You can get the type for less than $15000US, but the equivalent of $50000US is the amount of the bond. It is 5 years and I believe that the amount goes down after 3 years, but it is still a significant amount. I got this info from a friend of a friend who is a fairly new DEC who was not type rated before he went. I believe the 50K could also be found in other posts on this message board also- I fully believe the amount is correct at the current time.
The training is at least 4 months long if you aren't typed- lots more training and effort put into the pilots at AirAsia than the contract pilots that get more pay so they have more incentive to keep you around for a while. That said, you are only getting paid your base salary- about 13000 ringgits a month for the training. That is less than half the pay you can expect once you are online getting hourly and segment pay.
Another thing I have heard is that the interview is much more difficult if you are already typed. I believe they worry that since the pay is currently well below many of the contracts available for 320 captains, they will lose pilots too quickly if they don't make a massive bond. They also appear to want pilots who will want to stick around for quite some time since their growth is so big over at least the next decade. Good luck. Please let me know if you find out anything more about how the pilots get scheduled.