Does Malaysia do it Better?

I’m living in Malaysia now with my family.

I grew up in the United States and lived in Japan, on and off, for about twenty years. I’ve had plenty of time to develop opinions about how different countries do things—and, naturally, to become an expert on none of them.

Still, after spending time in all three, I’ve noticed a few things Malaysia does surprisingly well. This is by no means an exhaustive list, and I could be a bit off on some of this. But they’re just my general impressions. 

For starters, the bird calls. I love hearing them in the morning. Malaysia seems to have an endless supply of birds with complicated opinions about the dawn. You wake up and there they are, carrying on as though they have somewhere very important to be. It’s a small thing, perhaps, but it makes the morning feel alive, as well as the dusk walks when they’re settling down for the night. They have lots to say to each other before bed, too.

Japan has jungle crows. A lot of them. In the urban areas, they bully everything else into quiet submission. They also ravage the sacks of (delicious) garbage we place in front of our homes, leaving an aftermath that looks like a garbage truck exploded and the crows won.

Malaysians, like Americans, are generally a friendly lot.  They’re cheerful and can be quite friendly. Say good morning to someone and they’ll usually respond.

That shouldn’t be remarkable, but it is.

I’ve lived in places (sorry Japan!) where greeting a stranger seems to create a minor social emergency. Here, it feels natural.

In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia has remarkably good infrastructure.

KLIA, the airport, is better than just about any major airport I’ve encountered in the United States. It’s modern and clean, and there’s a fast train that takes you directly into the city. From there, you can connect to a surprisingly sophisticated network of MRT and LRT lines. It’s almost as efficient as Japan. 

Sorry, USA, but we all know your public transportation blows the big one.

The contrast with much of the United States is indeed striking. America built an enormous amount of infrastructure during the twentieth century and then, somewhere around the 1980s, seems to have decided it had built enough.

The Petronas Towers are genuinely impressive, marking the downtown district. They call it KLCC—Kuala Lumpur City Center—so there’s no dispute on where the center is.

 LA doesnt have that; we have no idea where the center of Los Angeles is—though many areas may vie for that distinction. Its urban layout is so spread out, it looks like someone sneezed on a map and then decided to build a city there. Maybe it’s no big deal, but neither Tokyo nor Osaka can claim a city center either. 

Crime? This is Asia, man. You guys in the West can keep your guns. 

Here’s another big difference: gun control. I’ve always felt considerably safer walking around Japan and Malaysia than I have in many parts of Los Angeles. There is something psychologically reassuring about going through an ordinary day without wondering whether the person standing behind you at the ATM might be packing.

Malaysia also retains many traditional values that I associate with Asia: education, hard work, entrepreneurship and close family ties. Those values are certainly not absent from the United States, but I sometimes feel they have become less culturally dominant there than they once were.

Should I mention the food? … Okay, I’ll mention the food: 

Then there’s the food.

Malaysia is ridiculous in the best possible way. Malay, Chinese, Indian and other culinary traditions all coexist here, and you can eat remarkably well without spending much money.

And there’s something else I appreciate: food still tastes like food.

Compared with much of the American food environment, where so much seems to arrive processed, packaged and engineered to survive indefinitely, Malaysian food often feels fresher and more immediate.

And American portion sizes? — Let’s just say that Malaysia has spared me from being served enough food to feed a minor soccer team.

Politics? … Let’s not go there. I will say, however, that Malaysia’s current prime minister strikes me as thoughtful, intelligent and comparatively reasonable, and compared with the political circus we’ve all watched unfold in the United States, I find that refreshing.

But, hey, this is far from paradise.  If you’re a pedestrian, Kuala Lumpur can be an adventure. It’s not a particularly walkable city. When someone tells you, “You can’t get there from here,” they’re not necessarily joking. The city often seems to have been designed on the assumption that everyone owns a car—or at least has access to a Grab (the Uber equivalent).

Sidewalks can disappear. Roads become obstacles. A destination that looks tantalizingly close on a map can turn out to be separated from you by six lanes of traffic, a highway interchange and what appears to be a small municipal moat.

Japan has its own daunting intersections and tentacled roads, but there is one enormous difference: I trust the Japanese driver. They tend to be extraordinarily careful around pedestrians. Malaysia is a little more… improvisational.

Roundabouts scare me. I hold my breath when I’m in one. 

Perhaps this is because I was raised in America, where roundabouts were once regarded as exotic European devices designed to confuse motorists. But Malaysian roundabouts can be an experience. Let’s just say that Malaysian drivers aren’t always the carefullest drivers in the world, and entering—or escaping—a busy roundabout can occasionally feel like participating in a live-action video game. You don’t necessarily know what anyone else is going to do.

And then there are the motorbikes. They rule the road.  They squeeze through spaces I didn’t know were spaces. They emerge from behind cars. They materialize beside you with the supernatural timing of creatures that have spent generations perfecting the art of surprising automobile drivers.

I’ve learned to respect them. And to look everywhere.

Malaysia has another complicated feature that is harder to reduce to a simple observation: its three major ethnic communities—Malay, Chinese and Indian—live together, but the relationships between those communities can sometimes feel more complicated than the cheerful multicultural image presented to outsiders suggests.

There is coexistence, certainly. There is also separation, particularly in some social and cultural spheres.

Language is part of that complexity.

Malay is the national and official language and is taught in public schools, but the Chinese and Indian communities may use other languages within their homes and communities. I’ve even encountered Chinese Malaysians who told me they had little interest in learning Malay.

That surprised me at first. But Malaysia isn’t a country where everything has been neatly blended into one homogeneous culture. It’s more like several cultures living alongside one another—sometimes comfortably, sometimes awkwardly, and sometimes with considerable distance between them.

Perhaps that’s one of the things I find most interesting about living here.

Malaysia isn’t Japan.

It certainly isn’t America.

And the longer I live here, the more I realize that it doesn’t have to be either.

There are things Malaysia does better than both. There are things it does worse. And there are things it does in a completely different way.

That’s probably the most interesting part of living abroad: eventually, you stop asking which country is better and start noticing what each place has figured out for itself.

And, of course, there are the birds.

The birds are definitely better.