Why are foreigners attracted to moving to Malaysia, while Malaysians are migrating away?

Answered by Gareth Davies, Lived in Malaysia for 13 Years (KL) | www.quora.com
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As a non-Malaysian who has lived here for a long time, I’d say a lot of ‘expats’ are moving away too. Even those who weren't relocated here by their company, and actually aren't expats (like me).

If you are single or a young-couple it’s a great hub with fairly high English proficiency, very multi-cultural and amazing food culture.

It’s a really good place to travel regionally, cost of living is still fairly low apart from Cars (which have become a lot less necessary with Uber and Grab) and housing which can be reasonable if you don’t stay in a prime area (KL, Mon’t Kiara, Bangsar).

Income tax is fairly high, higher than Singapore for example which caps out at 22% vs 28% in Malaysia has FAR better infrastructure, Internet, education levels, public transport etc.

But there are a lot of downsides, the way people drive, the lack of consistent, easy to access public transport (which has improved a lot in the past year), the currency has fallen a long way against USD/Euro, education is not great here (or REALLY expensive) if you are having kids soon, the talent-pool here if you are building a company or in a position of hiring is not great due to the economic factors of hiring World class talent and customer service is a non-existent concept here (If you find a fly in your food, or a waiter spills something on you, don’t expect more than a grunt).

The country is also corrupt from top to bottom which means there are artificial glass ceilings, certain industries are completely dominated by crony-ism and the whole area of law enforcement is fairly flexible. If you are ever a victim of a crime here, do not expect anyone to ever get punished for it.

Then there’s the political instability, the questionable practises during the general election and so on.

The weather also seems great at first, you never need more than shorts and a t-shirt, but after a while the humidity and sweating whilst standing still doing nothing becomes a bit tiresome, people live from aircon in the house, to aircon in the car to aircon in the office to aircon in the shopping mall.

There’s two seasons, hot and wet, and hot and wetter.


Plus people say the islands are beautiful, which they are on the East coast, but they are only accessible half of the year, from October until March they are basically closed.