Can try outskirts of KL such as Petaling Jaya / Bangsar / Damansara. Decent tech talent here. Decent number of tech meetups. English-speaking people in general.

Honestly, KL/Klang Valley is such a gem, cost of living is super low for USD folks. Met many Americans who work on their startup/product here. Your runway extends by 4x thanks to currency exchange.

A huge number of co-working spaces around. Gyms too.

He said he's from the Bay area so I doubt he's used to clean air and clean streets. :)

also the internet in MY is very slow an unreliable.

edit: fix abbr

Really, I live here and we have speeds up to 30Mbps/100Mbps/1Gbps. 3/4G is quite reliable too.

ML is Mali, Malaysia is MY.

I’m there a few times / year and never had a problem. Maybe if you rely on some coffee shops WiFi it could be a problem but that’s a general problem. Internet is really cheap too if you get a SIM card.

It's a lot more variable than surrounding countries in that you're more chance of winning the lottery than finding a coffee shop / restaurant / bar with usable internet, or working government sponsored free internet but 4G sim cards and coworking spaces, and chain hotels, it works well.