Club Med Cherating Didn’t Just Close, It Exported 47 Years Of Malaysian Hospitality To The World

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Thirty-six days before Club Med Borneo opens in Sabah, the resort on the Pahang coast that taught Asia how to take a holiday quietly closed its gates — estimated two years before it returns as a reimagined property on the same 80-hectare site.

The timing is not a coincidence.

In the late 1970s, Club Med co-founder Gilbert Trigano scouted the East Coast of Peninsular Malaysia by helicopter, searching for a site where dense jungle met open beach.

Invited by the Malaysian government and the state of Pahang — both looking to put the East Coast on the international tourism map — he spotted a coastal forest flanking Pantai Cherating from the air and, by most accounts, knew immediately he had found it.

The beach was largely unknown outside a small circle of surfers and backpackers. The main roads from Kuantan were paved, but the final access road into the resort was still a dirt track.

Trigano, in partnership with Tan Sri Philip Kuok — eldest brother of tycoon Tan Sri Robert Kuok — chose it precisely because it was hard to reach and impossible to ignore.

Kuok provided the essential local business acumen, corporate backing, and network needed to secure and clear the massive chunk of pristine Pahang rainforest.

The resort that opened in 1979 was built on stilts in the style of a traditional Malay kampung, constructed from dark local teak wood.

A Journey of Two Halves: From Jungle to Zen

TRP was among the last guests to walk Cherating’s 850-metre elevated wooden walkway, the continuous corridor that connects all the resort’s buildings on stilts.

While the canopy is no longer as dense, many massive, ancient trees still tower over the path.

During the media visit, the itinerary included a guided botanical walk along this boardwalk, where a Gracious Organiser — G.O. — explained what the different trees and plants were.

The highlight came when the group spotted a large monitor lizard strolling casually across the green lawn below.

As part of the final hurrah, we were taken across the resort’s signature terrain to Pantai Beach — a journey that has always felt like a true rite of passage for anyone visiting Cherating.

The adventure began on the jungle discovery trails, leading us up and over the emerald, wildlife-rich hills.

Under the cooling canopy of the rainforest — where macaques swing, and exotic birds flash through the trees — the dense foliage eventually gave way to a spectacular reveal: the pristine, secluded sands of Pantai Beach.

Once there, the energy completely shifted from active adventure to absolute stillness.

We stepped into the adults-only Zen Oasis — home to the iconic Zen pool — where a strict quiet policy keeps the space free of activities and disruptions, designed purely for sunbathing, reading, and the occasional guilt-free nap.

Perched quietly above the shore, this infinity-edge sanctuary features its own dedicated bar and offers views across the South China Sea — the ultimate reward after the jungle trek.

Nestled nearby is the Rembulan restaurant, where guests had been looking out at the waves from beneath the shade of the trees.

When it was time to head back to the main resort village, there was no need to lace the hiking boots back up.

Instead, we hopped aboard the iconic shuttle train for a nostalgic, breezy five-minute ride through the lush coastal gardens back home — a perfect, final look at the landscape that defined the Cherating experience for nearly five decades.

The Sanctuary Next Door

Cherating was never only about the resort.

Fifty metres from the resort entrance, on the same stretch of beach, sits one of Malaysia’s longest-running marine conservation facilities — the Turtle Conservation and Information Centre (TCIC), operated by the Department of Fisheries (LKIM).

Established in 1972 and opened to the public in 1998, the centre has spent more than five decades protecting the green and hawksbill turtles that return each year to nest on this coastline.

At its peak, the beach also received olive-ridley and leatherback turtles; the leatherbacks have not returned in years.

The centre recently reopened in a new building — modern, sustainable, and designed to sit within the coastal landscape rather than interrupt it.

The old concrete tanks and display boards have given way to open-viewing conservation pools, an interactive digital gallery, and upgraded hatchery facilities.

The work, however, has not changed.

Between April and September, rangers collect eggs from nests on the beach, incubate them for 45 to 60 days, and release the hatchlings into the South China Sea.

During this visit, we joined a small group at the waterline in late afternoon dark for one of those releases — hatchlings placed at the edge of the surf, the South China Sea doing the rest.

It is the kind of thing that is difficult to describe without sounding like a brochure, so it is enough to say that everyone reached for their camera and nobody looked at the screen.

For 47 years, Club Med guests walked past this centre on their way to the beach. Some stopped.

Many did not.

The centre will still be there when the resort reopens, and the turtles, as always, will arrive regardless.

The Economy of Beads

The jungle and the beach are what most guests remember.

But the thing that made Cherating genuinely strange — and genuinely influential — came earlier, and it no longer exists in the same form.

The all-inclusive concept wasn’t new to Club Med globally, but its execution at Cherating introduced something Asia hadn’t seen: deliberately removing money from the holiday experience.

Cash was not accepted on the resort grounds.

Upon arrival, guests purchased a necklace of coloured plastic beads — each colour a denomination, each bead a small permission to enjoy something.

Cocktails at the beach bar cost a bead snapped from the wrist.

