If you’ve been following my blog for a while, you know that besides posting all kinds of travel tips and guides I also have my travel diary section where I tell you everything I did and and saw in each country I visited. So even though I have already written a few articles about Singapore and Malaysia, it seems appropriate to also give you the whole breakdown of my travel itinerary for these two countries.

Why am I throwing Singapore and Malaysia together into one post? Simply because it doesn’t make much sense to create just a Singapore diary when you can already find out pretty much everything I did in this Asian city state in this post: Singapore in Pictures.

Travelling Singapore and Malaysia was a bit different to the rest of my Asia trip. After being on the road for six months and backpacking solo through Thailand, Vietnam, Japan, South Korea, China, Laos and Cambodia, I met up with my mum in Singapore and we spent three weeks together, travelling the Malay peninsula from south to north (starting in Singapore and ending in Phuket, Thailand).

SINGAPORE

I won’t go into a lot of details about Singapore. Like I said before, this post already contains everything I can tell you about my four days in Singapore (including my best photos!).

In short, however, Singapore is an expensive, futuristic and clean (not as clean as Japan though!) city and country in Southeast Asia. There are a lot of cool neighbourhoods and things to see, but in general, the Singaporean vibes didn’t really resonate with me. Instead, Singapore mostly felt a bit too artificial… (If you ask me, Hong Kong has a lot more character.)

But! At the time we were there, Singapore was celebrating its 53th birthday. There were flags all around the city and on Singapore National Day (9th August) we watched some fireworks and it felt like the entire population of Singapore was dressed in red and white, their national colours.

Here are the main points of interest in Singapore:

• Marina Bay Sands: The structure of the Marina Bay Sands hotel with its famous rooftop infinity pool has become a symbol of Singapore. We didn’t stay at this expensive hotel but at least went to the rooftop observation deck.
• Marina Bay: The downtown area of Singapore every visitor should walk around. You can find two Merlion statues and plenty of views of Marina Bay Sands here.
• Helix Bridge: The bridge in Marina Bay that looks like a DNA structure.
• Gardens by the Bay: Possibly the most unique gardens in the world.
• Little India: Singapore’s most colourful neighbourhood full of Indian food, street art and saari shops.
• Chinatown: Another fun district with the popular Buddha Tooth Relic temple.
• Sentosa: Singapore’s recreation island which is also the southernmost part of continental Asia.

MALAYSIA

After a few days in Singapore, it was time to explore the rest of the Malay peninsula. We took the bus straight to Kuala Lumpur (although if I ever come back to Malaysia, I’d love to stop in Malacca, which is about halfway between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur). I actually spent a lot less time in Malaysia than in other countries because my mum only had three weeks to see Singapore, Malaysia and southern Thailand which meant we had to travel a lot faster than I had done up to this point.

We spent ten days in Malaysia and stopped in Kuala Lumpur, Cameron Highlands, Ipoh and Penang. Langkawi, Perhentian Islands or Taman Negara will have to wait for next time.

Kuala Lumpur

While the Malaysian capital might not be as futuristic as Singapore, it had the coolest (and affordable) accommodation I have ever stayed at. Looking over the city from our rooftop infinity pool was my favourite activity in Kuala Lumpur! Check out this post to find out how you can stay there, too. 😉

Below are the main things we saw in Kuala Lumpur. For a more detailed guide of this city, go here.

• Petronas Towers: These iconic twin towers must be number one on any Kuala Lumpur itinerary…
• KL Tower: The tallest tower in Southeast Asia.
• KL Forest Eco Park: Really awesome green space in the heart of the city.
• Sultan Abdul Samad Building: Beautiful majestic government building on Merdeka Square.
• Jamek Mosque: Oldest mosque in Kuala Lumpur surrounded by rivers and fountains.
• Chinatown: Busy Chinese neighbourhood, great for shopping and food.
• Batu Caves: Very crowded religious and tourist site that was basically under construction (but still open) when we visited. Overrated.

Cameron Highlands

From Kuala Lumpur we headed to Cameron Highlands to cool down a little. The town of Tanah Rata is a great base for some hiking or trips to the nearby tea plantations, strawberry farms, lavender farms and all kinds of other activities. Read my full blog post about Cameron Highlands here.

Ipoh

Next up: Two nights in Ipoh, which is apparently the non-touristy Penang. Ipoh is a charming little town with some impressive architecture and above all, loads and loads of street art! So yeah, basically spent two days chasing all the best murals in town…

Check out the best street art of Ipoh in this post! (I’ve shared all the exact locations with you, too. 😉 )

Penang

And finally, Penang island. We spent majority of our time in George Town, Malaysia’s second largest city. George Town is amazing and rightfully a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You can walk here for hours admiring the cute colourful houses and street art. It is very busy, though. While in Ipoh you pretty much always have the murals to yourself, in George Town you usually have to queue if you want a picture with some of the most popular artworks by Ernest Zacharevic.

Beyond George Town, we decided to venture out to Penang Hill where you are supposed to have a great view of the island. You have to take a cable car to go up. When we arrived at the bottom of the hill, it looked like there was almost no queue so we bought the cable car tickets thinking we would be on top of the hill in no time. Turns out, that couldn’t have been further from the truth!

Once you join the cable car queue, you slowly move from one room to another thinking you must be at the boarding point soon. But nope! There’s always another room with another part of the queue you previously didn’t see… We spent two hours waiting to board the cable car. Then when we finally made it to Penang Hill, it was such a commercial and loud place that we barely spent an hour there (and half of it was spent eating because we were starving). Plus the view was quite hazy so we didn’t see very far. Let’s just say, if we had to go through it all again, we wouldn’t. Feel free to skip Penang Hill on your trip.

And that’s all we managed to see in Singapore and Malaysia. My mum and I travelled from Penang straight to southern Thailand where we spent our final week together, before mum flew back home and I continued my solo journey to Myanmar! But I will tell you about all that next time 😉

Read all the parts of my travel diary from Asia here.

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