of excellent ideas for destinations.

If you don't want to hire a car (fair enough, even I find Malaysian driving scary), there are many options:

Within most towns/cities, we all use the Grab app (equivalent to Uber) to get around - very convenient and inexpensive, you can link the app to a pre-loaded credit card or a PayPal account if you want to avoid scrabbling for cash after every ride.
In KL, the mass transit options (LRT, MRT, monorail) are plentiful, cheap, air-conditioned, clean and easy to navigate.
In other cities e.g. Georgetown, public buses are also cheap and usually quite easy with the aid of Google Maps.
Long distance, for major destinations I prefer the trains, but most Malaysians love long-distance coaches which literally go everywhere and are super-cheap.
Another excellent option which is a bit more pricey is to hire a driver to take you around, there are lots if you Google or look on Facebook and they generally have comfortable, large, modern and air-conditioned vehicles - you can hire them for a specific journey (local or long-distance), or for a period of time.*

BTW, March/April is still monsoon season on the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia.

*Anecdote: A few years ago, I met a lady who had just come back from a group holiday in Malaysia. She told me they had hired a people-carrier with a driver, all was excellent and they were very happy with the service. She said her only complaint was that it was very hot in the car without air-conditioning. My face was all because I honestly haven't encountered any kind of passenger vehicle in Malaysia without air-conditioning for about 4 decades. Afterwards, DH and I were speculating that the driver must have specially unearthed an antique van to give his guests a more "vintage" experience

Thanks all, some good ideas to consider.

I seem to remember that you can’t take your cat on the monorail in KL. Something else to consider…

Lovely country.

Check NHS Fit for Travel but I believe Borneo is a malaria zone.