Student profile - David Bowly

Campus: Clayton

Program: Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical)

I've just spent the past semester at Monash's campus in Malaysia . It's been a great time; the people are friendly and the country is amazing.

Malaysia is a very easy place to live in. The accommodation is good (and will be better when Monash finishes their own condo) and Sunway has an ultra-modern shopping centre nearby. Going out for meals is cheaper than cooking, and eating out in the local places is great fun – Malay, Chinese and Indian foods are specialties. There are all the usual fast food places and expensive restaurants, but we generally avoided them as the local food is so good! KL is a great city; it's modern in places with good clubs etc. but very interesting off the beaten track.

It's also an amazing place to travel – only slightly more expensive than Thailand , but much easier to get around. We travelled almost every weekend, using the cheap long distance buses which cover most of the country. The roads are good so trip times are relatively short. Decent English is spoken by almost everyone, but a few halting words in Malay are often met with exclamations of delight (or laughter) by the locals. You meet heaps of backpackers all over the place, some of whom came years ago and never left!

The campus is fantastic; certainly in a similar league to Clayton. The new campus is only two years old, so the facilities are very modern and well equipped. It's a small campus (my class had only 30 students) so you get more personalised attention from lecturers – they generally put in a lot of effort. The whole campus has only a couple of thousand students, about a third of which are internationals, so it's easy to get to know people. In case you were wondering (and I was when I got here) the classes are all in English!

Finally, living here is incredibly cheap – the $3500 travel grant easily covers living expenses, and it covered a fair bit of my travel too! The other big advantage of exchange to Malaysia is that organising the transfer is much easier than trying to communicate with another uni. I'd really recommend doing part of your course overseas, and this is an awesome place to do it!

If you want any more info, drop me a line: drbow1@student.monash.edu.au