Malaysia Travel Guide to Top Tourist Attractions
As a multicultural country, Malaysia offers tourists so much to see, despite their budge or what attractions they consider most appealing or what their concept of fun may be. The country's capital, Kuala Lumpur is a cosmopolitan, bustling city bursting with stunning architecture and incredible shopping, and within only blocks, you'll locate colonial buildings like palaces and even ultramodern Petronas Towers.
Just a brief driving distance away from Kuala Lumpur, there are many activities to do, whether at islands with gorgeous golden beaches, mountains with amazing views, caves and caverns hiding all sorts of natural wonders, endless temples to an exciting opportunity to pretend you're a ruthless head-hunter as you tour through Borneo's fauna-rich jungle.
Malaysia also is popular for scuba diving and snorkeling, with soft sandy beaches and stunning coral reefs that consistently top destination lists.
For great ideas on what to explore, continue reading my Malaysia travel guide to find the top tourist attractions in Malaysia.
1) Petronas Twin Towers. As the world's highest twin towers, the Petronas soar a spectacular height of 452 dizzying meters into the far sky. These towers are eighty-eight floors tall and have a grand total of seventy-six elevators.
Constructed and reinforced with materials like glass, steel, and concrete, a double skybridge connects the two towers to each other on the forty-one and forty-second floors. Tourists could ascend up here for amazing sights of the huge KLCC Park just below, but the views are especially impressive at night.
Though the majority of the towers' floors are leased to companies, Microsoft, IBM, and Huawei Technologies have offices here, and the lowest floors rented to Suria KLCC, a massive shopping center, in fact, one of Malaysia's largest. With more than 300 stores, a fine art gallery, including a Phillharmonic Hall, the mega entertainment and retail area can easily trap visitors for hours.
2) Batu Caves. Situated under one hour from Malaysia's capital, the complex of the Batu Caves comprises 3 chief caves and a series of little ones, of which contain statues and even one-hundred-year-old shrines in dedication to Hindu gods.
The chief cave, known better as Cathedral Cave, sits high up on an enormous colorful staircase, and when you climb all 272 steps, you'll discover a room decorated with lights, statues, and altars. At the foot of the staircase, a gold statue standing 43 meters tall, greets visitors with that unsmiling stoic-like gaze.
Tourists are permitted to wander through the caves either alone on a personal self-guided basis or with a guided tour in order to extract more information about the caves. 1000s of people throng to these caves in January to celebrate the Hindu Festival of Thaipusam.
3) Mount Kinabalu. At a little more than four-thousand meters tall, Mount Kinabalu happens to be Malaysia's highest mountain, which is part of the well-known Kinabalu Park, one of Malaysia's oldest national parks, and even a UNESCO World Heritage Site. Since its one-of-a-kind ecosystem combines shrublands, alpine meadows, and grasslands, Kinabalu provides a home to an admirable variety of animal and plant species, as well as the threatened orangutans.
Though Mount Kinabalu is a significant destination for many serious climbers, summiting here could be tricky. The park issues just 185 climb permits per day, and visitors must both reserve accommodation and pay for a mountain guide ahead to be permitted to use the trails. Despite people less than 16 years of age can join climbing groups, know that restrictions exist.
Climbers are advised to plan a short stay at the park prior to trying to reach the top, for the park itself sits at a high altitude of more than 1,800 meters, of which will go far to allowing much needed acclimatization, especially for novices, before actually attempting to climb to the peak.
4) Sepilok Orangutan Rehabilitation Centre. Founded in 1964, the center assists in rescuing orphaned orangutan infants from illegal hunting or from pet trade. The center's chief goal is to teach these wonderful animals how to survive in their natural habitat, so then they could be finally allowed to roam freely in the Kabili-Sepilok Forest Reserve, covering in unspoiled forest and stretching for 4,300 hectares that surround the rescue center. More than eighty orangutans presently live in the reserve.
Although tourists can't interact directly with them, nor approach them, however, they could come here to learn much more about orangutans such as the real challenges they face now, visit the nursery and climbing space, and even attend feeding sessions twice daily.
The boardwalk which cuts throughout the center provides many chances to observe these animals playing and climbing all over on the trees standing close by.
5) Kek Lok Si Temple. As Malaysia's biggest Buddhist temple sitting on a hill, but at the base of Air Itam mountain, Kek Lok Si is quite new, for construction started in 1890, except the enormous 7-floored Pagoda, surrounded by ten thousand Buddha statues, have raised the overall status of this general area, making the striking destination impossible to miss.
Surrounded by prayer halls, fishponds, gardens, and stalls selling secular and religious items, the pagoda houses a very high Kwan Yin statue, the Buddhist goddess of mercy.
In fact, the temple draws several tourists from all over Southeast Asia, who come here to earn "merits" and to see the most significant pilgrimage site. Chinese New Year festivities are especially lively at the temple, for the whole area gets decorated with a sea of lanterns.
