Round up of our three weeks in Malaysia

Malaysia has been absolutely incredible. Such a fun varied experience and there wasn’t one place here I didnt enjoy. It is cheap, the food is incredible and the people are extremely friendly!

• KL- was my favourite big city I’ve ever visited, it was really clean, easy to get around, plenty to do and lots of food to try. We stayed at the dreamville hostel which had a cool backpacker vibe. Wish we spent an extra day here, if you visit make sure you visit the Sky Bar for the best view of the Petronas Towers! The Batu caves and the night markets here were also well worth a visit and all of this can be done for free. 
• Taman Negara rain forest was good fun, we spent 5 days camping here at Danz eco resort which was hard work but fun! Be prepared to get sweaty, smelly and see plenty of bugs here. The canopy walk was good, don’t use a guide and you’ll save a few quid.. the rapid shooting was great but I don’t know if I’d visit the nomadic village again as the people were pretty arrogant and weren’t in the slightest bit poor. The food here was really good and cost next to nothing.. to be honest we hardly spent anything during our time here I’d guess averaging at about £12 per day including accommodation and trips.. it would be less if I didn’t eat so much!
• Spent a few days at the Tok Aman Bali hotel in Kuala Besut to chill and get our shit together after being dirty rainforest tramps. Wasn’t too much to do here but the hotel was awesome and the food was great! Just caught up on some rest as we knew we’d be busy on the islands. It was an absolute bargain at £15 per night each including a lovely all you can eat breakfast buffet. 
• The Perhentian islands we’re hands down my favourite place we’ve visited so far. We stayed at the Barat resort in a lovely beach hut. Theres not much here to do bar snorkel, dive and chill on the beach but it’s incredible and me and paige both loved every second. Thsee islands are beautiful and nowhere near as touristy as other islands I’ve visited. Every night we ate a BBQ on the beach consisTing of different fish, chicken, lamb, potatoes and vegetables.. i think I could eat this for the rest of my life and not get bored! The views were amazing, the beaches were beautiful, we saw lots of fish, turtles, stingray and jellyfish lol. As expected it was alot more expensive than the other parts of Malaysia we visited for accommodation and food but worth every penny.. however to put this in perspective it’s still much cheaper than moat places in Europe, juSt dear for this part of the world!
• Penang was a cool island on the west coast which is famous for its great food and street art. We stayed at guesthouse 109 in Georgetown. There’s plenty to see and do here for free! The best food we found were at the local hawker centres which offered a large variety of food and drink including Malaysian, western and BBQ for good prices. It’s full of locals with a good atmosphere and free musical performances all evening. We spent 3 days here and it was about right.. if you’re a real foodie you’ll want longer!

All in all we had a cracking time in Malaysia, definitely a pleasant surprise as apart from the Perhentian we didnt know too much about it! Can definitely recommend this as a holiday destination and even somewhere you can bring kids. We didn’t move around as much as we did in Sri Lanka, which I personally preferred (only visiting 5 places in 3 weeks instead of 6). Despite being only 1 place less it felt a much more relaxed pace and gave us more time to explore and enjoy our stays.. plus travel days are alot harder than you think! I’d recommend all our accommodation that we stayed in whilst in Malaysia, wit the exception of maybe the rain forest.. I personally enjoyed it but can imagine it’s not suited to everyone!

Money wise we spent around £730 for 3 weeks which was slightly more than Sri Lanka. Overall I’d say Malaysia was cheaper than Sri Lanka but spending a week at the Perhentian islands definitely jumped our budget up considerably (completely worth it!). I’d say this was a middle of the road figure as we didn’t splash out needlessly but definitely enjoyed our food and stayed in reasonably comfy backpacker accommodation (bar the tent in the rainforest lol). I’d guess if you were on a really tight budget you could probably half this figure by staying in shared dorms and eating less meat and less often whilst still getting a similar experience!