Malaysia, Crony Capitalism, and Cool Hats!

Just a quick post on my recent excursion into Malaysia. My group crossed the strait for 4 days to experience a bit of what life is like in Malaysia and to take a little break from the classroom. We went to a mangrove forest (with even more monkeys), had lunch at a random fishing town (I ate a tasty fish eye ball and some baby teriyaki squid), spent a couple nights in historic Melaka, were ushered around like children by a tourist company, and went for a bike ride through some palm oil and rubber plantations.

I found the trip a very insightful glimpse into the general workings of business in many parts of Asia, specifically crony capitalism. This practice bases business transactions of relationships with family and friends. So if you are our crazy travel guide, Eddy, then you take us to all your friends' spots and make us get out and eat. We don't complain because we're getting fed, and you get a nice little kick back. Eddy conveniently knew everyone personally wherever we stopped, and I'm pretty sure there was a fair amount of financial transactions going on behind the scenes.

One example: we did a "leisure hunt" around Melaka, and on it had to try out a local dessert. It didn't specify what, but apparently the only way to get the "bonus points" for this task was to go to a certain stand and all get a dessert, which I'm pretty sure he charged us an extra 30 cents for. And you wonder where that extra 30 cents goes? and why they wouldn't could a group going to another stand? It's all about reciprocal relationships.

This isn't always a horrible thing, I mean our other tour guide took us over to her cousin's shop and gave us a little sample and showed us how they baked some special cookies, but she was very insistent on taking us to this shop so we could just look around...

Another thing, I thought our bike ride was especially funny because it was essentially the same thing as a bunch of Asian tourists coming to rural North Carolina and taking a bike ride in the crazy summer heat through a nice tobacco field. Who would do that? But when you're on vacation in Malaysia it's perfectly normal to go for a traipse through the cash crops. I love biking (prefer downhill though), but just found this idea funny when I looked at it in reverse.

Elliot, Katie, and I found a pretty cool local shop among all of the overly tourist oriented stalls of the market. Granted, we did have to ask around and get led there on a 10 minute walk by the shop owner's daughter. But we came away from the journey with some cool Malay hats and scarves, and a nice opportunity to have a short conversation with a local besides crazy ole Eddy.

More to come soon, I just finished The Problem of Pain (C.S. Lewis), and am starting up the Cost of Discipleship (Bonhoeffer), so lots of good things to discuss. More pictures from Malaysia and other adventures are up on facebook, so check those out!