By Ahmad Faizuddin
Not long ago, a US-friend of mine visited Malaysia for holiday. He truly enjoyed exploring the country. The first impression as he remembered is the official tourism slogan, “Malaysia’s Truly Asia”. While having dinner at one of traditional stalls, we shared some unique thoughts about Malaysia. Not only the country is rich with delicious cuisines, but it’s also full of fascinating cultures.
In Malaysia, there are many kinds of foods that are considered as Asian charms. Among them are durian, nasi lemak, cendol, and teh tarik. Some Southeast Asian people regard durian as the king of fruits for its formidable look and overpowering odour. It is covered by strong thorn husk and has edible flesh with unusual distinctive flavour and odour.
For that reason, certain hotels and public transportation has banned the fruit within their area. My friend said, “The hotel where we are staying imposes a fine of RM300 for anyone caught bringing in durian.”
Interestingly, durian is not only used for culinary, such as mooncakes which my friend had a bite on it. But it is also used for nutritional and medicinal purposes. It is a good source of carbohydrate and protein since it contains a high amount of sugar, vitamin C and other useful essences. The leaf juice is believed to cure fever. However, some people also believe that durian is harmful especially when it is taken with coffee and alcohol. Personally, I agree with one of my friends, “Durian is harmless.” Therefore we should enjoy the fruit.
Penang’s durian is acknowledged as the best in Malaysia, especially from the western region with its kampung lifestyle attraction. It is actually debatable and I believe different people have different tastes. While I am okay with all varieties of durian, my close-friend will choose the musang king as the best one due to its aromatic bittersweet taste and light yellow colour with small seeds.
While having the discussion, we enjoyed nasi lemak served with chicken curry, small fried anchovies, hard-boiled eggs, roasted peanuts, fresh cucumber slices and hot spicy sauce. Literally it means “fatty rice” which is cooked in coconut milk. It is commonly found in Malaysia and neighbouring countries like Singapore, Thailand and Brunei Darussalam.
As dessert, we had cendol and teh tarik. Both are popular traditional Southeast Asian quencher and beverage taken during the day time and at night. Cendol contains shaved ice with coconut milk, green rice-flour jelly, and palm sugar. While teh tarik is a hot milk tea which literally means “pulled tea”. It gets its name because it is pulled during the pouring process of the drink. Teh tarek’s fan may claim that the longer the pull, the tastier the tea.
Regarding the landscapes and cultures, Malaysia has many beautiful islands and attractions. My friend snorkelled at Shark Point, Perhentian Island, in the northeastern Malaysia. It is a paradise island in the state of Terengganu, close to the Thai border, where we can enjoy the attractiveness of aquatic wildlife including small reef sharks and magnificent turtles. According to him, it was a fascinating sensation of being able to momentarily become one with the nature. He enjoyed underwater life like the fish itself and recommended me to do so sometimes.
Walking along Kelantan countryside, my friend found that the people are very friendly and helpful. He also experienced the soothing moment when hearing the call for prayer (azan). The first time he heard this beautiful voice was in Turkey where some people considered it as liberal country. However, he also saw a bad habit of motorcyclists. It seems that we value our life less. A family of father, mother and son are riding one motorcycle and slipping among cars at the traffic jam. It is a common phenomenon that we are aware of.
One important thing to remember for foreigner-traveller is that they should not rely on the ATM card while spending their time here. In some places, as my friend experienced, there are no ATM machines. Even the worst case is there are ATM machines, which “eat” your card immediately once you insert it. Thus, it is recommended to use the machines while the bank is open so there will be staff around who can help solve the problem. In this condition, some say, “cash is the king”. You should prepare enough Ringgit whenever you go on holiday here.
I do not know if he found out about our “rubber time”. We are always about 30 minutes late for anything. I believe this is not only in Malaysia, but also in neighbourhood countries like Indonesia and Thailand. Often we told our friends that we are “on the way” via the phone while the fact is we were still at home wearing clothes. We should develop the sense of punctuality especially with friends who value the time most.
Slangs are the other interesting sides of daily life in Malaysia. We call everyone “boss” as a sign of affection, especially in Kedai Mamak. You call the guy serving you as boss and they will also call you boss. Sometimes we call our friend boss too when we seek a favour from them. In addition, we often use lah at the end of a sentence, which is adaptable in any situation. For example, when you disagree with someone, you will say, “cannot lah!” or when you express abut the weather, you say “it is so hot lah!”
Actually, Malaysia and other Asian countries have numerous local languages. It seems that we should start preserving our unique languages so they are not extinct. There is a growing phenomenon of the death of languages because it is not used anymore. This is what happened to several world languages, such as Latin, Sanskrit and Ancient Egyptian. One way to preserve the language is by recording it so that we can use and teach the future generation about the language. It may take years to do the job, but it is an undeniably worth the work.
Finally, due to its great market, people start investing in Asian countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and other countries. Perhaps someday Asia will be the centre of the world. It would somehow affect our rich culture and identity. Therefore, we should prepare ourselves mentally, socially, culturally, and economically in the face of global future challenges. Do not just be spectators in our own homes, but be active players and give contributions to our nation.***