Malaysia

You wouldn't know it from the sunburnt buildings, fishing boats on the bay and slow tropical pace, but Kudat used to be an important trading post and the capital of Borneo back in the late 19th century. Some of the streets have Chinese names, harking back to the British colonial administration's request to the Chinese to come and run its coconut plantations. Many of their descendants are still here today, along with a warm cast of Bajau, Rungus and Filipino.

På ön Penang utanför Malaysias västkust pågår bygget av världens längsta vattenrutschbana för fullt. Den kommer att bli hela 1 140 meter lång. Om du känner dig sugen på ett åk får du bege dig till Escape Theme Park när vattenrutschbanan öppnar i augusti.

Cave temples, drowned forests, a town famous for bean sprouts – Perak's highlights are a motley group. This rugged swathe of Peninsular Malaysia is as rewarding for trekkers as gastronomes. Perak (literally 'silver', a nod to its tin-mining boom times) receives only a modest stream of international travellers, but to Malaysians, its attractions are totemic: white coffee, colonial-era architecture, limestone bluffs.

Colonial architecture stands side by side with rickety kedai kopi (coffee shops) in chameleonic Ipoh. The capital of Perak is flanked by towering white cliffs, some with magnificent cave temples pocketed in the limestone. Sliced into old and new towns by the Kinta River, Ipoh charms with its street art and street food – rather like a languid version of George Town.

If you linger in Lahad Datu, and hook up with Bike & Tours, you can learn to cook the Borneo way, dive and snorkel the local reef and shipwreck without the Semporna/Mabul crowds, or go mountain biking up and down Mt Silam for scenic views of Darvel Bay. It's a far cry from the first glance of this little coastal town, which appears to have a lively produce market, dry-goods market, sun-scorched buildings and very little else. Travelers who breeze through en route to Tabin Wildlife Park and Danum Valley, arriving on early morning flights from KK and spirited away immediately, are missing out. Lahad Datu's location, roughly halfway between Semporna and Sungai Kinabatangan, makes it an ideal place to fly into from KK if you're looking to commune both with sea creatures and orangutans.

With a sweeping white beach bordered by coconut palms, this small village of guesthouses and shops is a very popular spot for surfing, windsurfing and general beachfront slacking. Outside of the surf season, Cherating can be dead quiet, which only adds to the appeal, with the occasional sound of a guitar strumming between the rustling palms or the heavy thud of a falling coconut.

Dominating an archipelago of more than 100 islands and islets, Pulau Langkawi is synonymous with sandy shores, jungle-cloaked valleys and bargain shopping. Blonde beaches are the biggest draw, but this 478.5-sq-km island has been duty free since 1987, making low-cost kitchenware a close second.

Also known as the Gunung Mulu World Heritage Area, this park is one of the most majestic and thrilling nature destinations anywhere in Southeast Asia.

Sabah occupies a relatively small chunk of the world’s third-largest island, Borneo, yet what a punch it packs: the treasure of turquoise-fringed desert islands with coral reefs swarming with marine biodiversity; trekkers' paradise Mt Kinabalu reaching 13435ft (4095m) into the clouds; and jungles pulsing with a menagerie of bug-eyed tarsiers, gibbons, pythons, clouded leopards and huge crocs. Around 55% of Sabah is forest, and protected areas such as the Maliau Basin and the Danum Valley Conservation Area are more accessible than ever.

Looking out to distant isles across the Bay of Sandakan, where fishing trawlers dot the teal-blue waters, the former colonialist capital of British Borneo is a buzzing little city used by travelers as a  gateway to the Sungai Kinabatangan and Sepilok. German merchants, Dutch and Chinese planters, Arab and Indian traders, and pearl divers all had their heads turned by Sabah's second city at some point, until it was razed to the ground by the British during WWII in an attempt to shake off the invading Japanese. Today the compact centre is buoyed by the success of the palm-oil industry and those who linger here will find religious relics, colonial mansions and haunting mementoes of WWII dotted across the city.