8 days East Malaysia roadtrip

Day 1: Drive from Kuala Lumpur to Kuantan – 3h

You could depart around 11 am, arrive around Jandai Baik area a little bit after lunch. A good spot for lunch outside of the highway is: The Pineyard café in Bentong  
 

Continue on to Kuantan, if your hotel check in is late ( like 3pm or later ), you can make a stop by this nice Cendol location in Kuantan city-center: Cendol Air Putih 

We stayed in Hyatt Regency on Teluk Cempedak, which is one of the nicest beach in Kuantan.

Two tasty restaurants for diner in Kuantan is Ana Ikan Bakar Petai for some fresh grilled seafood and local dishes and Satay Zul  if you are craving some tasty Satay and not all the seafood offered in town and around. 

For breakfast, if you do not fancy your hotel buffet, you can also enjoy a traditional Kopitiam in town, there are plenty.

Unfortunately most of the food options on Teluk Cempedak are fast foods ( McDonald, KFC, starbucks ). There is a small foodcourt which is mostly open at night time. People come and enjoy the beach when temperatures are cooler, and it gets progressively busy as the evening starts.

Teluk Cempedak is a clean and nice sandy beach and a good place to spend the week-end. 

If Kuantan does not strike your fancy, an alternative is to drive a little more along the coast to Cherating and stop there instead.
 

Day 2: Rest in Kuantan and enjoy the beach

You can do this nice walk from Teluk Cempedak

Or drive and hike for sunrise at Bukit Panorama in Sungei Lembing, which is about 45km northwest of Kuantan. It’s a fairly straightforward hike up stairs and a beautiful view at the summit ( approx. 270m elevation). This used to be a mining town, and unfortunately since covid the little train and mine visit there seems to have been closed. It’s a sad as it would have made a nice little half day visit before heading back to Kuantan.

Day 3: Drive to Kuala Terengganu with stops along the way for lunch. 

We decided to stop in Dunggun because of a small tunnel to see and it’s the moderately larger town half way. The seaside is slightly set up and there are some pic nic tables around the google pin for Pantai Teluk Lipat. 

At lunch, it was quite deserted and we did struggle to find something that made us want to stop. We ended up in this “Chinese looking” part of the town, with traditional shop houses and we ate at a Kopitiam there before going to see this old mining tunnel.
 

The old mining tunnel is located in town and can be found by searching for Terowong Bukit Tebuk.

You can drive through but it’s narrow and one way. It’s going to take just barely 5 min to see this small site. The locomotive and history about this mining activities is available and be seen at the National Museum in Kuala Terengganu. It’s interesting to see the place for real before reading about it at the museum.

We drove along the coastline road up to Kuala Terrenganu. There you will a lot of small town and beaches with beach shacks selling coconut and other small snacks. The nicest ones to stop at, started about 45 min from Kuala Terrenganu. You could very well stop at one, swim and enjoy a refreshing drink under the trees at any of those. Kelulut Beach was one of the nicer ones with a lot of small stores, easy to park to seat and snack.   

Arrive at Kuala Terengganu and rest in your accommodation. You can then go out again for diner or around 5pm when the temperatures goes down.

We stayed at ARENA Boutique Hotel Kuala Terengganu, which is well located in town and walking distance from the little Chinatown and the water front.

That evening, we walked from the hotel, through Chinatown, by the market to reach the waterfront and check the bridge. We found ourselves a nice restaurant in Chinatown area along the way back and called it a day.

Day 4: Visit of Kuala Terengganu

The hotel doesn’t offer breakfast. But the street behind has some very nice local kopitiam across Kamdar and BSN Bank. It takes the whole corner, it’s an option that is open super early and is very tasty. We ate all our breakfast there. A little further along is Restoran Chuan Kee  which serves simple chicken rice dish – but it’s one of the nicest one we had. It’s open for lunch and breakfast only.

