Puddleduck

I did a 2 week tour with Kuoni a few years ago, it started off in Singapore went all the way up the west coast, crossed over and came down the east coast back to Singapore. At the time you could break the journey in Penang on the west coast or Kuantan on the east, then pick up the next tour a week later. Kuoni are usually very good with addons and a few people stayed on in Singapore for a few days. My friend and I flew up to Bangkok after the tour and spent a week independently in Hua Hin and Bangkok before returning to the UK from BKK. The Tour company who organised the tour in the far east were Tour East who were very good. If they are still in existence I'm sure they could arrange something independent for you if you didn't want to go with a group. I believe Premier Holidays and Hayes and Jarvis do similar holidays. If you just want a beach holiday all of the above Tour ops do stay put or multi destinations holidays to Malaysia.
Judith

Thanks Judith we are wanting a tour and stay (neither of us can laze on a each for 14 days!) so I'll certainly look at those. Thanks very much.

Speak to TravelBag or Travel Mood they can make the trip how you want it book hotels, flights etc, Travel Bag usually have local reps as well who can help with trips (Tour East from memory)

We have been to Malaysia a few times now and there is plenty to see, Penang is great, KL is very cosmopolitan, Malacca is very interesting - plenty of choice

Weather patterns might influence your choice of destinations. We went to the East coast of the peninsula (Kuantan) in June for better weather (and we had done most of the West coast resorts in previous visits (Penang,Langkawi,Pangkor)). Its an easy country to DIY as well and even fly-drive. Theres an extensive flight network including low-cost carriers like Air Asia who also do long haul from Stansted to Kuala Lumpur.

There's also an interesting interior to consider - places like the National Park Taman Negara, or hill resorts like the Cameron Highlands or Frasers Hill. And of course there is the Maysian states of Sabah and Sarawak on Borneo as well. Before we started DIYing we used Premier Holidays and Hayes and Jarvis both fine.

Thanks for the info. I'm not sure I'm confident to DIY to Malaysia. We do it all the time in Europe and America but I'm not sure about long haul. I think I'd prefer a tailor-made trip like we had in China. I'll take time out at the weekend and look at the tour ops suggested.

Puddleduck, we have just returned from a DIY trip to Penang, Borneo and Kuala Lumpur.
We booked our main flights with emirates and booked internal flights with Air asia and malaysian airways.
We booked hotels direct, as we found their prices to be the best.
We had done alot of reasearch on trip adviser and on here as well as other sites getting tips about how much taxi's would cost, where to get a taxi, where to eat etc.
It worked out brilliant - and it meant that we could do and stay exactly where we wanted.

Had a flash of inspiration last night. We were talking holidays and one of our friends said they were surprised we weren't going to the F1 now there's a race there and of course hubby and I talked about it ages ago but had forgotten all about it and we're now thinking that we would rather go and make that part of the trip, especially as tickets are so easy to get to that race. So I'll keep all your suggestions and we'll look at going earlier one the year, hopefully in 2011.
Thanks for all your help.

I have been to Malaysia a few times and DIY a few trips and it all was pretty easy. If you go during F1 week the hotels in KL double or triple their prices for that week, also book early because the best hotels get snapped up quickly.

Thank Rick, will bear that in mind.