Malaysia: Where the Food Is Supreme, the Jungle Is Ancient, and Everyone Is Obsessed with Durian

Welcome to Malaysia, a country so gloriously multicultural that you can eat breakfast at a traditional Indian mamak stall, grab lunch at a Chinese noodle house, and finish dinner with a Malay feast—all while arguing with locals about which street food vendor makes the absolute best Nasi Lemak.

It’s a place of absurdly cool contrasts. In Kuala Lumpur, you’ve got the iconic Petronas Towers cutting through the skyline, surrounded by mega-malls, rooftop bars, and hyper-modern highways. But step just thirty minutes outside the city, and you’ll find the Batu Caves, where you’ll climb 272 brightly painted steps while dodging cheeky, gang-affiliated monkeys whose sole purpose in life is stealing your iced coffee and snacks.

Then there’s the nature. Malaysia is home to (part of) Borneo, a wild paradise filled with ancient rainforests, head-hunting history, and adorable wild orangutans swinging through the canopy. And let's not forget the "King of Fruits"—the legendary Durian. It’s a spiky fruit so notoriously stinky that it’s legally banned from most hotels and public transit, yet locals eat it like it's literal gold.

Between sweating through your shirt five minutes after stepping outside, marveling at pristine tropical islands like Langkawi, and learning that "lah" is an all-purpose word tacked onto the end of every sentence, Malaysia is warm, flavor-packed, and wildly entertaining. Just keep a firm grip on your camera around the monkeys, embrace the humidity, and always say yes to extra sambal!

October, 2012