Eleven days from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur: the easiest road in Southeast Asia, and the best eating on it

The whole bay is built on land that was sea in the 1970s, dammed at the mouth in 2008 to turn it into a freshwater reservoir. Start at the Merlion, walk the waterfront promenade anticlockwise, and you get the colonial waterfront on one side and the hotel with the boat on the roof on the other.

A hundred hectares of reclaimed land planted as gardens, with metal supertrees between twenty five and fifty metres high carrying vertical gardens and collecting rainwater. The outdoor part is free and the light and music show on the supertrees runs twice each evening. The two cooled conservatories are ticketed and worth it in the middle of a hot day rather than now.

Lau Pa Sat, a Victorian cast iron market shipped out from Glasgow in 1894, is five minutes back towards the office towers, and the satay stalls set up in the street outside it at seven when the road closes. Cash still helps at the older stalls.

Reopened in 2023 after a long rebuild, and now the best single explanation of Peranakan culture anywhere. Beaded slippers that took a year to make, wedding chambers, porcelain in colours no European would have chosen, and enough context to make sense of what you see in Malacca in four days.

The hawker centre on the edge of Chinatown, and the most famous chicken rice stall in the country is in it, with a queue to match. The three stalls either side of it are almost as good and have no queue at all.

The oldest Chinese temple in Singapore, built by the Hokkien community between 1839 and 1842 for Mazu, the sea goddess, on what was then the shoreline. The timber frame was assembled without nails, the granite and ironwork came out from China as ballast, and the whole thing was restored in the 1990s well enough to win an award for it.

The oldest Hindu temple in the country, founded in 1827 by a clerk of the East India Company from Penang, with a gopuram over the gate stacked with painted figures. Shoes off at the door. It sits on South Bridge Road with a mosque a hundred metres one way and a Buddhist temple the other, all three built by communities living in the same few streets.

The golden dome is the landmark of the Malay quarter and the present building dates from 1924. Look at the base of each dome: the black band is made of glass bottle ends, donated by poorer Muslims so that everybody had a hand in the building. Non Muslims are welcome outside prayer times, with robes lent at the door.

Serangoon Road and the lanes off it: garland makers, gold shops, sacks of spice, and the Tekka Centre at the bottom for lunch. Sunday evening is when the whole South Asian workforce of the city comes here and the place is at its most alive, and its most crowded.

Biryani, fish head curry and roti prata under one roof, with a wet market downstairs that is worth walking through even if you buy nothing. Order the teh tarik, pulled tea, and watch it made.

Founded in 1859 and the only tropical botanic garden on the World Heritage list, eighty odd hectares of it, free and open from five in the morning until midnight. The rainforest remnant in the middle predates the garden. The National Orchid Garden inside is ticketed and holds a thousand species, and it is the one part worth paying for.

Around five hours door to door from central Singapore, with luggage off the bus at both immigration halls. Take a mid morning departure rather than the first one; the border is worst at dawn and at Friday rush hour.

The salmon red church on the square was finished in 1753 to mark a century of Dutch rule, and it is the oldest Protestant church still in use in Malaysia. Inside are ceiling beams cut from single trees, Dutch tombstones set into the floor, and hand cut pews. The red paint is a British afterthought from about 1911.

Up the steps behind the square, roofless since the Dutch made it a burial ground and gunpowder store. The Portuguese built it in 1521, and Francis Xavier was buried in the small pit inside for nine months in 1553 before being shipped on to Goa. The tombstones stacked against the walls are Dutch, and the view over the strait is the reason everybody wanted this town.

Walk down the far side of the hill and this gate is all that survives of A Famosa, the Portuguese fortress of 1511. The British blew up the rest in 1807 and Stamford Raffles talked them out of finishing the job. The coat of arms above the arch was added by the Dutch after they took it.

Three adjoining shophouses that have belonged to the same Peranakan family since 1861, opened as a museum and still furnished as a home. Blackwood furniture inlaid with mother of pearl, an air well in the middle to cool the house, and a guide who will tell you exactly what each object was for. Guided tour only, and worth an hour.

The oldest functioning Chinese temple in Malaysia, founded in the seventeenth century, with an inscription from 1685 still on the wall. Craftsmen and materials came from southern China. Three doctrines share the site, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism, which is normal here and rare elsewhere, and the roof ridge is a riot of glass and porcelain figures.

Ask for ayam pongteh, chicken slow cooked with fermented bean paste, or asam pedas, sour and hot fish stew. Nyonya laksa here comes in a coconut broth rather than the sour Penang version. Most of the good places shut by three.

Jonker Street and Heeren Street run parallel a block back from the river, and the walk is the point rather than any single building: antique shops, clan houses, a Dutch era bridge, and shophouse facades with Portuguese, Chinese and British details on the same street. On Friday, Saturday and Sunday evenings Jonker closes to traffic and turns into a night market.

About six hours, direct if the timing suits and otherwise with a change at Tapah on the main north road, where local buses make the climb. Sit on the left going up for the valley views and take something warm out of the bag before you get off.

