A Weekend in Malaysia

This past weekend we in the SEAS crowd packed our bags, left our dorms behind, and boarded a bus for a long weekend in Malaysia. I think that it was welcome break from academic commitments for all of us, and an exciting opportunity to see a country with which we’d become familiar in class, to which we are so physically close, and yet which is so different from Singapore. One doesn’t want to be politically incorrect or too broad in labeling the nation a part of the developing world, but it is certainly clear that Malaysia is a nation that has not developed to the same extent as Singapore.
After going through customs, first leaving Singapore and then arriving in Malaysia, we went to Tanjung Piai National Park, the southernmost tip of mainland Asia. It’s worth noting that this was the second time I had visited a “southernmost tip” of Asia that week, the first in Singapore. How is that possible, you ask? Singapore counts bridges. It’s in things like these that you get a sense for how competition between Malaysia and Singapore extends beyond the football field. Whether or not, we were really as far south as we could be on the continent of Asia does nothing to change the beauty of Tanjung Piai. After walking alongside wild monkeys and touring the ecologically important mangrove forests, we looked out onto the Straits of Malacca, Indonesia in the distance and ships carrying all sorts of goods to as far away as Europe passing in between. The juxtaposition of the natural beauty of the mangroves, critical for the protection of nearby towns and the local economy, and the complex realities of globalization, which the cargo ships represented, certainly gave us something to think about.
After a brief stop for some delicious seafood in a small town, we continued north on our coach, as we have learned to call buses, to Melaka. For dinner we went to a restaurant serving Portugese-Malay cuisine, which comes from the marriages of Portugese colonizers to Malays in the sixteenth century. It was a day of seafood, which I loved.
The next day we toured a house-turned-museum and where we learned about the Peranakans, who are of both Malay and Chinese descent. The house was beautiful and full of beautiful antiques and art. After the house we went on a bus tour of the area, which included stops at two markets. At the first we learned about spices and herbs and I bought a bag of mangosteens (which I will miss back in the States) and the second had a lot of local crafts. We then went on a scavenger hunt in the downtown area, which allowed us to see a lot of the city. Melaka is similar to Singapore in the existence of many different cultural influences and it was interesting to see preserved colonial landmarks of the Portugese, the Dutch, and the British next to Chinese shophouses and Malay markets. That night, we went to the night market, a mix of local jewelry, souvenirs, bags, art, and food (my favorite part).
On Saturday we got up, ate breakfast, and headed off for a bike ride in the rural areas surrounding the city. We rode through palm oil and rubber plantations and past farms, houses, and all sorts of fruit trees. It was a great way to see the countryside. That afternoon we were free to wonder and the group of people I ended up with walked around a part of the city that we hadn’t yet seen, which contained mostly shophouses with antiques and statues of Buddha. At night most of us went back to the night market for a last chance to get souvenirs and to spend the ringgits we still had before heading back to Singapore in the morning. All in all, it was a great weekend adventure!

-Patrick