Malaysia Final Thoughts

We fell into this trip really. We had planned to re-sign at our last university, however for several reasons we decided to move and, thanks to changing our visa, needed a simple and cheap trip for our 2 month summer break. Cheap and easy flights to Malaysia and Thailand were all we could really find at short notice, and as we had done Thailand 4 months before decided to head back to Malaysia. The biggest thing that we learned was to do more planning and research next time. Planning and booking on the go doesn’t really work for us anymore, and we prefer a set up trip with everything sorted in the weeks leading up to it (or at least ideas on where we will go). A far cry from a few years ago when we used to keep everything fully flexible.
Sarawak and Brunei in Borneo were by far our favourite spots. The nature was stunning and the places very genuine, along with the people. Not like the fakness and abruptness of JB, the hordes of tourists in Melaka, or the far too touristy KK.
As for costs, we forked out around NZD6,500 for our 2 months all in, including flights and currency exchange costs. Pretty much what we expected which is good.
The one thing we won’t miss however is the food. We found everything either coated in masses of oil, or full of so much sugar that it was nearly inedible. In fact, for about the last week we survived on Subway sandwiches, as it was not swimming in oil or coated in kilos of sugar. How Malaysians aren’t all diabetic I don’t know.

4 months of work at our new university awaited us before our next trip, a huge bucket list item and a much needed foray out of Asia: Greece.