My visits with them are always fun, with my uncle and aunt plying me with more food than humanly possible. They enjoy spoiling me, and invariably take me to one of my favourite Chinese restaurants for "sang ha min" (ie, freshwater prawn noodles - GIANT prawns wok-fried in a fragrant soya sauce stock then poured over crispy egg noodles - heaven in your mouth with some nice chilli padi). Needless to say, I always leave KL several kilograms heavier - belly full of food, bags filled with new clothing & shoes.
During my many visits, my cousin always tries to convince me that I should find a job in KL and move there. He is Singaporean, mind you - did his 2.5 years of National Service duty to the nation, albeit as a Malaysian Permanent Resident. So what is it about Malaysia that has so greatly appealed to my aunt and uncle's family, all born and raised in Singapore, yet who have mostly (save one cousin) decided to make Malaysia their permanent place of residence?
I have visited Malaysia many times in my life but my trips are never longer than 3 days and typically focused on food and shopping (or is it shopping and food?). My experience of Malaysia is superficial and limited, to say the least, and I never once questioned the idea that Singapore is a far superior place to live in.
On this trip, it suddenly struck me what the tourism board tagline meant: Malaysia, Truly Asia. In some ways, it is truly Southeast Asia. With its multi-ethnic society not unlike Singapore's, each race seemed to be more actively vocal than in Singapore. Going around KL, one can hear a polyglot of languages and Chinese dialects - suppressed by the Singapore government in favour of standardised Mandarin Chinese. With its dirty streets, over-stocked and spicy-smelling grocery store shelves of everything under the sun, unhealthily delicious food, kampung-esque city planning - Malaysia is a great way to experience Southeast Asia in all its unkempt glory.
On the Malaysia vs Singapore issue, I could sum up the differences in three areas: food, cost of living, and politics.
I shall start with my favourite topic - indeed the favourite topic of the Chinese! - food. In terms of variety, flavour and authenticity of street food and Chinese "zi cha" (home-cooked) food - Singapore gravely loses out to Malaysia. Where the modern denizens of Singapore have become health-consciousness and eliminated many traditional ingredients in Chinese cooking, the Malaysian Chinese still retain the old ways - pork lard, extra salt, dash of ajinomoto (aka monosodium glutamate), deep-fried this and that in animal fat. This leads to an extraodinarily rich menu - probably the sort that brings on gout if one is not careful.
My cousin took me out for after-hours, post-drinking street food from a mobile steamboat stall. This type of street fare, called "lokeloke" (ie, dipping in Cantonese), is a real favourite among the club-goers. Selecting from choice delicacies like skewered cockles, baby octopus, cuttlefish tentacles and pigs' umbilical chord (apparently a treat that is hard-to-find) - one dips the whole lot in boiling water then douses it with salty, spicy chilli sauce to eat while still steaming.
My uncle also brought me to one of his favourite family-run hawker centres where he and his family eat on a regular basis. For dinner, he ordered:
- whole pumpkin with seafood delicacies like fish maw, scallops, sea cucumber, and tender shrimp cooked in a light, sticky broth
- pan-fried chicken then stewed in a claypot with dark and sweet soya sauce
- pork ribs marinated in Guinness Stout and stewed till tender
- a whole steamed garoupa
- fried kangkong (water spinach) with sambal belacan (pounded chilli mixed with pungent shrimp paste)
- large, deep-fried tofu squares (still white and soft on the inside) topped with a delicious blend of minced pork and finely chopped preserved radish (chai por)
- giant shrimp covered with mashed salted egg yolk and deep fried to a crisp
All this was served with a few bowls of rice, a wok-fried rice noodle dish and "gat zai xi muoi" (lime juice with preserved sour plum) to wash it all down. This feast fit for a king fed eight adults and cost Malaysian Ringgit 280 or S$120+. This is completely unheard of in Singapore, especially for the quality and size of dishes that were ordered. This meal would have easily cost S$400 in Singapore, and the taste would probably have been toned down considerably. As my aunt puts it, Singaporeans become birds when they arrive in Malaysia. All you hear them say is "cheep! cheep!" (translation: cheap, as in highly affordable). It must get quite tiresome for the Malaysians after a while......
Therefore cost of living is another factor to consider. My cousin always tells me how much more affordable it is to buy a car, a house, and other material possessions in Malaysia. Granted that wages are considerably lower in Malaysia than in Singapore, but the cost of living is still less than in Singapore.
The only worry I would have about ostentatiously gathering too many material goods is that crime in KL is rapidly rising and one can easily become a middle-income target for petty thieves and organised burglars. Such behaviour also serves to perpetuate the myth that all ethnic Chinese in Malaysia don't require any governmental support because they can "take care of themselves". The truth is, the gap between the haves and the have-nots still remain quite wide, though the ethnicity at the bottom of the economic rung in Malaysia is undoubtedly the Indians.
Finally, one of the most interesting observations to arise from my recent visit to KL is politics. Singaporeans are probably one of the most depoliticised societies in the world. With no real viable government opposition movement and generally little popular interest in local politics - Singaporeans probably know more about the on-going American election campaigns than what goes on inside Singapore.
For the Malaysians, the recent success of Anwar Ibrahim's re-election to the Parliament in the August has been on everyone's lips. He has since publicly announced his bid to oust the current government by winning over 30 more seats from the ruling coalition - the Barisan Nasional - by Tuesday, 16 September. As of Monday (15 September), Mr Ibrahim already told rally supporters that he had the numbers to defeat the government.
In anticipation of this date, my aunt has rushed off to the supermarket to stock up on some food in case Prime Minister Badawi takes drastic action. Well, he did already - by shipping off 50 of Malaysia's lawmakers to Taiwan on a "study trip" - taking them as far away as possible from Anwar Ibrahim's reach. Then the infamous Internal Security Act (ISA) was put to use over the weekend, on a Chinese newspaper journalist (freed shortly after) as well as an opposition lawmaker and anti-government blogger (yet to be released). This then prompted the resignation of the Law Minister Zaid Ibrahim. Little wonder that KL folks can only talk about politics at the moment.
Singaporeans are very fortunate because we have a stable government that has, thus far, looked after our needs if in a paternalistic fashion. On the negative side, we don't have the standard checks and balances to prevent the government from abuse of power. On the positive side, we haven't had any real need to, to date. The struggle for change and a perceived greater good has been replaced by a more self-centred struggle for economic advancement and wealth accumulation. It's the norm for developed nations, but sometimes seems to leave us a little soul-less.
Arriving back into Singapore at dusk - I can't help but observe the clean tidy streets, the gleaming condominiums, and wide sidewalks where Singaporeans are safely going about their business on a Sunday evening. I like not worrying about parking my car outside my gated compound. I like not wondering if I'll be mugged, or fined for "speeding" by a corrupt policeman who'll then take a bribe to release me. Singaporeans have paid the price for this social contract with the government.
I wonder how Malaysians feel when they visit Singapore. Do they think we are a bunch of spoilt, well-to-do neighbours? Do they feel that we are lucky yet ungrateful? Are they star-struck and taken in by the apparent wealth and comfortable standard of living?
Whatever it is, I know that this trip has only served to whet my appetite to learn more about my neighbouring country - a wilder, more liberal (due to lax & corrupt officials rather than lack of legislation) version of Singapore. A version Singapore could have ostensibly evolved into given a different political and economic trajectory.
