Lorien Holland - Malaysia

Chinese immigrants brought many traditions with them to Malaysia, including female foot binding for richer women in their community. Although foot binding is no longer practised, replicas of the diminutive brocade shoes can still be found in craft shops and museums.

Dressed in traditional costume, this young woman helps celebrate Malaysias remarkable cultural diversity in its annual Citrawarna (Colours of Malaysia) parade.

Fireworks over the old Moorish-style law courts bordering Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) in downtown Kuala Lumpur, heart of the colonial administration in Malaya.

Malaysia

a travel adventure

photography by Bok Tai Siew
text by Lorien Holland

Contents

A runner on the jogging track outside the state-of-the-art Petronas Twin Towers in the Golden Triangle business district of Kuala Lumpur. Below right: The white sands and palm trees of Sipidan Water Village Resort in the eastern state of Sabah are deliciously inviting. Top right: All hotels and dive operators were evicted from the world-renowned Sipidan dive site in 2005 in order to preserve its unique environment, and divers are now accommodated in romantic stilt villages like the Sipidan-Kapalai Resort. Right: Until Malaysias highway network got off the ground in the 1970s, Kuala Lumpurs old railway station, designed in Moorish style by a British colonial architect, was the centre of activity.

Published by Periplus Editions with editorial offices at 61 Tai Seng Avenue, #02-12Singapore 534167.

Copyright 2007 Periplus Editions (HK) Ltd
Photographs 2007 Bok Tai Siew

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission from the publisher.

ISBN: 978-1-4629-0929-2 (ebook)

Printed in Singapore

Photo Credits
All photos by Bok Tai Siew except for the following: C. K. Ng: pages 85 (below left and right), 91 (below), 94; S. G. Tan: page 107; A. T. Tang: page 52 (above); Ricky Teoh: pages 56 (below), 78 (below), 100, 102, 103 (above), 104 (below left).

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Sunset on Penangs famous Batu Ferringhi Beach.

Malaysia:
The Original Melting Pot

A typical village house in Kampong Mortem in downtown Malacca. Its steep pitched roof is well suited for ventilation and tropical downpours. The ceramic tiles on the steps are a Portuguese-influenced style.

Long before New York became the melting pot of the New World, Malaysia was bubbling away, mixing cultures, religions and ways of life. From way back in the third century BC , when trading links were firmly established with China to the east and India to the west, Malaysia has been a fertile ground for the fusion of different faiths and ways of life. The result is a unique jumble of localized cultures involving aboriginals (Orang Asli), Malays, Chinese, Arabs, Sumatrans, Indians and Europeans, who have mingled and fought for control of trading rights and the countrys rich natural resources.

Underneath that mesh of beliefs and religions, Malaysia is a humid, tropical landscape, where frangipani trees grow by the roadside, inviting white sands separate the land from the sea and the jungles are so dense that animal and plant species are still being discovered within. Encroaching on that landscape is, of course, a fast-expanding urban environment of office blocks, highways, billboards and shopping malls as the modern state of Malaysia reaches towards its goal of developed nation status by 2020.

I was quite unprepared for the degree of modernity in present-day Malaysia when I moved there in the year 2000. I had seen photographs of Kuala Lumpurs icon to progress, the Petronas Twin Towers. My sister, a long-term resident of the city, had also briefed me on the changes afoot. But the state-of-the-art airport, the modern highways, the swish hotels, the highly air-conditioned upmarket shopping centres not to mention the traffic jams were way beyond my expectations.

Until recent decades, Malaysia, or Malaya as it was called in colonial times, really was a backwater. Time passed slowly, palm oil, tin and rubber were the major industries, and people had time to sit and talk as long as they were out of the sun and in the shade!

Still, the concept of time passing slowly should not be confused with time not passing at all. Malaysia has a very lengthy past. Human remains dating back some 37,000 years have been found in the Niah Caves in eastern Malaysia. More recent ancestors moved southwards from China and Tibet around 10,000 years ago and make up the bulk of the indigenous populations of Orang Asli today. Later migrants brought fishing and sailing skills with them, and gave their name to the Malay Archipelago lands which today make up the modern states of Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Brunei.

The Sultan Ahmad Samad Building at Dataran Merdeka (Independence Square) in the centre of old Kuala Lumpur. Once the centre of the colonial administration, the building now houses the commercial division of the High Court.

The pink granite Putra Mosque is at the centre of the new administrative capital of Putrajaya. Completed in 1999, the mosque can accommodate 15,000 people and is an interesting blend of Islamic architectural and decorative styles from Malaysia, Persia, the Arab world and Kazakhstan.