Trip to Malaysia!
If you don't know, Singaporeans are most racist to Malaysians and I'm sure that there is some historical context in it all (perhaps starting from the separation between Singapore and Malaysia in 1965). Singaporeans make fun of everything Malaysian: from the politics to the organising system, you can rest assured that Singaporeans will be there to criticize it all.
It was thus very confusing when my family decided to go down to Malaysia for the weekend. The last time I went was around 2009 when I was to attend my World Scholar's Cup competition in Kuala Lumpur and I therefore developed a rather narrow view of Malaysia: I had yet to travel to many places.
We stayed clear of many big cities but instead visited small ones. Ipoh and Penang to name a few. After a few hours there it became clear to me what the attraction was to many Singaporeans. Food was cheap and absolutely delicious. Singaporeans take a lot of pride in their tastes in food, and we will go to the place that gives us good food over and over again be it in South East Asia or in other parts of the world, especially if that food is cheap. For Malaysians, the food would be considered expensive, where 1 Ringgit in Malaysia would buy you 1 SGD worth in Singapore. But the exchange rate is so that 3 Ringgit was just over 1 SGD so Singaporeans could buy three times more than what we normally could buy at home. As such I enjoyed the 1 dollar Chicken Rice, the 3-dollar-for-ten-sticks of satay and 20-cents-a-piece of Roti Prata (which is Malaysian and not Indian, just to correct the misconception). Needless to say that I gained weight, or if I didn't at least depleted my life span with the consumption of fatty or high cholesterol foods: tasty food is not necessarily healthy food".
I would say that Malaysia is Indonesia 30 years into the future. The architecture was similar, yet the roads were cleaner, the people (slightly) more educated and the MRT system operational (still much development to be had, but Indonesia only just started constructing an MRT line). For me it brings hope of a much better future for Indonesia. As an economist, rarely is the future very dim.
However Malaysia was not home, and my relative's comments about the country was never fun to hear and if anything made me feel uncomfortable in this country, so I was happy to have left. Short and sweet, just the trip I need before I can get back to work.
(Some heavy filtering had to be done to make Ipoh look THIS good. The Chinese structure must have done wonders, but remove the filter and the structure, and Ipoh looks close to the picture above)
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
It was thus very confusing when my family decided to go down to Malaysia for the weekend. The last time I went was around 2009 when I was to attend my World Scholar's Cup competition in Kuala Lumpur and I therefore developed a rather narrow view of Malaysia: I had yet to travel to many places.
We stayed clear of many big cities but instead visited small ones. Ipoh and Penang to name a few. After a few hours there it became clear to me what the attraction was to many Singaporeans. Food was cheap and absolutely delicious. Singaporeans take a lot of pride in their tastes in food, and we will go to the place that gives us good food over and over again be it in South East Asia or in other parts of the world, especially if that food is cheap. For Malaysians, the food would be considered expensive, where 1 Ringgit in Malaysia would buy you 1 SGD worth in Singapore. But the exchange rate is so that 3 Ringgit was just over 1 SGD so Singaporeans could buy three times more than what we normally could buy at home. As such I enjoyed the 1 dollar Chicken Rice, the 3-dollar-for-ten-sticks of satay and 20-cents-a-piece of Roti Prata (which is Malaysian and not Indian, just to correct the misconception). Needless to say that I gained weight, or if I didn't at least depleted my life span with the consumption of fatty or high cholesterol foods: tasty food is not necessarily healthy food".
I would say that Malaysia is Indonesia 30 years into the future. The architecture was similar, yet the roads were cleaner, the people (slightly) more educated and the MRT system operational (still much development to be had, but Indonesia only just started constructing an MRT line). For me it brings hope of a much better future for Indonesia. As an economist, rarely is the future very dim.
However Malaysia was not home, and my relative's comments about the country was never fun to hear and if anything made me feel uncomfortable in this country, so I was happy to have left. Short and sweet, just the trip I need before I can get back to work.
(Some heavy filtering had to be done to make Ipoh look THIS good. The Chinese structure must have done wonders, but remove the filter and the structure, and Ipoh looks close to the picture above)
Cheers,
Matthew Tan
Comments
Post a Comment