A Chinese temple on the slope above Brinchang, built in 1972 and reached by a flight of steps with stone lions on it. Gilded Buddhas, a bell that visitors are welcome to ring, and a terrace looking down over the vegetable farms in the valley. Ten minutes by taxi from Tanah Rata.

The local evening meal is steamboat, a pot of stock on the table and plates of vegetables, noodles and thin sliced meat to cook in it. It exists here because these hills are the one part of Malaysia cold enough to want it. Order for one fewer people than you have.

Boh has grown tea in these hills since 1929, when a British merchant took a concession on the strength of the climate. The Sungai Palas estate has a factory tour that shows withering, rolling and drying in the original machinery, and a tea room cantilevered out over the slope. Go on any day but Monday, when the factory is shut.

A boardwalk along the ridge at the top of Gunung Brinchang through montane cloud forest: stunted trees, everything under a skin of moss, pitcher plants at the edge of the path, and no view at all when the cloud is in. Numbers are limited and a permit is included in any organised trip. It is genuinely cold up here.

Kedai kopi on the main road do noodle soup and clay pot rice for a few ringgit, and there is decent Indian food at the southern end. Afternoon tea with scones at one of the estate tea rooms is the other tradition and it is nowhere near as good as it sounds.

At 2,032 metres this is the highest point in Peninsular Malaysia you can reach by road, and the road is a single narrow lane of broken tarmac that concentrates the mind. A rusting lookout tower at the top gives you the whole ridge on a clear morning and a wall of white by two in the afternoon.

About four hours to Terminal Bersepadu Selatan in the south of the city, a proper airport style terminal with the commuter line and the light rail underneath it. Buy the onward ticket at the machine rather than the counter.

Built in 1909 on the spit of land where the Klang and Gombak rivers meet, in brick and white plaster with three onion domes, by a British architect who had studied in India. It is the oldest mosque in the city and still the calmest place in it. Robes at the door, and the riverside plaza around it is floodlit at night.

The cricket pitch the British laid out in front of their club, and the place where the Union flag came down and the Malayan one went up at midnight on 31 August 1957. The flagpole at the southern end is one of the tallest in the world. The mock Tudor clubhouse on the west side is still a club.

Petaling Street after dark is more counterfeit handbags than food, but the lanes either side of it are excellent: hokkien mee cooked over charcoal, bak kut teh, and a row of mamak stalls on Jalan Tun H S Lee that do not close.

A limestone massif whose caves a Tamil trader dedicated to Murugan in 1890, twelve years after an American naturalist first recorded them. The gold statue at the foot of the steps is nearly forty three metres high and went up in 2006. At Thaipusam in January or February more than a million pilgrims climb these steps, many carrying kavadi frames pierced into the skin.

Little India, one stop from KL Sentral, and the banana leaf rice places along Jalan Tun Sambanthan are the best value meal in the city: rice on a leaf, four vegetables, papadam and as many refills as you can take, for about ten ringgit.

The best museum in the country by a distance, opened in 1998, and worth two hours you did not plan to spend. Architectural scale models of the great mosques, Qur'ans from Andalusia to China, Ottoman armour, Mughal jade, and a dome gallery that is worth the entrance on its own. Excellent air conditioning and a very good restaurant.

Masjid Negara went up in 1965 as a statement of what an independent Muslim country would build for itself: a folded concrete roof like a sixteen pointed star, a seventy three metre minaret, reflecting pools and no dome at all. Open to visitors outside prayer times, with robes provided, and five minutes on foot from the museum.

Four hundred and fifty two metres to the top of the spires, finished in 1998, and the tallest buildings in the world until 2004. The tour takes you to the skybridge on the forty first floor, which links the two towers and is designed to slide rather than snap when they move, and then to a deck on the eighty sixth. The floorplan is based on an eight pointed Islamic star.

A hundred and twenty hectares of wooden Malay houses on stilts, granted to Malay farmers in 1900 and never surrendered, now surrounded on all sides by towers. Walk Jalan Raja Muda Musa and the lanes off it, look at the carved eaves and the shutters, and eat: this is the best Malay food in the city and the stalls run all evening.

Nasi lemak wrapped in banana leaf, nasi campur where you point at what you want, and the Saturday night market if your day lands right. Cash, and expect to eat sitting on a plastic chair on the pavement.

Four hundred and twenty one metres of concrete on a hill that already has a head start, with the observation deck at 276 metres. The advantage over the twin towers is obvious once you are up: from here the towers are in the picture rather than under your feet. Go an hour before sunset and stay for the lights.

A restored back lane off Petaling Street, painted with murals of the tin mining Chinatown of the 1960s, with a couple of coffee shops and a bar in the shophouses either side. It takes twenty minutes and it is the prettiest corner of the old town.

Kaya toast with soft boiled eggs and a kopi O, black coffee roasted with margarine and sugar, at any old kedai kopi with marble tables. It is the standard breakfast from Singapore to Penang and the right last meal of the trip.