Geography of Malaysia

Malaysia is situated in the Southeast of Asia. The country consists out of the federation of Malaya (more commonly known as West Malaysia) which is situated on the island of Malacca and East Malaysia which consists out of Sabah en Sarawak on the North of Borneo. The country is approximately 329.758 square kilometres big and it has an estimated 24.821.286 inhabitants (Winkler Prins, 2007). This means 76 people live on one square kilometre.
The capital of Malaysia is Kuala Lumpur, which literally means ‘muddy confluence’. Approximately 1.297.526 people live in the city, from which more than 50 percent is Chinese. Kuala Lumpur is the economic and the cultural centre of Malaysia. The industry, which is mostly concentrated in the suburbs consists among others out of wood industry and agrarian products (like tobacco), the production of automobiles and railroad materials, and chemical, electronic, metal and food industry. There is a large service sector (national and international banks and insurance companies). This is where Weber Shandwick fits in great as well. We were in the same office block as the ‘Deutsche Bank’ and the Ambank (one of the biggest Malaysian banks) was in the building next to us. Kuala Lumpur is the junction between the rest of the country and Thailand and Singapore (Winkler Prins, 2007).