Places to visit in Malaysia

Legoland Malaysia outside Johor Bahru is just north of Singapore, in the far south of Malaysia. We visited with our kids, then 7 and 9, making a special trip south from Kuala Lumpur and Melacca, just to visit Legoland Malaysia and the Legoland Water Park next door. You will find honest reviews for both on our …

By popular demand, here are our experiences of hotels near Legoland Malaysia Johor Bahru. We had a really good time at Legoland Malaysia and at the Legoland Water Park, right next door. You will certainly need an absolute minimum of two full days in the parks here, a 3 night hotel stay.  You could easily …

I’ve been really struggling with this travel thing lately. After the first couple of days in Malacca, loving the ancient buildings and churches, I reached total travel burn out and chucked a great big girly tantrum.  I was over it. We had a run of bad experiences, including my favourite T-shirt being stolen and our …

Keeping the children happy in Malacca isn’t hard at all. The town is bright, colourful and filled with interesting sights, tastes and smells. There are forts and canons to climb on, great museums and great shops. If you need more to keep the kids busy, we found plenty of things to do in Malacca with …

Malacca doesn’t seem to be much of a backpacker town, most of the tourists we see are local and/or considerably richer than us, which isn’t hard. Maybe all the backpackers are in other districts rather than the Old Town. Finding cheap accommodation ( for a family of 4 in particular) in Malacca has been tricky. …

Malacca is a strange place. Arriving on the bus from Kuala Lumpur, on motorways that could easily have been in Surrey, I felt as if we’d left Asia. It was all a bit too Western. We got off the bus at Malacca Sentral, not to be greeted by touts, but by helpful people pointing us in the direction …

There are many and varied places to eat out in Batu Ferringhi, from Mc Donalds to The Hard Rock Hotel and everything in between. You’ll also find numerous region specific speciality restaurants including Thai and Lebanese. It’s a lovely spot and well worth a stay. We spent 10 days in Batu Ferringhi on a fairly …

Stunning Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang Kek Lok Si temple, the largest Buddhist temple in the region, was high on my list of places to visit on Penang.  I think it’s possibly the prettiest temple I’ve ever visited, each section of Kek Lok Si  has its own charming style and the temple and it’s compound …

I thought this photo of huge spiders came out pretty well, so I’m making it photo of the week. This was part of  Penang Butterfly Farm, it’s a nice little place, you can wander around among the glorious tropical butterflies, hold giant millipedes ( we had another drama there, Facebook page followers would know all about that …

The kids and I went to Fort Cornwallis in Georgetown, Penang yesterday, I posted a photo on my Facebook page and Suzi asked me ” What’s in Fort Cornwallis?” So here, just for Suzi, is a brief run-down on Penang’s historic fort. We also have a full post on things to do in Penang if …

Malaysia is in the middle of an environmental catastrophe. If you read my last post, things we didn’t like about Kuala Lumpur, you’ll remember me mentioning the air pollution.  I didn’t realise what was going on back then. Vast quantities of smoke from fires on Sumatra are blowing across the straits of Malacca engulfing Singapore …

Kuala Lumpur isn’t perfect. We’ve had a great time, seen some cool and interesting things, enjoyed excellent cheap and free public transport, eaten some fantastic food and stayed in top-notch accommodation, but all cities have their drawbacks. Kuala Lumpur has some not-so-nice bits, too. This post is about the negatives of Kuala Lumpur that we …