The system placed a French backpacker and a Kuala Lumpur businessman on identical economic footing within the resort walls.

Forty years before anyone called it cashless hospitality, Cherating was already doing it. Nobody called it innovative at the time.

It simply felt right.

The Table of Eight

Dining at Cherating in the 1980s was not a private experience. Tables were set for eight; strangers were seated together by design.

The G.Os sat among the guests, ate the same food, and stayed through the meal.

The philosophy was quiet but deliberate: remove money, remove privacy, remove the structures that keep people separate, and observe what happens.

By most accounts, people talked to each other.

Friendships formed over French-style buffets in a Malaysian jungle.

Some of those friendships lasted longer than the teak wood.

The table of eight may no longer be the format.

But somewhere on that wall, a couple wrote down the date they got engaged, a family signed their names in a list, and a stranger from 2006 came back 20 years later to say so.

The friendships, it turns out, did not need the table to find each other.

The Last Three Days

The final press invitation ran from Wednesday to Friday (7 to 9 Oct) — three days, two nights, dress codes specified — and, as with everything at Cherating, it was structured around the table and the evening.

The first night asked guests to arrive in Bohemian dress for a pool dinner at the edge of the jungle canopy.

Then the lights shifted, the music changed register, and the G.Os took to the trapeze above the pool — the same poolside acrobatics that had been a nightly fixture for decades, high-flying catches and synchronised flips performed directly over the water, as if the jungle and the sky were the only audience that mattered.

The Moon & Sea Show followed, and the night ended, as most nights at Cherating end, at the Main Bar — the music still running.

The second evening raised the register further. Cocktails at the Coconut Garden gave way to a formal dinner at the Main Restaurant, followed by a Lion Dance at the Theatre.

Later, the Theatre was transformed into a Cultural Night Market — local fabrics, vintage wares, artisan goods — that felt less like a programme item and more like a farewell letter written in batik and brass.

It also marked the culmination of the resort’s Auction with Heart — guests bidding on 47 years of physical history: signature teak furnishings, vintage signage, pieces of the property that would otherwise have gone into a skip.

Proceeds went to charity, and some guests, by all accounts, bid more than the objects were worth.

By the third morning, breakfast was served, and departures were quiet.

What Is Being Built in Pahang

The transformation is not a cosmetic refresh. Rachael Harding, CEO of Club Med for East, South Asia, and the Pacific (ESAP), has described the overhaul as a full-scale reimagining of the property, built around a low-density architectural approach that works with the existing terrain rather than clearing it.

Every guestroom and public space will be completely refreshed; the 80 hectares of jungle — the monkeys, the monitor lizards, the flying squirrels — remain the centrepiece, not the backdrop.

Five new signature experiences anchor the redesign.

Replacing the original open-air wooden tram that carried generations of guests through the canopy to Pantai Beach, Jungle Express keeps the journey intact — just updated for a new era.

Jungle Discovery Trails introduce curated guided excursions: wildlife spotting, birdwatching, sunrise hikes, and specialised nocturnal fluorescent walks developed in partnership with a local NGO.

Natural rock formations overlooking the South China Sea now host Cliffside Challenge, a new climbing experience built into the landscape itself.

The Rembulan restaurant — long one of the resort’s most beloved dining spaces — is being reimagined as an upscale farm-to-table culinary destination embedded in the jungle.

And the Firefly Mangrove Cruise adds guided low-impact boat excursions through the nearby mangrove ecosystems after dark.

The direction is deliberate: less resort-as-entertainment-complex, more resort-as-conservation-experience — the jungle is no longer the setting; it is the product.

The Torch Moves to Borneo

On 16 November, Club Med Borneo opens in Kuala Penyu, approximately 90 minutes from Kota Kinabalu.

By the brand’s own logic, the one-month gap between the two properties is a handover.

The new Sabah resort carries a different set of credentials.

Club Med Borneo is the first large-scale beach resort in the Asia-Pacific region to be certified by BREEAM — the Building Research Establishment Environmental Assessment Method, the world’s leading science-based validation system for sustainable green building design.

Where Cherating was built from Peninsula teak in the kampung tradition, Borneo draws its architectural language from the indigenous Rungus longhouse — East Malaysian in identity, modern in execution.

The contrast is instructive.

Cherating was rustic by design and weathered by time.

Borneo is sustainable by certification and contemporary by intent.

One was built for the age of isolation; the other is built for the age of conscience.

The G.Os Are Not Leaving

Cherating’s seasoned Malaysian G.Os and culinary teams are taking their world-class expertise on the road.

While many will anchor the opening of Club Med Borneo, others are dispersing across Asia — bringing their signature hospitality to destinations from the snow resorts of Japan to the beaches of Phuket.

Not all departures are easy; for some, leaving a place they have called home for years is a bittersweet step, a testament to just how deeply Cherating gets under your skin.

Within the ESAP portfolio, Club Med operates 10 flagship regional properties alongside multiple locations across North Asia, bringing the total Asia-Pacific footprint to nearly 20 operational resorts.

Because of this seamless transition, the warmth and