...And Then, Flying East to the Phillippines

Many a wise traveler met on the road have remarked as such, "every adventure with an abrupt beginning must have an abrupt end."  The wisdom of the words cannot be anymore appropriate for my five-month stay in Kuala Lumpur.  The whole episode started with a directionless grad student frantically seeking any opportunity anywhere in the world as he awaited the inevitably end of his one-year tenure in London.  A couple of 30-min Skype interviews and a few disjointed email communication with a landlord...all the sudden, he found himself on a 12-hour flight across the globe.

Although the 12-hour flight bit will be not be repeated, what will happen six days later will inevitably be something very similar.  Just a sudden as the original job offer arrived in an email to London, a notice for internal transfer to the company's Manila office arrived after only an email followed by a 30-minute Skype interview.  Then all the balls start rolling once again, with housing hunt, plane ticket hunt, and anxieties for a new home...this time, to the capital of the Philippines.  All that will culminate in a 3-hour flight on the morning of Saturday, Dec 1st.

All that will be followed by house viewings, meeting the new coworkers, getting used to the new job description and responsibilities, as well as getting accustomed to the neighborhood, the food, and the people.  All the trivial matters of adjusting to an environment will surely accumulate into a major headache.  And as such headache is dealt with, Malaysia will be sorely missed, not just as a constant home for nearly half a year that is no loner in the realms of the unknown, but also for its predictability as a society and a community that is, despite everything, easy for the foreigner to adjust to.

In fact, Malaysia is a great teacher for a mild, comprehensive introductory lesson to all the issues and difficulties of Southeast Asia.  Like others, it is a multicultural society created by centuries of migration and colonialism.  Like others, it is slowly strangling that multiculturalism with the twin forces of ethnic nationalism and religious conservatism.  And as a result, it faces very realistic concerns of domestic conflicts stemming from ethnic/religious divides and a massive exodus of a more and more anxious dominant minority.

And like others in the region, while it tries to stay off the global spotlight by balancing good relations with all major powers in Asia and elsewhere, it does not seem to be able to contain some of its deeply biased views.  The dominance of a particular religion in the country has led to formation of national opinions that color nearly everyone's views that then find themselves in the direction of national policies, both domestic and foreign.  Any open opposition of the said policies and the dominant views become social taboos.

These are not at all unique in Malaysia, but due to Malaysia's above-average economic performance, they have been glossed over (or rather, shoved under the carpet temporarily) here, as minorities keep themselves busy with making money while the government shut up the opposition with extra money to toss around for subsidies.  This is not the case in all parts of Southeast Asia, where discrepancies in economic growth has lead to massive, in-your-face kind of inequality that can clearly be seen an felt as sources of grievances and visually obvious social divisions.

The wealthy will look so much wealthier when placed next to urban slums, and the poor will look so much poorer when residing at the foot of glittering skyscrapers that they do not dare to enter.  While that may not be the case in Malaysia, it could very much be the case in the polluted streets of Manila, where the most beautiful and ugliest sides of the endless metropolis lives side by side.  It will certainly by exhilarating and stimulating to witness all that, and to learn as much as one can about such unequal society as possible.

It is as another wise traveler remarked, "life is a journey in which the journey itself is much much more important than the destination."  No matter where one lives, always have the mentality that it is not the final destination.  But at the same time, no matter where one travels to for short period of time, always consider it another home, somewhere that exist in the mind not just for beautiful sights and great food, but for myriad socio-economic issues that it faces and must tackle.  The traveler's ultimate mission is not just to see them, but to understand them at the deepest level possible.