One of the requirements for obtaining your Malaysia My Second Home visa is to have a doctor certify that you are healthy. This involves going to any government-registered hospital or clinic and having a doctor examine you, who will then fill in a short form, sign it and stamp it with the hospital or clinic’s official stamp. The total cost for this is likely to be around 120 RM, if my experience is anything to go by. Worth noting that most doctors only accept, or at least seem to prefer, payment in cash.

Before you go, fill in your RBII form – this is a three-pager, of which the first two need to be completed by you, and the third is for the doctor to complete. You’ll need to download this from the MM2H web site and complete it by hand (or use a PDF editor to complete it on-screen, which may not be a bad idea if, like me, you have terrible handwriting). Form RBII is pretty much identical to RBI, which you will already have completed and submitted as part of your original application – however, RBII contains a different third page, this time being the one for the doctor to complete.

If you are applying with dependants, you need to complete a separate RBII form for each person in your party.

The bits you’ll need to complete, on the first two pages, are basically your personal details (name, gender, passport, date and place of birth), and then two sets of tick-boxes confirming whether or not you have certain illnesses and whether or not your senses are functioning. In theory, you can fill this in with the doctor during your examination, but you should probably do it in advance, if only to save the doctor some time – it doesn’t hurt to have thought about it beforehand, especially if you’re not certain of your medical status. If in doubt, have a full health check at home before you go to Malaysia, or before you even start the process.

Although in principle you can go to any hospital or clinic in Malaysia for your MM2H health check so long as it is government-registered, in practice not all will have experience of the MM2H requirements. It will be a lot simpler (and probably cheaper) if you find one that knows what you’re on about when you say ‘MM2H health check’.

In my case it took three goes. With the help of a local friend, we literally walked down a street in Pudu, on which almost every other shop-lot was a clinic. This seems to be fairly common in Kuala Lumpur – clinics (or ‘klinik’ to use the local spelling) are not hard to find. We went into the first one we came to and asked if they could do an ‘MM2H health check’ – to be met with blank looks, some discussion amongst themselves behind the counter, and then some hesitation as they weren’t sure whether the check needed to involve blood tests and x-rays and the like. We decided to move on.

The second clinic was much the same, and clearly hadn’t heard of MM2H, so again we passed. The third clinic was the complete opposite – they instantly knew what was needed, explained that it would take maybe 10 or 15 minutes and cost 120 RM, checked that I had my paperwork with me (the main thing was my passport and the RBII form, but I would take everything, just in case), and asked me to take a seat in the waiting room.

About five minutes later I was called in to see the doctor, who proceeded to conduct the examination. This involved him basically asking me the same questions as were on the first two pages of the RBII form, so that was nice and quick as I’d already completed it. He then did a standard blood pressure test, before using a stethoscope on my chest and back to listen to my breathing. A few other basic questions as I recall (do you feel unwell, have you suffered any illness recently, any family history of serious illness – that sort of thing), then he filled in page 3 of the RBII form, signed and stamped it, and we were done.

You’ll take the completed RBII form away with you, so keep it safe and add it to your collection of paperwork – you’ll need it when you go to Putrajaya in due course to collect your visa.

I’m not sure what happens if you have any of the illnesses listed on the RBII form, or if any of your senses aren’t working, or the doctor finds you to be anything less than healthy. The Terms & Conditions on the MM2H web site do mention that the requirement for medical insurance may be exempted for “participants who face difficulty… due to their age or medical condition”. So as far as I am aware, that would not automatically mean disqualification from eligibility for MM2H. But that’s probably where you should take advice, either by speaking to MOTAC, or using an agent to handle your case.

You’ll also need to obtain a “medical card” (medical insurance), which I’ll talk about next.