Malaysia

I started in Kuala Lumpur, with the Petronas Towers and a food scene that mixes Malay, Chinese and Indian kitchens on the same street, then went up to the Cameron Highlands, where the air is cool, the tea plantations roll for miles, and you forget you're in the tropics. It felt like a different country than the one I'd left two hours earlier.

Penang was my favorite part. George Town is full of old Chinese clan houses lit up with red lanterns, yellow colonial buildings and street art on every corner. I went to Fort Cornwallis, stuck my face in a painted redcoat cutout and sat behind an old cannon facing the sea. Some of the best meals of my life were nameless paper plates of noodles on street corners there. Malaysia doesn't get the hype that Thailand does, and it should.