During this day, you can cover and visit the following:

Masjid Kristal (crystal mosque and Taman Tamadun Islam). 

The crystal mosque is beautiful and the park around it has miniature replicates of the world most famous mosque. It’s a nice walk around  that should be done early morning for late afternoon to avoid the worst of the heat. 

Terengganu State Museum

The building in itself is worth the drive. Its monumental traditional house inspired buildings with intricate pillars and carvings. This museum is surprisingly interesting ( except perhaps the natural history park which is too dated) and one of the best we have seen in Malaysia.

Souvenirs and noteworthy elements: Keropok lekor are just everywhere and very special from this area. They are deep fried fish cake eaten as a snack and usually dipped in a sweet chili sauce. You also have crackers ones available ( which I really like myself ). It has a strong fish taste and if you like prawn crackers, you should very much fall in love with Keropok Lekor.

You could google for a location that shows you how they make it and buy some fresh fried ones or crackers to bring back as a souvenir. There are plenty of signs along the road. 
 

Kuala Terengganu is the best place to buy authentic batik and Songket. It’s where they are still traditionally made. The Kamdar shop (right behind the hotel) has an absolutely amazing collection of affordable batik fabric ( better than in Kuala Lumpur ). So fellow seamstress, that’s where you want to load up for your future projects. Overall, Kamdar in Kuala Terengganu was almost half price to Kuala Lumpur on locally made fabric.
 

Along the street heading to the market downtown, you cannot avoid the various shop selling beautiful hand painted Batik Baju and large dresses. They are extremely affordable, compared to what I find in Kuala Lumpur myself. So again, just indulge, they are gorgeous and the choice of colors will make your head spin.
 

Would you want to learn more about Batik making, and found a tour to introduce you into a workshop (I didn’t search for one) – it’s in Kuala Terengganu that I would do it.

Day 5: Drive to the island of your choosing

We wanted to dive and chose the Perenthians – therefore we continued our drive to Kuala Besut early morning to catch the hotel earliest ferry. We parked there and enjoyed 3 days there staying at Bubu villa and diving with Turtle bay diving, although, seahorse diver was just next door, if you didn’t want to walk all the way down. I tend to go back to dive shop I have already been to, so I (re)booked with turtle bay on this trip.

From Kuala Terengganu, you have all the jetties within 1h drive for the best islands in peninsular Malaysia, so you could very well decide to stay and pick one of the below instead of the Perenthians:

Pulau Kapas: it’s the least touristy island ( and a really nice one away from the crowd ) but accommodations are very limited and best to pick a full board one. Diving is also available there. You will need to be lucky to get a room at certain time of the year.

Pulau Redang: The perenthians are the most affordable, busy and diving oriented islands. Pulau Redang is the one with more upscale accommodation and in my opinion nicer white sandy beaches. Diving is not as good.

Day 6 and 7: Scuba diving, beach time and relaxation

Day 8: The long drive back to Kuala Lumpur

It’s a long drive back, it’s going to take between 6 to 8 hours based on traffic when you near Kuala Lumpur.

My advice is to just load up on snacks and water in the car. We didn’t stop anywhere on the drive back and only stopped on a highway rest area for a long break.

You could again stop at the Pineyard cafe (check their closing time) for a tea time and a coffee. You could even drive up and spend the evening in Genting highlands and extend a day or two to enjoy the theme park and the fresh air.

Note on the drive: RFID is not available on the East Coast Highway, so don’t forget to top up your Touch N Go card! You can go up to Kuantan with RFID. 
Use Waze to get an accurate estimate of the toll cost to plan this.
 

I was personally very surprised by Kuala Terengganu; downtown is small but nicely maintained. There were enough sights to occupy a good day and possibly two if we had searched for more stuff to visit about Batik and Songket manufacturing. As a first-time tourist, I might not put it as a must see – but definitely with your own transport and on a road trip, a very worthy stop and base to enjoy the area’s nicer islands.