Return home and reflections

We flew home on April 6 through Seoul and Tokyo leaving KL at 11 p.m. and arriving in Minneapolis on April 7 at 2 p.m. CDT; about 27 hours travel time. There were no signs of anything out of the ordinary at the Incheon airport despite all the saber-rattling from North Korea.  The flight to Tokyo was more exciting than you would want as we had to land twice; the first time we were about 30 feet off the ground and the plane was wobbling all over the place due to the high winds so the pilot pulled up and circled around for another try which was still quite rough but we made it down.  Some of the passengers were crying but most clapped.
Obviously the trip back was quite long but it was not as tiresome as I thought it was going to be and we adjusted to the jet lag pretty quickly.

Looking back, the trip struck me as a study in contrasts.  There were the obvious differences you would expect when you take an upper middle class couple from an affluent suburb of a moderately sized metropolitan area (about 2 million people) in the upper Midwest and fly them to Kuala Lumpur, a metropolitan area of about 7 million people set in a tropical rain-forest climate 200 miles north of the equator.

From our backyard now:

To my daughter's backyard a week ago.

 Don't worry, ours will look a lot different in another month with leaves on the trees and green grass (if this winter ever ends).

Another difference between the Midwest and Malaysia is the starkness of the contrast between rich and poor.   In the U.S. we have just as great if not greater differences between the rich and poor but it is usually not so readily visible or close at hand as it is in Malaysia.

For example, this is a picture from the balcony of my grand-daughter's bedroom.

Each of these duplexes is valued at around $1 Million U.S.  I don't know the square footage but they are each 3 stories tall and have their own elevator.  Each of them also has a small room off the kitchen for a live-in maid who is typically an OFW (i.e., Overseas Filipino Worker) usually paid about $500/month plus room and board and the Filipina maids send what they can back to their families in the Philippines.  I was told that the maids like working for American Ex-Pats because they are regarded as being generous and friendly and that the least-liked employers are the Chinese who are regarded as being more demanding and tight-fisted.  But this was a survey of one who happened to be an American Ex-Pat so who knows what the truth is. The maids' room are modern and clean but they are small and are not air-conditioned.

But back to the view from my grand-daughter's balcony . . .If you zoom in past the modern million dollar duplexes you see tin roof shacks and shipping containers that people are living in just a stone's throw away.

Note the satellite dish on top of the shipping container shack.

And yet, a couple of miles away are the stunning Petronas towers:

Another striking contrast, at least to me, was the overt issue of race in Malaysia.  Of course, America had a long disgraceful history of racism but it is fortunately no longer sanctioned by law and although there are clearly still some Americans who have racist attitudes, open expression of those views is not socially acceptable.  In Malaysia, racial preferences are de jure; written into law.  The Federal Constitution of Malaysia gives preferences to the Malay ethnic group, often referred to as the Bumiputra (Sons of the Soil), which constitutes about 70% of the population.  The ethnic Malays are guaranteed, as a matter of constitutional law, preferences for admission to government educational institutions, qualification for public scholarships, positions in government, ownership of businesses and a 7% discount in purchases of real estate; all without reference to financial status or need.  

The purported rationale for this law is the economic disparity between the Malays and the ethnic Chinese that developed in colonial times.  When Malaysia was a British colony in the 19th century Chinese were imported to work in and run the tin mines.  Eventually the ethnic Chinese became economically dominant and after Malaysia became independent the ethnic Malay majority established the constitutional preferences for their ethnic group.  The 20% ethnic Chinese population and the roughly 10% ethnic Indian population (who have always been on the lower rung of the economic ladder in Malaysia) are understandably upset about this de jure discrimination by the majority for the majority.  I don't see how that type of legal discrimination can continue without considerable social and political consequences.

Race and skin color is apparently something that is often considered by Malaysians.  On our flight from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur a young Malaysian was sitting next to us and telling us about the country.  I was surprised when the very first thing he said was, "In Malaysia we have three different races.  The lightest in skin color are the Chinese.  The next lightest are the Malays.  The darkest are the Indians.  And that is also the hierarchy in terms of the economic status of the races."  I've also mentioned several times earlier in this blog how odd it struck us that Asian women in both Thailand and in Malaysia would want to touch our grand-daughters and have their pictures taken with them.

I'm grateful that they were so kind to our grand-daughters but I still don't understand what their thinking was.

The last thing I wanted to comment on was the issue of the religions in the country.  The majority of Malaysia is Muslim and I have to confess I felt a little trepidation about that before we went there given the history between the U.S. and  Muslim countries during the last 20 years.  However, that concern turned out not to be an issue at all.  The only time anyone expressed any animosity toward me was when I went to pick up our son at the airport and a 20 year-old guy wearing a T-shirt that said "Jihad is the only solution", aggressively pointed at the message and scowled at me.  But hey, you can find 20 year-old jerks in any country.  Other than that I didn't perceive any hostility at all.

It really is quite remarkable that a Muslim majority country is able to co-exist peaceably, as far as I  could tell, with a minority Hindu population when their tenets and cultures are so different and have, in other parts of the world, resulted in such conflict.  As an example of the stark differences between them, the Muslims are completely monotheistic and believe it is inappropriate to have any images of animals, humans, or God in their mosques. Thus, the architecture and art of the mosques use a number of primary forms: geometric, arabesque, floral, and calligraphic, which are often interwoven.

The Hindu temples on the other hand are a riot of images of animals, devas, supernatural beings and gods.

All in all, Malaysia is a remarkable country with incredible diversity in all aspects of life.  I highly recommend going there if you have the opportunity.