From Vietnam to Malaysia

After three months of travelling through Vietnam, leaving the country felt a little strange. Vietnam had become familiar: we knew how to order food, how to navigate streets full of motorbikes, and how everyday life flowed around us. At the same time, moving to a new country was exciting and we wondered how different Malaysia would be from Vietnam.

We had a short flight from Da Nang to Kuala Lumpur, where we spent one night before continuing to Ipoh. Breaking the journey was intentional. We wanted to avoid the stress of rushing to catch a train after our flight and arriving in Ipoh late at night. Instead, we had time to rest, adjust, and start fresh the next morning.

Even our short ride from the airport to our one-night accommodation in Kuala Lumpur was enough to notice the contrast with Vietnam. Our driver spoke fluent English, the highway could easily have been in North America, cars far outnumbered motorbikes, and the few riders we saw all wore helmets. Our Grab ride was also considerably more expensive than in Hanoi. Yet despite these differences, Malaysia still felt unmistakably Asian.

The next day we boarded a train from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh.

The train left exactly on time.

It was not a luxury train, but for a two-hour journey it was very comfortable. The seats were spacious, there were electrical outlets and Wi-Fi, and soon the busy capital gave way to greener landscapes and limestone hills.

After Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh immediately felt like a completely different scale. There were no skyscrapers in sight, only a compact historic centre. Even the railway station where we stepped off the train was a colonial-era heritage building. For the next four weeks, Ipoh would be our home.

Our First Malaysian Home

When choosing our apartment in Ipoh, I was looking for a comfortable modern place: quiet, but still close enough to walk to the historic centre. The apartment seemed perfect: a spacious two-bedroom unit in a modern high-rise condominium, reasonably priced and surrounded by greenery. The building sat beside a river, with jungle-covered limestone cliffs rising nearby. On paper, it seemed like an ideal combination of city convenience and nature.

Reality was a little more complicated.

The first thing we discovered was that being surrounded by nature did not necessarily mean having easy access to it. The limestone cliffs that made the scenery so beautiful also created natural barriers. A large park beyond the cliffs was inaccessible from our side, and there were no walking trails through the jungle or along the river near our building.

As for the walk to the historic centre, which was indeed only about thirty minutes away, it did not happen very often. The walk itself was not pleasant as it was mostly along busy streets which were not designed with pedestrians in mind. Also, they did not provide any shade, and it was hot in Ipoh in March. Very hot.

However, we came for four weeks and had to make it work for us, one way or another. Surprisingly, the adjustment was not very hard.

Our apartment had no balcony. Later, we discovered that balconies are not always common in Malaysian condominiums. Fortunately, our unit was close to an open staircase on the side of the building, and one of the staircase landings became our unofficial balcony.

Every morning, we stepped outside to stretch, practice a few yoga poses and watch the sunrise. The view was incredible.

Our condo also introduced us to a different style of living.

The heat shaped our schedule. By mid-morning, the sun was already intense, and long walks on city streets became much less appealing than they had been in Vietnam. On hot days, we walked in the shaded condo park instead, surrounded by greenery and sheltered from the strongest sun by the tall buildings. After lunch, we often went to the gym, and in the evening, when temperatures finally dropped, we ventured out again.

On the days we went to explore Ipoh’s historical centre, we would use Grab, which was thankfully very inexpensive and saved us unpleasant hot walking. Slowly, we began to adjust to the Malaysian way of life in the tropics.

Learning to Eat in Ipoh

Once we settled in, our main priority was to sort out our meals. The first days were spent finding the closest supermarket, checking out the neighbourhood’s restaurants and, most importantly, exploring the local markets.

Ipoh’s central market provided a very different experience from the market scene we were familiar with in Vietnam. It was organized very strictly, with all vendors inside the market buildings rather than spilling into the surrounding streets. Inside, each product had its own clearly defined area.

Seafood and vegetables shared the main level while all fruit was located upstairs. For meat you had to go to the lower level where beef and lamb were displayed on the counters. But you could not find poultry there. It was in a completely separate building across the alley. Why did the chicken cross the road? I never found the answer to this “joke”.

We were impressed by the variety of whole dried fish on display. Apparently, it is an important ingredient in Malaysian cuisine. The fresh produce section felt more familiar, with many of the same greens we had seen in Vietnam, such as water spinach and mustard greens.

Restaurants offered another glimpse into Malaysian food culture.

We loved the variety of flavors influenced by Malay, Chinese and Indian traditions, but after a while we discovered that it was hard to find meals that matched our usual eating habits. Many dishes we saw relied heavily on deep frying, and after several attempts we returned more often to cooking at home.

Wild Side of Ipoh

One of the things that surprised us most about Ipoh was how close nature remained even in an urban environment.

The river running beside our condo became part of our daily surroundings. From dawn to dusk, the strip of jungle lining its banks echoed with birdsong. I even installed a bird recognition app on my phone to identify one particularly haunting call we heard every morning. To my surprise, it belonged to an Asian koel, a type of cuckoo that looks similar to the European cuckoo but sounds completely different.

But birds were just the beginning of our nature encounter in Ipoh.

After that day we began to see monitors in the river almost every day. They were large and looked slightly prehistoric, like small dragons, but we learned that they were harmless to humans.

Seeing these animals was special because we hadn’t travelled somewhere remote to find wildlife. They were simply part of the landscape around our home. From our apartment window we could see the sandy shallows of the Kinta River, and every now and then we would spot otters or monitor lizards moving through the water.

This was something we noticed throughout Malaysia. Compared with Vietnam, where we had surprisingly few wildlife encounters despite travelling through many beautiful natural areas, nature in Malaysia seemed much closer to everyday life.

Not Quite a Melting Pot

One of the biggest differences we noticed after arriving in Malaysia was how strongly the country’s three major cultural communities—Malay, Chinese and Indian—retained their own identities. Rather than blending into a single culture, they seemed to exist side by side.

We saw it everywhere. Languages, food, places of worship, festivals, even schools and cemeteries reflected different communities.

Malay is the official language, but English is widely spoken, which was incredibly convenient after months of relying heavily on Google Translate in Vietnam. We often found ourselves able to communicate easily in English even when we had no idea which local language would otherwise be appropriate.

During our month in Ipoh, we slowly began to recognize these different influences in everyday life. At first they were just observations. Later, as we explored the city’s history, we started to understand how they had come together to shape modern Malaysia.

Ramadan in Ipoh

Our month in Ipoh happened to coincide with Ramadan, which gave us another opportunity to understand daily life in Malaysia.

Over the weeks we watched how Ramadan shaped the rhythm of the city. Before sunrise, the melodious calls to prayer woke us up. As the sun went down, public spaces became gathering places where families came together to break their fast.

The park along the Kinta River was one such place, where temporary food stalls appeared, filling the evening with activity and conversation. There were performances and games for children as people gathered during one of the most important times of the year in Malaysia.

One day, while walking through the old town, we passed a mosque and decided to ask whether we could look inside. We had never visited a mosque before and were curious to learn more.

The caretaker welcomed us warmly.

I was curious and asked why Muslims fast during Ramadan. He explained that charity is an important part of the holy month and that fasting reminds people what hunger feels like.

As time went by, Ipoh no longer felt unfamiliar. It had become our introduction to Malaysia—not through a checklist of sights, but through four weeks of simply living there.

After learning the rhythm of daily life, we were ready to discover the stories of Ipoh hidden behind the streets, temples and limestone hills that surrounded us.