My last couple days in Singapore weren’t particularly noteworthy, apart from catching up with an old friend. I’m getting to an age now where I’m meeting up with friends from university and we collectively realize that it’s been over five years since we last saw each other, which is a trip (…said the 28-year-old).
One of the things we chatted about was a topic I’ve been slowly learning about during my time here, namely Malaysia and Singapore’s racial politics. Thanks largely to the British Empire, this part of the world is home to significant populations of Malays, Chinese, and Indians. It makes for a very cool cultural experience – you often find a large Muslim mosque, Hindu temple, and Chinese Buddhist temple all on the same street, just a few minutes’ walk from each other. From the outside, it seems like a wonderful picture of peaceful coexistence – but I keep getting glimmers of deeper tension.
When I was at the comedy club in Singapore, the MC opened with a joke about the building we were in. “This bar is up on the third floor,” she said. “It’s a comedy club, we have a lot of white people, so we get to say whatever we want.
“On the second floor, there’s a Chinese massage parlour. They smoke in the stairwell because they know they can get away with it.
“And on the ground floor, there’s an Indian dance hall. They stay inside, because they know if they loiter on the street they’ll get arrested.
“And that’s Singapore society in one building!”
I retold that joke to my university friend, who now lives in Singapore, and he chuckled ruefully. “That’s a little bit too real,” he commented.
Singapore was actually fairly well off when it comes to race relations, though, he explained. The state emphasizes racial harmony, and money papers over many of the issues. Malaysia, he said, was the one with real problems.
I brought this up with a Malay-French traveller in my hostel in Penang and he had similar views. “From the outside it looks harmonious,” he said. “But the Chinese, the Malays, and the Indians all keep to themselves. They don’t speak each others’ languages, they don’t intermarry. The government is run by Malays and the businesses are run by the Chinese.”
As a foreigner I get to skate above all these issues, but coming from Canada’s (mostly) successful multiculturalist project it’s interesting to learn about these tensions, especially when they’re not visible on the surface.
But anyway. On to Malacca.
I hate to say this, but I didn’t particularly enjoy Malacca. It’s a beautiful historic city, but after the first day or so I’d seen most of what there was to see and the glamour wore off quickly. It has impressive history as a Malay Sultanate, Ming trading post, then a Portuguese, Dutch, and English colony, but much of that has been built over and buried. The British didn’t help. They held the city for the Dutch during the Napoleonic Wars, and before returning it demolished the main fort so it didn’t threaten their colony in Penang. Now only fragments of the original buildings remain, many reconstructed.
The city is well-aware of its status as a tourist destination, which means that it tends towards tourist trap more often than not. At first it was gloriously cheesy: Bike taxis bedecked in gaudy Hello Kitty and Spiderman and Baby Shark (doo doo doo-doo doo-doo) decorations, blasting dance music as they travel in packs around the historic streets are impressive in their excess. But it got old fast – not helped by how obviously the prices in the historic areas were inflated to take advantage of the tourist dollars.
The night market was the first night market I’ve been to in Malaysia, which surprised me. I expected them to be a popular way to stay out of the heat, as is the case in Taiwan, but there were none in Kuala Lumpur that I could find.
The one in Malacca was…fine. It had decent options for food but the street was narrow and the stalls hemmed you in, forcing you to shuffle along slowly with the crowd. Beyond that, even the locals I talked to acknowledged that Malacca is a pretty quiet city, so I ended up spending a lot of time in the hostel before heading to Penang.
I’ve had much better impressions of Penang so far, two days in. It also banks on its historic status, but it’s a big enough city that it also has its own industry and culture, making it more vibrant and interesting. I’ve also finally found the backpacker community that I couldn’t find in other cities, which gives me confidence that the holidays are going to be a lot of fun.
This is only my second full day here, so I don’t have much more to say about it yet, but I’m here through to the New Year, so I’m sure there’ll be lots to talk about. Stay tuned.
Harmon Moon 