Blue waters, green jungles and a cultural rainbow

Chinese tourists at a mosque in Kuala Lumpur.[Photo provided to China Daily]

The vibrant social fabric's sewing circle is a congregation of cultures.

Yesterday's announcement Malaysia is waiving visas for Chinese tourists, effective immediately, will paint new ways by which Chinese visitors discover the colorful country's true hues.

It's a place where barracudas shimmer silver through the brilliant blue, and reddish primates perform Parkour across verdant canopies.

China Daily explores what awaits those who follow the turning tide of tourism over its 48,000 kilometers of coastlines and strands that trace its land to outline a picturesque peninsula that radiates from an archipelago flung among cyan seas.

Malaysia's waters whirl with life.

It's divine for divers－from aspiring adventurers looking to dip their flippers into the water for the first time to pros who plunge to new depths.

Diving Magazine's Gold List Rodale's Scuba crowned Sabah state's Sipadan Island among the world's five best scuba sites. Oceanographer extraordinaire Jacques Cousteau proclaimed of the isle: "We have found an untouched piece of art."

The otherworld beneath its surface is a place where whale sharks, hammerheads and mantas wriggle over technicolored corals.

Its 13 main routes take such appellations as Hanging Gardens, Turtle Cavern and Barracuda Point.

Malaysia's only oceanicisl and is a bitty land dollop punching out of a massive marine habitat that coils with barracuda cyclones, punctuated by parrot-fish and hawksbill turtles.

Each of the five islands of Sabah's Tunku Abdul Rahman National Park are wreathed by distinctive marine ecosystems. Nearly 250,000 Chinese visited Sabah last year, an increase of more than 30 percent over 2014, the state's tourism authority reports.

Another attraction is Terengganu's Redang Island, where thousands of marine animals and hundreds of coral varieties flourish and have even colonized a WWII shipwreck.