Gardens by the Bay and Sentosa in Singapore, the old town of Malacca, the Petronas Towers and Batu Caves in Kuala Lumpur, finishing with the Genting cable car.
Photo: Bambi Corro / Unsplash
Day 1
The group meets at Da Nang International Airport for the flight to Singapore, connecting as the airline schedule requires. Your guide meets you at Changi Airport and transfers you to the hotel. Depending on landing time, the evening is free to walk around Bugis or Chinatown near the hotel.
Day 2
The morning is at Gardens by the Bay, built on reclaimed land, where eighteen Supertrees between 25 and 50 metres tall carry climbing plants and solar cells. You go inside both conservatories: the Flower Dome and the Cloud Forest, which holds a 35-metre indoor waterfall. In the afternoon we stop at Merlion Park for the lion-fish statue on Marina Bay, then cross to Sentosa by cable car or monorail. There is an outdoor water and light show in the evening before we return to the hotel.
Day 3
We clear the land border into Malaysia and continue to Malacca, a port that was Portuguese, then Dutch, then British in turn. You visit Dutch Square with its red-painted buildings and Christ Church of 1753, climb St Paul's Hill for the church ruin and the A Famosa gate, and walk along Jonker Street. In the afternoon we drive about two hours on to Kuala Lumpur and check in.
Day 4
The morning is at the Petronas Towers, 452 metres and the tallest buildings in the world until 2004, then Merdeka Square with the copper-domed Sultan Abdul Samad Building and its 95-metre flagpole. In the afternoon we drive out to Batu Caves on the northern edge of the city, a limestone cave shrine to Lord Murugan reached by 272 brightly painted steps, with a 42.7-metre bronze statue of the deity at the foot. Keep hold of your belongings — the macaques here are entirely unafraid of people.
Day 5
An hour's drive brings us to the foot of the Genting plateau, where the Awana SkyWay cable car carries you over rainforest to the summit complex at around 1,800 metres, usually a good ten degrees cooler than Kuala Lumpur. You have free time in the shops and the park at the top; on the way down we stop at Chin Swee Temple, built partway up the mountain. We return to Kuala Lumpur in the early evening, with free time for shopping in Bukit Bintang.
Day 6
After checking out there is time to buy chocolate, Ipoh white coffee and pewterware. Your guide sees the group through check-in at Kuala Lumpur International Airport for the flight back to Da Nang, where the programme ends.
This is two countries in one trip, which only works because Singapore and Malaysia are joined by road. We fly into Changi, travel overland through Malacca to Kuala Lumpur and fly home from there — no doubling back, which saves close to a day against returning to the same airport.
Day three is the long one: land border formalities, a stop in Malacca, then the run up to Kuala Lumpur. The wait at the Woodlands–Johor crossing is unpredictable — sometimes quick, sometimes an hour or more — so we leave early and put nothing else in that evening.
The two countries differ more than the distance between them suggests: Singapore tidy and expensive, Malaysia larger and considerably cheaper, and Malacca carrying the marks of three colonial periods layered on top of each other. Bring both currencies. Group size, hotel category and departure dates are agreed before the contract is signed.
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