Malaysian Road Trip

I traveled the country to learn something about it and something about me.

In the summer of 2022, I went on a road trip across Malaysia. The trip was with the family and we went around the coastal areas of the country for a week.

In brief, the first day of the trip started with Selangor, then to Perak for lunch, continuing on to Penang and staying a couple of nights there. Then we went north and deep into the Malay heartland of Kelantan bunking a few nights there too, and driving down the coasts of Terengganu and to Pahang. Turning back to Melaka and back to our home state of Selangor. All told, that’s 9 out of 11 states in the Peninsula.

It wasn’t the sort of trip where we just wanted to get away from Technology and immerse ourselves within Malaysia and its beauty. We used Airbnb to book our stays, Google Maps and Waze as our navigator, and Tiktok to find the best local food. Tiktok as a search engine is apparently a thing. I’m 27 this year, and I’m shameless enough to admit that I am terminally online, but finding out that people (Gen-Z, mostly) use the app for something more than just trendy dance moves and entertainment was a shock.

Wow. Gen-Z has harnessed the power of social media and leveraged its network of raw information. What’s next?

Okay, that aside and coming back to the road trip. We planned this road trip as a small celebration of the Covid lock-downs being lifted, and everyone was back in the country. Since, everything and everywhere in the country was open, we figured we’d give that a try and go explore the country.

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This post is an admission of guilt. I do not know my own country and my fellow countrymen. I’ve been here all my life and I’ve never actually been outside of my home state that much. This is just the Peninsula, not even counting the Borneo side of the country. All the stories I’ve heard (good and bad) about other towns or the people or their culture, some were true, most were probably false or totally misunderstood.

To turn my guilt into a damnation, I brought my work laptop with me during the trip. I was on a week-long leave but I was told to anticipate some tasks from the client. Midway into the journey and the phone rang. I think I spent 16 hours total just exploring the room and doing work, my trips consisted no more than three 10-minute walks to grab coffee from nearby coffee shops. I could not be fully present to experience the road trip and just be in that moment.

Though I only had a mere snapshot of an experience to go by, I’ve come to realise that I may have neglected what could be an enriching part of life. :(

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In September of last year, I met

Rob Henderson

who organized a meet-up while he was traveling in South East Asia. He said there’s an optimism to the people here, to the place. That was the vibe he was getting.

I couldn’t see what he meant there. He had the benefit of having an outsider’s view, I don’t.

There’s a line in Eiji Yoshikawa’s novel Musashi:

It’s only natural, but you should avoid the temptation of thinking that your dreams can be realized only in some far-off place. If you think that way, you’ll neglect the possibilities in your immediate surroundings.

I think I’m starting to get it now.