Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei have had a dramatic and at times turbulent past, born of a common history and ethnic composition that links the entire Malay archipelago, from Indonesia to the Philippines. Each became an important port of call on the trade route between India and China, the two great markets of the early world, and later formed the colonial lynchpins of the Portuguese, Dutch and British empires. Today the dominant cultural force in the region is undoubtedly Islam, adopted by the Malays in the fourteenth century, though in Chinese-dominated Singapore, Buddhism and Taoism together hold sway among half the population. But it's the commitment to religious plurality – there are also sizeable Christian and Hindu minorities – that is so attractive, often providing startling juxtapositions of mosques, temples and churches.

Malaysia has only existed in its present form since 1963, when the federation of the eleven Peninsula states, along with Singapore and the two Bornean territories of Sarawak and Sabah, became known as Malaysia. Singapore left the union in 1965, gaining independence in its own right; Brunei, always content to maintain its own enclave in Borneo, only lost its British colonial status in 1984. Since then, Malaysia, Singapore and Brunei have been united in their economic predominance amongst Southeast Asian nations. While Brunei is locked into a paternalistic regime, using its considerable oil wealth to guarantee its citizens an enviable standard of living, the city-state of Singapore has long been a model of free-market profiteering, transformed from a tiny port with no natural resources into a capitalist giant. Malaysia too has an ambitious manifesto – to achieve First World status by 2020, to which end the country is investing heavily in new infrastructure, from highways to ports and factories. Despite unforeseen problems, including the economic meltdown which plagued the region in the late 1990s, the rise in terrorism linked with September 11, 2001 and the cruel SARS virus of 2003, Malaysia and Singapore have bounced back with characteristic Southeast Asian tenacity, and remain two of the region's most dynamic, forward-looking countries.