Genting Highlands is the 'Las Vegas of Malaysia': an unusual leisure complex perched more than 1,700 metres up, on top of a peak in the central mountain range, just an hour from Kuala Lumpur. Where barely half a century ago there was impenetrable jungle, today a small vertical city of gigantic hotels, casinos, theme parks, shopping centres and cable cars rises up, all wrapped in cool air and in the mist that climbs from the valley. It's the realm of entertainment, very different from Malaysia's other destinations: you don't come here for temples or beaches, but for fun, gaming, rides and fresh air.
Its history is that of a dream: that of businessman Lim Goh Tong, who in the sixties imagined a mountain resort where there was nothing and insisted, against all odds, on opening a road to the summit and building his leisure city, obtaining the only land-based casino licence in all of Malaysia. Today Resorts World Genting welcomes millions of visitors a year —Malaysians, Singaporeans and people from all over Asia— who ride up by cable car to gamble, hop on the roller coasters, shop, see shows or simply enjoy the cold.
This guide organises the visit in a practical, friendly way: how to get up (the cable car is half the fun), what there is to do depending on your interests (casino, theme park, shopping, the temple on the way), how much things cost and what to expect from a destination that is more a big mountain amusement park than a town. Genting is best enjoyed in a day or a night, ideal as a getaway from KL, especially if you're travelling with kids, if you like gaming or if you simply want to swap the tropical heat for a while of mist and sweaters.
Genting Highlands is a young, artificial destination, the result of one man's vision: Lim Goh Tong, a Chinese immigrant who made his fortune in Malaysia and who in the early sixties came up with the idea of building a mountain resort where at the time there was only virgin jungle. Inspired by the cool climate of the highlands and by the resort model, Lim launched into a venture many thought was madness: opening a road to the summit of Mount Ulu Kali, more than 1,700 metres up. After years of titanic works, the road was completed and the first hotel opened in 1971. The key to the project was that Lim obtained from Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman the only land-based casino licence in Malaysia, a Muslim-majority country where gambling is forbidden for Muslims: that exclusivity turned Genting into a gold mine. In the following decades the complex —today Resorts World Genting, operated by the Genting Group— kept growing, adding more hotels (including the First World Hotel, one of the largest in the world by number of rooms), theme parks, cable cars, shopping centres and shows, until it became one of the great leisure destinations of Southeast Asia. The full story of the leisure city in the clouds is on our history page.
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Origins, formation and what the sources say.
Until well into the 20th century, the peak where Genting Highlands stands today was nothing more than a mountain covered in impenetrable tropical rainforest, with no roads and no permanent inhabitants, in the mountain range that separates the states of Pahang and Selangor. The summit, in the foothills of Mount Ulu Kali, rose more than 1,700 metres above sea level, which gave it a cool, misty climate, very different from the sticky heat of the lowlands where Kuala Lumpur spread out.
During the British colonial era, the value of the peninsula's highlands as cool retreats was already well known, as the development of Cameron Highlands and Fraser's Hill as 'hill stations' showed. But this particular peak was still a wild, hard-to-reach place, covered in dense jungle. Nobody had seriously thought about building there.
All of that began to change in the 1960s, shortly after Malaysia (then the Federation of Malaya) gained independence in 1957. The young country was looking to develop and diversify its economy, and a man with an unusual vision set his sights on that cold, jungle-clad mountain. That man was Lim Goh Tong, and his dream would completely transform the nameless peak into one of the most famous leisure destinations in Southeast Asia.
Lim Goh Tong was born in 1918 in China's Fujian province, into a poor farming family. Like so many others, he emigrated to Malaysia (then British Malaya) as a young man in the 1930s in search of a better life. He worked hard at all sorts of jobs, in construction, in the machinery trade and in iron mining, and through effort, a good nose for business and no small amount of daring he built up a fortune and became a successful entrepreneur.
The idea that would make him a legend came to him, so the story goes, while he was visiting Cameron Highlands and enjoying its cool climate. Lim thought that a mountain retreat like that, but much closer to the capital, Kuala Lumpur, could become a major tourist destination. He set his sights on the jungle-covered peak near Ulu Kali, just an hour from KL, and came up with an ambitious plan: to build a mountain resort there, a place where people from the sweltering capital could escape to the cold and have fun.
