Combination of Oppositions

Malaysia is the land of opposition that combines smoothly that it creates a nice and warm environment everywhere you go. If we look close enough, opposition in Malaysia is quite obvious.

We can start with the people. There are lots of races combined yet live in perfect harmony in Malaysia. Asians and Indians, two different races, blend together without the tendency to fight and make enemies. The Indians, although not a native race of Malaysia, don’t seem to be underestimated.  They pretty much have the same opportunity in work as the Asians. Though not all Indians has a promising job, so does the Asians. They live in good relationship with each other.

Beside the people, the neighborhood and places also do show opposition. One neighborhood is located in Masjid India area. From the name, we can see that the majority living in that neighborhood is Indians. In day time, this neighborhood is a chaos, noisy, crowded, full of traffic place. Everywhere we walk or drive, there’re always shops, people, cars, and garbage. It’s true that it’s not one of the cleanest and healthiest neighborhood in Malaysia. But, in that chaos and noise, we can actually see the real and true culture and social life of the people around.  The people are friendly enough, even to tourist and non-Indians. In the alley, food seller sells Indian cuisine such as Briani rice, curry, and Prata bread while at the same tie also sells milk tea as the drink. As loud and crowded this neighborhood in day time, it shuts itself up when the sun sets. Everywhere is now quite, dark, and not crowded. The shops shuts themselves up and turn the light into darkness. Lights now comes only from 24 hour shops, hotels, and the moon. The people disappear leaving the street empty and without voice at all. Walking down in those alleys now feels like walking in dead city, a lonely place so quite from manmade voices. Adding to all those is the crows flying and filling the night sky with their black figure and cracking noise. It kind of feels unreal and magical in some way, knowing that there’s a place filled with crows in night time like in the fairy tales and horror stories we’ve been listening to.

While Masjid India lives in line with the sun, there’s another neighborhood that lives in line with the moon. Bukit Bintang is this exact place. When night comes, this place comes more and more live. The street food and restaurants filling the whole street open up at night. Though they all sell kind of the same Chinese cuisine, all of the restaurants still filled with people, having fun in the night life.  Maybe this is actually the interesting part of this area. Since every restaurant sells the same cuisine and there are lots of restaurants, everyone who comes there will definitely get their spots and their favorite food. But even with those lots of restaurants, sometimes we still have to wait for the table. The crowd in this place is almost the same as in Masjid India, the difference is that this crowd comes at night time not day time. Apart from the restaurants, this area is also filled with lots of shops offering massage. They put salesman and saleswoman on the street offering massage in the way salesman and saleswoman offering credit card at the mall.

It could be the embracement that makes Malaysia the land of combination. It embraces modernity while at the same time keeping the true culture and traditional way of living. In the morning, when everyone rushes for work, people selling nasi lemak, traditional breakfast of Malaysians, seem to roam the street alongside McDonald’s that is also full of people having breakfast. Transportation also shows in that way. There’s modern and new train such as the LRT and Kelana Jaya Line subway, but there’s also old train such as the KTM Komuter. This condition might result from the lack of development in the KTM Komuter train. But we can also see it as building a development while at the same time keeping the old one. Don’t get it wrong, the KTM Komuter is still in good condition and completely safe, just feels kind of old when we board it.      

It’s an amazing experience to see how different cultures can live in harmony in Malaysia, knowing that in other places, differences don’t always get along well.