Peninsular Malaysia and Sabah and Sarawak are so blessed with natural beauties and ancient historical and pre-historic significance that five sites were gifted the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (Unesco) World Heritage status.
Getting the Unesco seal is a big deal: these sites assume new global identities while flaunting their outstanding and exceptional features. It helps greatly that major Unesco funding is provided to protect and preserve these sites. Tourism, too, gets a huge global boost.
Here's our national pride and joy. In 2000, the Gunung Mulu National Park and Kinabalu Park were listed as world heritage sites, followed by the historically rich cities of Melaka and Penang in 2008 and the archaeologically-rich Lenggong Valley in 2012.
Making up the foggy tropical forest of Sarawak, the Mulu National Park brims in geological features, exceptional biodiversity and alluring caves, home to colonies of bats and birds.
Nestled in Kinabalu Park, a mountain rocky top with forested slopes, is the magnificent Mount Kinabalu, the nation's highest peak at 4,095m, replete in grand biodiversity.
Melaka and George Town illuminate a storied history going back to the 16th century Melaka Sultanate, the arrival of Admiral Zheng He, the Portuguese and Dutch invasions, and foundational blocks of British colonialism that erected sublime architectural structures and spread Western enlightenment.
Lenggong contains archaeological clusters of stone tool workshops, 1.83 million-year-old handmade axes and the 10,000-year-old Perak Man, a most complete human skeleton from this pre-historic period.
Six more sites have been pitched for the Unesco honours: Taman Negara and the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia's Selangor Forest Park's artificial tropical rainforest. Next is the Gombak Selangor Quartz Ridge mountain peak, a massive quartz dyke formation.
Perak's Royal Belum State Park hosts the giant-flower plant Rafflesia and the endangered Malayan tiger, tapir, Asian elephant and hornbill.
The 1930 Sungai Buloh Leprosarium in Selangor, once a British Empire leper colony, is now famed for flora, ornamental plants and gardening supplies.
Equally enthralling is Sarawak's Niah National Park Caves, continuously occupied from the early Holocene period and the site of 40,000-year-old anatomically modern humans.
Now comes the seventh pitch: the historic Guillemard Railway Bridge in Tanah Merah, constructed in 1920 over Sungai Kusial. The Kelantan government is preparing the paperwork for a Unesco stamp for this significant post-World War 2 historical bridge, which turns 100 next month.
In the midst of global political and cultural wars, revolutions and scientific innovations, preserving natural, cultural and architectural heritage remain important conservation endeavours. In between the ugliness and harsh realities, global citizens yearning for peace and community can savour natural beauty, even if it has to be defined and protected as natural, and eventually, of planetary heritage.