We’re Going to Malaysia!

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Air Asia had a fantastic flight sale on, we are going to Malaysia from The Gold Coast for just under $800 for all 4 of us. The flight sale was about to end, so we clicked the “buy” button. At that price we really couldn’t turn it down. We leave to travel the world in just over four months, earlier than planned, but still plenty of time to finish organising everything at this end.

Why did we pick Malaysia to start our family travel adventure?

 Price And Convenience. Our nearest airport is Cairns, very few direct flights leave Cairns, we’ve often found ourselves flying via Brisbane or Darwin, sometimes even Sydney. We enjoy flying, but hours in the air aren’t good for anyone, so a direct flight, at a good price, from an airport that isn’t ridiculously far away ( by Australian standards), is a winner. It will take just over 24hrs non stop driving to get to The Gold Coast airport, we’ve done it before, it’s not so bad. We’ll have sold our lovely four wheel drive truck by then, but we’ll work something out, I like the idea of hiring a camper van and spending a few days driving down.

Weather In July most of South East Asia will be in the middle of its wet season. Malaysia doesn’t get that so much, rainfall and temperatures are pretty steady all year round. We really didn’t want to find ourselves in floods in Bangkok or Ayutthaya.  This way we can head north into Thailand by train and be there at the best time of year.

We’ve Never Been There Before. Always a good reason to go somewhere! We’ve never been, so it’s about time we did. Malaysia has never been high on my bucket list, it didn’t get a mention in our original trip planning ( where are we going to go?) but I’ve had my nose in the Malaysia Lonely Planet for the last few days and it looks FABULOUS! Lots of variety, easy to get around, expensive for South East Asia, but still good value and brilliant food. Both the boys are pretty keen, they’ve been reading along with me, Boo will have his 7th birthday a few days after he arrives, we’ve promised him something special.  

Find our Posts on Malaysia With Children Here

Update: we arrived in Malaysia over a week ago, here are our Malaysia posts so far. Kuala Lumpur, Getting Around and a Rollercoaster Kuala Lumpur, Batu Caves, Petronas Towers and Petrosains Kuala Lumpur Chinatown, Temples, Street Food and Hedgehogs World Travel Family is currently in Malaysia and having lots of adventures, we will add more posts as we go, check out the South East Asia, Malaysia link in the right hand column or sign up for email updates to follow our journey.

Onward From Malaysia

We will have a 3 month visa, plenty of time to explore all of Malaysia. While we’re there we’ll do Singapore and Brunei, pop over to Malaysian Borneo to visit the orangutangs ( bucket lister!). After that we could easily catch the train up into Thailand or maybe fly to Bali and explore more of Indonesia.

Komodo Island is very high on the bucket list. I’m not sure if we need to have an onward flight out of Malaysia, sometimes it’s required for entry into a country, sometimes it’s not.

We’ll work that out when we come to it, we can always book a refundable or flexible ticket and change it later. So that’s all I have to say today, we’re going to Malaysia and I’m excited!  

\My new backpack has arrived from the US and I found a great pair of trekking shoes in a sale, so things are moving along nicely. If you’d like to stick around to find out how our family travel adventure turns out, please enter your email address in the box below and follow us around the world. Thanks!

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