Many people thought the project was crazy. A road had to be cut to the summit through rugged, mountainous jungle, a huge feat of engineering for the time and for the resources of a private businessman. Lim went ahead anyway. He personally funded and directed the construction of the road, which moved forward slowly amid enormous technical difficulties, landslides and tough terrain. Building the road took years of gruelling work, but it was finally finished, opening up road access to the summit for the first time. The dream was starting to come true.
What would turn the Genting resort into a gold mine was a decision that seems surprising today in a Muslim-majority country. Malaysia bans gambling for its Muslim citizens on religious grounds, but the government of the day, led by Prime Minister Tunku Abdul Rahman, decided to grant Lim Goh Tong a licence to run a casino at his mountain resort. The reasoning was pragmatic: a legal, regulated casino in a remote location could generate revenue, attract tourism and stop money from flowing into illegal gambling or abroad. It was aimed mainly at the non-Muslim population (citizens of Chinese and Indian origin) and at foreign visitors.
So Genting got something extraordinary: the only legal land-based casino licence in all of Malaysia, an exclusive right it still holds today and that turned out to be the key to its financial success. The resort's first hotel, the Highlands Hotel, opened its doors in 1971, and the casino opened with it. The public responded straight away: going up into the clouds to gamble, in a cool climate and just a short trip from the capital, became an irresistible attraction.
That monopoly on legal gambling was Genting's great competitive advantage and the foundation of the fortune of the Genting Group, the conglomerate Lim built. With the casino's revenue, the resort could keep growing and reinvesting, funding the expansion that would turn it, decade after decade, into a true city of leisure. The 'master stroke' of securing that licence defined Genting Highlands' identity, and its profitability, for good.
From its opening in 1971, Genting never stopped growing. Through the seventies, eighties and nineties, Lim Goh Tong and his company kept adding hotels, attractions and infrastructure, turning the resort into a mass-tourism destination. Ever larger hotels were built, culminating in the gigantic First World Hotel, which with thousands of rooms came to rank among the largest in the world by room count, along with restaurants, show venues, an outdoor theme park and an indoor one, and shopping centres.
The link to the resort was modernised too. The original road was joined by cable cars that carried visitors from the hillside up to the summit, gliding over the jungle: first the Genting Skyway, which in its day was one of the fastest and longest cable cars in Southeast Asia, and decades later the modern Awana SkyWay. Lim himself also drove the construction of the beautiful Chin Swee Buddhist temple on the mountainside, giving the resort a spiritual dimension alongside the leisure.
The Genting Group, meanwhile, became a multinational conglomerate that went far beyond the mountain, with interests in casinos and resorts in other countries (Singapore, the United States, the United Kingdom, the Philippines), plantations, energy, cruises and more. Lim Goh Tong became one of the richest men in Malaysia, and when he retired and later died in 2007, he left the empire in the hands of his family, who still run it. That 'impossible' dream of a jungle mountain had given rise to one of the most powerful business groups in the country.
In the 21st century, Genting Highlands, now officially known as Resorts World Genting, is one of the largest and most visited integrated resorts in Southeast Asia. It welcomes tens of millions of visitors every year, mostly from Malaysia and neighbouring Singapore, but also from across the region. It is often nicknamed 'the Las Vegas of Malaysia' for its mix of casino, giant hotels, shows and entertainment all in one place, though in a cool, misty mountain setting very different from the Nevada desert.
The resort has kept reinventing itself. In recent years it underwent a major makeover with the addition of the modern SkyAvenue shopping and entertainment centre and the new Awana SkyWay cable car. After a long and controversial process (the original project with Twentieth Century Fox fell through), the outdoor theme park Genting SkyWorlds opened in 2022. It is one of the largest in the country, with the unique feature of sitting more than 1,700 metres above sea level.
Like any destination of this kind, Genting is not free of criticism and contradictions: the environmental impact of such a huge complex on a mountain ecosystem, the moral question of gambling in a Muslim-majority country, mass tourism and the crowds at weekends and on public holidays. But its success is undeniable, and for millions of people it means getaways, fun and cool weather just a short trip from Kuala Lumpur.
Half a century after Lim Goh Tong cut that impossible road through the jungle, his vision is still standing, bigger than ever: an improbable city of leisure built on a summit among the clouds, where once there was nothing but jungle and mist.
