Steve and Cathy's Blog

We have been traveling south along the Myanmar and Malaysia coasts for the past two days. We were supposed to have stopped in Penang, Malaysia, but apparently the tides and currents in the river that we would have had to traverse weren’t favorable. But this morning we glide into this massive port. There are container gantries everywhere, so we are already getting a sense that the Malaysia economy is light years ahead of the one we left a couple of days ago.

Most of the excursions today are going to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of the country and its largest city. There are to be a lot of shopping opportunities available on these tours, high end shopping like we could do at home. Plus we are told that the traffic from Port Klang to Kuala Lumpur is legendarily heavy. So months ago we decided to go in a different direction.

We are taking the Putrajaya – The Intelligent City half-day tour. This is a city built in 1999 specifically to house government administrative departments. The legislature is still in K L, but many of the departments, including the Supreme Court, are located here.

We board our bus and meet our large personality guide. She tells us she has a long name that none of us will be able to pronounce, so just call her Zee. She has a wonderful sense of humor, and laughs heartily at her own jokes. In about fifteen minutes after starting the tour, Steve has a crush on our guide.

We have about a one-hour drive to get to Putrajaya – a drive on a 6-lane divided highway in mint condition. It is a toll road, as almost all of the highways in Malaysia are. From Kuala Lumpur to Singapore is about a five-hour drive on a toll road, and I think I remember Zee saying the toll is around US$20-30.

During this tour, Zee covers a wide range of subjects introducing us to her country. Therefore, I must present these tidbits in similar fashion:

• There is a “cruise season” and it runs from October through June. So tourism is a huge industry now for Malaysia.
• 32 million people live in the country. There are also 7 million foreigners working here, mostly from Indonesia and the Philippines. Many of them are servants, especially Filipino women. She explained why women in particular, and I think it has to do with their ability to speak English. But I failed to write down why exactly. Maybe Cathy remembers.
• There are three main population groups: Sunni Muslims comprise 60% (those are the Malaysians), Indians and Chinese the rest.
• Malaysians are most of the Muslims, and almost all government employees are Malaysians. The Chinese, especially, as well as the Indians, operate the businesses. Malaysians like the pay and fringe benefits so they are content to work in the public sector. This remark coming from a Malaysian woman.
• Education is both public and private. In the public schools, the primary grades are for ages 6 to 12. A person has the right to be educated in their native language, so there are Chinese schools (where three languages are taught – Chinese, English and Malaysian), Indian schools (same three languages), and Malaysian schools (Malaysian and English only). Secondary school is for ages 13 to 27, and everything is taught in Malaysian.
• Medical care provided by the government is available to all, but she emphasized that it is s-l-o-w. If you can afford it, you definitely want to try and get private treatment. That medical care is world-class, to the point where ‘medical tourism’ is quite popular.
• There is a social security system called Employers Provident Fund, into which you pay 11% and the employer 12%. Retirement age is 60.
• The governmental setup is a bit peculiar by our standards. In addition to three federal areas (sort of like our D.C.), the country consists of thirteen states, nine of which are on the Malay Peninsula and two are on the island of Borneo. Nine of them are sultanates, in that they are run by sultans who apparently are not elected. The other two have no such royalty. There is a king of the country who serves for five years, and it is one of the nine sultans. This honor gets passed around equitably between the nine of them. He must be a member of the royal family and he must be Muslim. There is a parliament and a prime minister, and they hold the real power in the nation.
• When the Japanese invaded Malaysia in 1942, they brutalized the local population. Thousands and thousands were summarily executed. Zee explains this as we are driving along, and then adds: “But we get along well with the Japanese now.” Pointing out the window of the bus, she adds: “See all the cars?” And then she laughs. The woman is a wonderful piece of work.
• The economy is cranking. 40% of their GDP is manufacturing. Then there is palm oil. We pass by huge plantations of trees all planted for that crop.

We aren’t more than ten minutes on the way before we are struck by how modern and dynamic the area is. It starts with the highway, which I mentioned above is six lanes wide, paid for with tolls. Beside the road are high-rises, factories, warehouses – all less than ten years old.   Okay, part of our awe at what we see is the change from Myanmar, but whew! Who knew? Malaysia? Well, I looked it up and what we are seeing is a true reflection of the Malaysian economy, which has grown at an average of 6.5% annually for the past fifty years.

We arrive in this “planned community” of Putrajaya around 11:00 and our first stop is a huge botanical garden. Because it is less than twenty years old just like the rest of the city, it is picturesque but, well, HOT! Cathy and Steve wander around for about thirty minutes, take some photos ( a couple of them are below) and head back to the entrance. It is Tuesday, and the place is very quiet. We do get to chat with our guide and her colleague from the other bus for a couple of minutes and get a couple of questions answered. Cathy (maybe I shouldn’t even bring this up) encounters one of those people on the ship that bitch about everything, and we mean everything. I wander around in a daze (the entrance building is not air-conditioned) and Cathy listens to the litany of shortcomings that the cruise line has inflicted on this person. God bless her…I mean Cathy. I missed it all. Darn!

We board the bus and head for the … well, I’m not sure what to call it … the main vantage point for viewing the grandeur of this new city, I guess. We can see a hugantic Muslim temple, one of the eight bridges that span the waterways of the city, a tethered hot air balloon ride (sort of an incongruity in such a place), and the palace of the sultan that was displaced when Putrajaya was chosen to be the admin capital and thus became one of the three federal areas. The place is indeed wondrous if admiring public spending is your thing. Malaysia, given its growth rate, certainly can justify it, and the people of the country are justifiably proud. It stands as a symbol of how far the nation has come in a relatively short time, and we are glad to be there to witness it. And Zee proudly mentions that all the architects and laborers on this immense project were Malaysians.  Here are a couple of photos from this location:

I have to relate a fun interchange that I had with our guide: As enamored with her personality as I had become in a fast two or three hours, I really wanted to take her picture to share with people who would read my comments about her (i.e., anyone reading this). It is the picture at the beginning of this post.

So we are at the stop in the center. After taking a bunch of photos, I ask her if I might take her picture. She is surprised but of course says yes. We are under a tree in the shade, and I take two photos of her close up. I look at them and say: “These are kind of dark.” And I start to add “Perhaps it’s because you are dark.” And she says: “I think that’s because my skin is dark” at the same time. We both laugh. This is a memory I will treasure for a long time. It is this kind of interchange that builds bridges among nations one person at a time.

We leave there, drive past many spectacular buildings, many with the most interesting, bold architecture. Here are some examples.

This is a huge Muslim mosque, capable of handling 15,000 worshipers at one time.

Below is a building that has a garden on each floor.

In the photo below on the right, if you look carefully, you will see a dome framed by the building in the foreground.  This is the “Steel Mosque,” and this one is capable of holding services for 30,000 people at one time.

Then we head back to the ship. Zee entertains us all the way back. One member of the tour asks what I consider a most impertinent question, that being “How much government corruption is there in Malaysia?” I mean, what is this jerk implying with such a question? Well anyway, she handles it beautifully. With a big smile on her face and a hearty laugh, she holds up her Tour Guide License and says: “I need to keep this license, so I cannot answer that question.”

We are back at the ship around 1:00pm. At this point, I cannot for the life of me remember any details about what we did after that, nor does it really matter. We learned a great deal about this dynamic country, and we sense that it is just the beginning of our awakening to twenty-first century Asia.