Travels with Tony: Root for Me in Malaysia

By Tony Lee

Travels with Tony

 

Not long after I started in the Roots program a month ago, I began to get toothaches. In the month before I left San Francisco, my dentist had filled two cavities. At the wedding in Kuala Lumpur five days ago, I met the groom’s uncle, who turned out to be a dentist. He saw me three days later and determined that I needed a root canal. I was taken care of in two visits and the cost was less than half of what it would have run back home. Trained in England and Germany, he specialized in implants so my procedure was relatively routine for him. A nice touch in his office was the flatscreen TV mounted in the ceiling. Watching a National Geographic documentary on the deep sea life helped me get through the pain.
 
I have spent the past week traveling with my brother and his wife. We toured KL and my Malacca, a world heritage town that dates back over 500 years to the Portuguese occupation. Later came the Chinese, the British and the Japanese. We found the local Malay people to be helpful but we would have to initiate any interactions. We learned later that there have been racial tensions between the Malay natives and the Chinese that go back many generations. I had noticed at the wedding dinner that out of 220 people in attendance, there were only two non-Chinese people—one a Caucasian man and the other an Indian.
 
The Malaysians are primarily Muslim and make up about 60% of the population. Chinese are roughly 30% of the total and the rest are mostly Indian. Islam is the official state religion and the government gives preference to the Malaysians when it comes to getting into universities. For this reason most Chinese go abroad if they can afford it. The Chinese and the Malays generally keep their distance, even avoiding the restaurants of the other group. The fact that the Chinese are far more financially successful only contributes to the rift.
 
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As a tourist, I did not encounter any difficulties. English is widely spoken and among the local Chinese, the primary dialect is Cantonese. Any Mandarin speakers are likely to be tourists from the mainland. My brother and his wife marveled at the top quality Chinese cuisine that was just as good as they have in Hong Kong but far cheaper. Unusual food items that we came across were blue colored rice, stingray (it look like white meat fish but it was heavier and denser in texture) and large steamed fish heads.
 
Besides the food everything else was quite cheap — everything from taxis to toothpaste to telephone plans. The latest James Bond movie, Spectre, cost us only US$3 a person. So if you would like a unique Asian experience, come to Malaysia. Bring your appetite and be prepared for a good time. You will find a modern society with a well-developed infrastructure, better than that found in the neighboring countries of Thailand and Indonesia. Expect a warm and tropical climate. KL has an average rainfall of 94 inches —that’s almost 8 feet of water.
 
And if you need a top notch dentist at a reasonable price, I’ve got the man for you. His son and daughter are also dentists who work alongside their father in his practice. Root for me and I’ll root for you.