Malaysia

Discover Malaysia

Around the year 1400, a prince named Parameswara founded the port city of Malacca on Malaysia's west coast. Within a century, it became one of the most important trading ports on Earth, drawing merchants from Arabia, India, China, and Java all at once.

That kind of wealth attracted trouble fast.

The Portuguese arrived in 1511 with cannons and took the city by force. The Dutch pushed them out in 1641. Then the British moved in and stayed for over a century.

During World War II, Japan invaded and occupied the country from 1941 to 1945. After the war, a communist group tried to seize power by force in a conflict called the Malayan Emergency, which lasted from 1948 to 1960.

Malaysia finally became an independent nation on August 31, 1957. They call it Merdeka, which means "freedom" in Malay.

Today, Malaysia is home to Malays, Chinese, Indians, and dozens of indigenous groups. It is also a country split in two. The Peninsula sits in Southeast Asia, while the states of Sabah and Sarawak are on the island of Borneo, across the South China Sea.

In Kuala Lumpur, walk across the sky bridge connecting the Petronas Twin Towers, which were the world's tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004. Just outside the city, the Batu Caves are a Hindu temple built inside a massive limestone hill with 272 colorful steps leading up to it.

In Borneo, trek through Taman Negara, one of the oldest rainforests on Earth at around 130 million years old, where wild orangutans still live in the trees. And eat nasi lemak, rice cooked in coconut milk and served with a spicy chili sauce, which Malaysians eat happily at breakfast, lunch, and dinner.