Renting a Car in Malaysia as a Foreign Visitor

Most of what makes driving in an unfamiliar country hard is not the driving. It is the twenty small conventions everybody local already knows and nobody thinks to explain. Here is what tends to catch visitors out in Malaysia, roughly in the order it catches them.

Your licence, and the question to ask before you fly

Malaysia generally accepts a valid foreign driving licence, with an International Driving Permit alongside it if yours is not written in English or Malay. That is the law and it is the easy half.

The harder half is that every rental company sets its own rules on top of that: which licences it will accept, how long you need to have held one, and what its minimum driver age is. Those rules decide whether you get the keys, and they are not always published. Ask before you book rather than at the door, and get the answer in writing. A message on WhatsApp settles it in a couple of minutes.

We drive on the left

If you are coming from a right-hand-drive country this is unremarkable. If you are not, the two moments that need conscious thought are pulling out of a car park and turning at a junction with no traffic to copy. Roundabouts run clockwise and you give way to the right.

The other adjustment is that lane discipline on Malaysian roads is more suggestion than rule, and motorcycles filter through traffic constantly, including between lanes at speed. Check your left mirror before every lane change, not just your right.

Tolls, and the card that runs them

Nearly every intercity highway here is tolled, and none of them take cash. Payment is electronic: either a Touch ‘n Go card held against a reader, or an RFID tag stuck to the windscreen that is read automatically as you pass.

This is the single most common thing visitors get wrong, because arriving at a toll plaza with no working card and no way to pay is a genuinely stuck situation. Ask what the car you are renting is fitted with, and how it is topped up. Some of our cars come with a tag already fitted. If yours takes a card instead, top it up before you leave the city, not at the last stop before the highway.

Fuel

Two grades at almost every station: RON95, the standard, and RON97, which costs more. Every car in an ordinary rental fleet runs on RON95 and there is nothing to gain from the other one.

Stations are self-service. Most want you to pay first, either at the counter or by card at the pump, and then fill up to the amount you paid. If you are paying at the counter, tell them the pump number and the amount.

Check what the rental agreement says about fuel before you drive off. Ours are handed over with a full tank and should come back the same way, which is the simplest arrangement to follow and the easiest to forget on the last morning.

The highway is easy. The city is not.

Malaysian expressways are in good condition, well signposted in English as well as Malay, and punctuated by rest stops with fuel, food and toilets. Long drives here are genuinely pleasant.

Kuala Lumpur is a different proposition. Traffic is heavy between roughly seven and ten in the morning and five and eight in the evening, the elevated highways stack over one another in ways a map does not prepare you for, and exits arrive faster than you expect. Give yourself the extra twenty minutes and use live navigation rather than a printed route.

Parking in the city is mostly paid, through an app or a machine depending on the district, and in older areas you may still meet the paper coupon system. If you are unsure, park in a mall and walk.

Getting the car without an airport counter

The traditional arrangement is that you land, queue at a desk, and drive an unfamiliar car out of an unfamiliar car park while jet-lagged. It is not the only option. We deliver instead, which means the car reaches you where you actually are, and somebody hands it over and answers questions.

Delivery within five kilometres of our base is free. Further out it is quoted by distance and confirmed before you pay anything, so there is no surprise at the end.

The five minutes before you drive off

Whoever you rent from, do this. Walk around the car and photograph every panel, including the wheels and the bumpers. Photograph the fuel gauge and the odometer. Open the boot. Check that the toll card or tag is where you were told it would be, and that the air conditioning works before you are sitting in traffic.

It takes five minutes and it removes the entire category of argument that can otherwise happen at the end of a rental.

Ask the awkward questions early

Minimum rental period, what the deposit is and when it comes back, who pays for tolls, what happens if the car is returned late, and whether there is a mileage limit. None of these are difficult questions and all of them are cheaper to ask now than to discover later.

If you are planning a trip and want ours answered, message us. We would rather explain it before you book than after.