7 National Parks to Explore in Malaysia

Oldest national park in Sarawak. Millions of years of erosion of the sandstone have created a coastline of steep cliffs, rocky headlands, and stretches of white, sandy bays. Wave erosion at the base of the cliffs has carved many of the rocky headlands into fantastically shaped sea arches and sea stacks with colored patterns formed by iron deposition.

Niah National Park provides some interesting and impressive sights. The area was a major center of human settlement as early as 40,000 years ago and features one of the world’s largest cave entrances, Palaeolithic and Neolithic burial sites and iron-age cave paintings.

This UNESCO World Heritage Site is famous for its caves and karst formations in a mountainous equatorial rainforest setting.

The Kilim Karst Geoforest Park consists of three river estuaries that stretch from Kisap village approximately 10&km to Tanjung Rhu, and they are all interconnected. They are rich in wildlife with hairy nosed sea otters, brown winged kingfishers, monitor lizards, and swimming macaque monkeys being common sights. There is also a bat cave within the Geoforest Park.

The famed Lambir Hills National Park is located along the Miri-Bintulu road, 36 km south-west of Miri town in Sarawak, East Malaysia. There are around 1,173 tree species in the park alone, with 286 genera and 81 tree families making Lambir one of the more diversified forests in Malaysia.

Kinabalu Park, in the State of Sabah on the northern end of the island of Borneo, is dominated by Mount Kinabalu (4,095 m),. It has a very wide range of habitats, from rich tropical lowland and hill rainforest to tropical mountain forest, sub-alpine forest and scrubs on the higher elevations.

Taman Negara is a national park in Peninsular Malaysia. It was established in 1938/1939 as the King George V National Park after Theodore Hubback lobbied the sultans of Pahang, Terengganu and Kelantan to set aside a piece of land that covers the three states for the creation of a protected area. Taman Negara has a total area of 4,343 km2 and it is one of the world's oldest deciduous rainforests, estimated to be more than 130 million years old.