Our favorite places in Malaysia
Centuries-old trading ports, 130-million-year-old jungle, and beaches to rival the Maldives – all accompanied by hyper-modern megamalls, fabulous hotels, and some of the best food in the world: this is Asia dashing headlong into the future.
Connected to the Asian mainland by the long, thin spit of southern Thailand and separated from its Bornean territory by the South China Sea, Peninsular Malaysia has a fairly low profie on the world travel stage. Try to picture it. What do you see? The rocket-like profile of the Petronas Towers, perhaps, but probably not much else. And there’s, so, so much more.
For a start, it has some of the very best beaches in Asia. We mean it – Maldives eat your heart out. Its world-class culinary scene is an explosion of influences from across the continent, and its rainforests harbor tigers, leopards, bears and elephants. There are other countries with similar accolades, but there are perhaps none where you can do it all in English, on transport that runs like clockwork, while shopping in cutting-edge megamalls and enjoying super-fast 4G service. Malaysia is Southeast Asia made easy.
“Kuala Lumpur rises up out of steamy, equatorial, Southeast Asian jungle, Malaysia’s capital city — a chaotic, multiethnic, multicultural modern metropolis of Malay, Chinese, and Indian.” Anthony Bourdain
