The Southeast Asia Travel Specialists Since 1999
Our 16-day West Malaysia and Borneo tour combines our Malaysia World Heritage tour of the Malay Peninsula with the Land Below the Wind tour of the Malaysian state of Sabah situated on the island of Borneo. The former section includes the highly contrasting sights of the capital Kuala Lumpur as well as the UNESCO-listed World Heritage Sites of Malacca, (now…
Current Sites With just 2 cultural and 2 natural sites inscribed on UNESCO’s Malaysia World Heritage list this section is going to be brief. Now, at first glance on a map, the little blob tagged onto the bottom of the Thai-Malay Peninsula does appear quite small, however, once you’ve added Borneo’s states of Sabah and Sarawak to the little ‘blob’…
A flight from north Sabah’s Sandakan to Kota Kinabalu Town on Borneo’s west coast was an often scenic but otherwise unremarkable flight although it was reassuring to fly over some still extensive forest cover. Alas, from ground level – especially aside highways – it can seem that the dreaded oil palm plantations stretch all the way to the horizon. Of…
As paradisical tropical islands go, Southeast Asia provides a lot of serious competition but we can think of very few that are so easily accessible and such great value for money as Malaysia’s Perhentian Islands. The twin islets, Besar and Kecil, (large and small Perhentian) are reached by a 30 to 40-minute speedboat ride from the small port of Kuala…
Malaysia World Heritage Sites includes 2 cultural sites in the Peninsular and a national park each in Borneo’s Sabah and Sarawak States. A further 2 candidates in the tentative section adds a second national park in Sarawak plus the famous Taman Negara in West Malaysia. Considering the country’s rich cultural heritage and stunning landscapes that’s a relatively poor return though…
Kuching, the ‘City of Cats’, is the capital of Malaysia’s Sarawak State on Borneo Island. (Note, that’s nothing to do with furry animals but the nickname actually derives from a tributary of the Sarawak River along which the city was founded and which in turn was named after a common local fruit, the cat’s eye longan.) Kuching was founded as…
Following on from our recent aerial pix of Penang’s George Town post here’s a few shots of some of the lovingly restored buildings of UNESCO-listed Chinatown Penang (Pinang) at street level. First up – the 19th-century Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Leith Street is probably the most iconic of George Town’s Chinese heritage buildings and certainly one of the most…
That’s aerial as in being high up rather than actually in an aeroplane since we took these George Town Penang views from the top floor of the town’s Komtar. Think it was the 65th floor – more of a helipad than a ‘floor’ as such since it consisted mostly of steel mesh rather than solid concrete – and we have…
Situated in eastern Sabah State, inland from the Malaysian coastal town of Lahad Datu, the magnificent Danum Valley is one of Borneo’s best-preserved stands of primary rainforest. It comprises of nearly 450 sq kilometres of lush, lowland tropical forest – sadly increasingly rare with the predominance of oil palms in the local economy. Danum is particularly rich in flora and…