Organizing a trip to Malaysia is not as easy as it seems, mostly because so many tough choices have to be made. The country offers a real wealth of travel opportunities, and unless you have six weeks or more at hand, you can’t fit it all in. You will have to decide what to focus on – and that means leaving things out.
The first decision is whether to focus on the peninsula or to also include northern Borneo. For obvious time reasons, even with three weeks, we decided to skip Borneo altogether. It’s a genuine trade-off, but trying to add it would have meant rushing everything else.
The next decision is the focus of the trip itself. There’s no shortage of beaches and islands to choose from – the Perhentians, of course, but also Tioman and Langkawi. Then there’s the question of the jungle: do you add Taman Negara or not? We decided against it. We’d been to Costa Rica the year before, and even though Malaysia is very different, wildlife and jungle simply weren’t a priority for us this time. And finally there are the cities, which can easily fill a lot of days: Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, Melaka, George Town. With three kids, the real difficulty is striking a good balance between all of these – enough beach time to keep everyone happy, without turning the trip into one long string of city visits.
This is also where a practical point comes in that we’d underestimated: some reservations need to be made far in advance. The Perhentian Islands are the clearest example. Seven months ahead, we were already left with only a few possibilities – and we heard that five months out, everything is booked.
Then there’s the question of whether to add Singapore. We did, for a couple of reasons: some friends are expats there, we had never been, and it’s an easy point of entry, with a lot of flights arriving. If you’re coming from far away, it makes a logical place to start.
