15 November 2010 - Air Asia X Flt D72702

In the air somewhere over Indonesia.

Breakfast on the verandah of the once-grand now just “Majestic” Station Hotel in Ipoh matched our room in the less-than-spectacular stakes. Cold chicken sausage, cold, deep-fried noodles, burnt toast (our fault) and jam. Oh, well, it was clean and we had a good night's sleep.

With only a couple of hundred kms to cover for the day, we elected to take a 'scenic' loop near the KL International Airport to see some “off the tourist track” parts of Malaysia. We headed for the small town of Morib, about 40 kms south-west of KLIA. No real surprises. The roads were good, the traffic moderate and the drivers erratic. The largest town on our route was Banting, a good example of what Malaysia is and will soon become. Despite some crumbling older buildings, the streets were spotlessly clean, cranes dotted the skyline, new roads were being built, new drainage works being dug. New, new, new!

We had made our little side trip hoping to find a traditional Malay fishing village. If we had more time, we probably could have found one, but the best we could do was a small fleet of boats gathered in a creek beside the main road.


While our thoughts are fresh and we have heaps of time – it's an 8 hour flight – it is probably a good time for some reflections.

In short, we really enjoyed our short stay in Malaysia. We probably didn't have enough time to truly appreciate the natural wonders that the country has to offer, so any serious comment on the scenery would be a bit unfair. What did surprise us was the enormous amount of open space. Not true wilderness by any means, but rolling hills covered with dense jungle lined the motorway for almost all the 400 km trip from KL to Penang. The Cameron Highlands with Tea Plantations, Palm Oil Plantations and Strawberry Farms gave us a cool, almost cold, break from the tropical heat of the coast.

Malaysia, for us, was more about the culture and the lifestyle. Culturally, it is a true miracle, well at least on the surface. Chinese, Indians, Malays and a number of indigenous minority groups, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists and Christians co-exist in relative harmony. But true integration of the many racial and religious groups simply doesn't exist. Inter-marriage seems to be extremely rare, education is segregated on religious and racial grounds and even living areas are roughly zoned on an ethnic basis.

Language could be another great divide. While most people seem to have a smattering of the three major 'domestic' languages, Malay, Chinese and Hindi, the real common language is English. A great advantage to us as travellers and probably a significant advantage for Malaysia in the future as English is fairly much the universal language.

All that aside, the people of Malaysia seem firmly united in their loyalty to Malaysia itself. They have a Malaysian identity. Sure, they still have filial loyalties to their various 'origins', but so do Greek Australians, South African Australians, Vietnamese and Chinese Australians.

It is impossible to travel in this country and not recognise the vigour and drive of its people. It is all happening in Malaysia.