An invitation to be a visiting academic at a Malaysian university provided me with rich opportunities to talk with international students and academics and to explore their experiences of learning and teaching in that context. The university had developed an internationalisation strategy and was positioning itself as an "education hub" for South-East Asia. Having conducted extensive similar research in the UK, a context in which I am perceived to be an insider, investigating people's experiences in a context in which I felt myself to be an outsider enabled me to reflect on their narratives and to compare and contrast them with my own experiences of the Malaysian university. I conducted narrative interviews with six doctoral researchers and three academics, curious to hear their stories about what had brought them to Malaysia, their reasons for studying or working there, how they experienced the learning and teaching environment, their relationships with local Malaysian students and academics. I was intrigued by what they told me, finding some surprising commonalities with other research that I had conducted and also some significant differences. In this article, I share the findings, reflecting also on my own experiences in Malaysia.