Is KL, Malaysia A Good Option?

Although I've lived more than half my life in the Far East, back in 2003 I had been stuck in the UK for around 2 - 3 years, and decided to move to Malaysia. Reasons I chose Malaysia are that property is much cheaper than say in Singapore, everyone speaks English and the food and shopping is good. I got the MM2H in 2008 because I married an Indonesian girl so that she could stay in Malaysia long term.

For advice, I'd make sure to have an HSBC Premier account in the UK which if you don't already have one then you can probably get or upgrade to once you sell your house. Once you have that you can open a Premier account in Malaysia. I managed to get a total of five housing loans over the years with no proof of income required just by being a Premier customer. The mortgage loans were only 50% and 60% though. I also made friends with people at HSBC including a branch manager and regional manager. With Premier you get a few benefits such as preferential exchange rates, free global transfers between Premier accounts etc. But I would still open a local bank account say with Maybank or CIMB.

When you apply for the MM2H you need to prove your income of MYR10k or more unless the requirements have changed. I also bought a tax free new car in 2008 because of the MM2H but again, not sure if that benefit still exists. Instead of the normal Rm147k that I would normally have paid, I only paid Rm91k.

As long as you live in a condo or apartments building where expats like to stay, you will easily find friends. Also in KL there are lots of bars and pubs where expats hang out. I was into photography so joined photo shoots with others and made friends. Then there are Facebook groups for expats where they used to have meetups, I guess this kind of thing still goes on.

The drawbacks for us was that we got bored living in Malaysia. I lived there for 12 years, my wife for 7 years, and we just got bored visiting the same places again and again - Melaka, Penang, Cameron Highlands, Port Dickson and even Singapore. KL started to feel small and costly. We moved to Indonesia which we prefer as it is less developed, genuinely nice people who are 'not' after your money (apart from in Bali), much more beautiful terrain and so on. But KL would be a good base if you plan to travel around the region and you are not very familiar with Asia.

We love the choice of food that you can find in KL. Shopping is really great too. That is why from time to time we fly to KL to eat and shop. I sold all my properties in Malaysia because it seems the property market has still not recovered. I sold apartments in 2014 for more than I could have gotten today....

Forgot to mention, if you do decide to buy an apartment or condo, as an owner you can try to join the owner's committee which overseas the running of the building. You won't get paid for it, but you and the other members decide on how the place is run. Unless the rules have changed, there can be a maximum of 14 members on the Council, but usually there are less. It's also a good way to meet friends as they are mostly educated and friendly people who care about the building and the way it's managed. I joined three committees, made a few enemies as well as friends but got a good understanding of how things run.

@wyngrove60

Thank you so much for your reply and the valuable information supplied which will help us immensely. We are planning on going back to places like Penang, Langkawi and Kota Kinabalu and few other places which we have now visited at all, plus Japan which has long been on my list of places I really want to visit, so the connections on both Malaysian Airlines & Air Asia will be fantastic. I do not think we will get bored as we have always lived in the UK so this will be something we will enjoy especially as the weather will be far more appealing even though it other side of world where we know absolutely nobody.

That is also a good idea to join committee of owners in an apartment block and good way to meet people.

I shall look into HSBC as we bank with different banks in the UK.

Thank you so much for all your help and information, I really appreciate it. We hope we are doing the right thing by moving 🤞.

You're welcome.

Japan is also probably our favourite place to visit and hopefully we'll live there one day. The population is ageing, people are not having so many children as before, so the Japanese government is letting people come to live and work more easily than before. We were there for 2 weeks in November....

As far as banks go, even though I did not yet have the MM2H from 2003 until 2008, I was allowed to open an HSBC Premier account in Malaysia in 2003 as I already had one in the UK. In other words, for most foreigners in Malaysia, you'd need to have the MM2H otherwise you cannot open any bank account at all, but if you already have an HSBC Premier account in the UK or somewhere else, then you can automatically open one in Malaysia (unless the rules have changed) even as a tourist as I was back then. The advantage of this is that you can instantly transfer money from the UK to Malaysia using the global transfers feature without any charges or deductions so while you are waiting for the MM2H to go through, you will have money which I think is important. I believe the rule still exists that unless you have MM2H you wouldn't be able t open a bank account in Malaysia, so this  could be quite useful. They will also give you a Premier Mastercard and a Visa Signature card straight away.

The other thing which I think is useful is to open a Wise account online. What I do several times a month is transfer my pensions from my Lloyds Bank account in the UK to my Wise account (also in the UK), and then transfer the funds to my banks in Malaysia or Indonesia or wherever. Wise have by far the best exchange rates and the lowest transaction fees, and very many expats are using Wise, so it's worth checking them out.

Yes it's definitely worth moving out to Asia, not just because things don't seem to be as nice in the UK as they used to be, but when you live in Asia, every day feels a bit like being on holiday.

Thank you so much for all this valuable information, I had not heard of Wise before so that is something we need to look into as we are going for the Mm2H on retirement scheme so our pensions will need to be paid into a bank in Malaysia. We are planning on purchasing a property anyway but also another requirement of MM2H in order to receive some of the money back which we have to pay for the scheme. It is a rather a high amount now, so previous versions would be more favourable than now from what I can tell.

That is lovely, which part of Japan are you going to ? I used to work for Japanese company at Heathrow Airport so became very interested in their culture and ethics from there.

UK has changed for the worse since 1997, sadly Blair started the destruction and the current government will finish it off, I say that as a Muslim Asian, my husband is white English and feels the same way. My Asian friends say the same but unfortunately far too many brainwashed people in the UK who have helped with this and think Labour are great and cannot see how they are controlled by corrupt politicians & media.

The safety aspects are another reason, crime is sky high here and mostly not investigated. From what I have seen crime is much lower in Malaysia and I felt safe enough to wear my jewellery out which I never do in the UK.

I am slightly concerned about leaving friends & family behind and having absolutely zero people to fall back on or when things are tough but I guess time will tell.

I think you are definitely right about everyday feeling like a holiday in Asia, for some reason KL resonated with since our very first visit in 2008, we have visited every 2 years since then except lockdown. Only recently my husband loved it too, though we need to keep away from Secret Recipe 😂

In Japan, we usually visit for photography or to see bands playing or just for a change of scenery. Generally we are in Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto, Nara, Kobe, Mishima, Numazu, all around the Mt. Fuji area. We still have so many other places to visit but we have many friends in the places mentioned above.

Yes Malaysia feels safer than the UK but you still need to be careful. A lot of scammers target Malaysia. But in general it is pretty safe.

Another good thing about Malaysia is the medical insurance (which you will need for MM2H). It is very reasonably priced. I used it for a slipped disc operation and absolutely everything got covered, and the premium was not all that expensive. Here in Indonesia the coverage is a lot less with many exclusions and the premiums are really high. KL has a few really good hospitals too and most doctors have qualifications from Edinburgh.

I have recently moved to Malaysia as a British Muslim but am working in the education field. I have been here 5 months and have been enjoying it since.

One of my biggest concerns has probably been the lack of cleaner healthier food (shows how small most issues are if that's my biggest!). I struggle to find healthier food such as salad leaves and everything seems to have loads of sugar in it. Other than that it's been great. Happy to discuss more if you wish.