Tour Perspective

Every trip comes with perspectives, especially for new places with new people. I can't help to ponder that there are too many differences between us and them. And they have more good things than us. These are perhaps my surface observation of things that may seemed premature considering the short time spent, but nice places with good scenes bring good hear within.

Some points from my perspective:

1.     Thailand is a country of Boleh! There's so many things can be done in Thailand. No, not Malaysia. Definitely not. In Malaysia, there are too many things “Tak Boleh!”.

2.    I think Thai people grow together with the pace of their country’s growth. That’s why we can see people in their most coolness behaviour. At least in the areas that I toured. Unlike Malaysia, our country’s evolution is too drastic for the people to catch up. We had to compete, producing competitive society. Hence we produce failures and loads more cheaters. Creating abundance of offensive minded population. And one of the common species are the 'kiasu's'.

We are being spoon fed instead of educated. We cry out loud when the feeding portion became less or the spoons taken away. We become panic and angry when we lost our comfort zone. We cannot accept losing and losers. Instead of finding alternatives to survive, we chose to demonstrate our dislikes.

3.   Why there’s no toll collection throughout the road that I travelled in Thailand? Why Malaysia need highways and collect tolls (like forever) from end to end? Why Thailand can build good wide roads without needing to privatize it? Why?

What makes Malaysia and Thailand different in this manner? Road building have the same engineering standard all over the world. Malaysia adopts the Malaysian Highway Standard Guideline.

4.    The streets of Thailand are clean, though it is not newly constructed. Not a single cigarette bud, candy wrap nor accumulation of street debris and sands clogging drain inlets. Is it because their street design is perfected with self-cleaning mechanism? These are non-tourist spots like here in KLCC or Bukit Bintang. We are referring to old streets like Chow Kit and Ampang. 

5.    The petrol and diesel price is so high due to non-subsidy by the government, but the food is cheap and tasty. I take it that they prepare the food with passion. It is not over commercialized or over rated like here in Kuala Lumpur. Especially during the soon to be Ramadhan. It is just so insincere.

6.    South Thailand have an abundance of rubber plantations. So I heard that rubber yields more than oil palm in south Thailand. Malaysia used to have rubber as commodity but we were too arrogant to keep it as our honoured product though we have been given with good soil for rubber. We were driven by greed to chase the oil palm market demand, converting all rubber estates to oil palm.

As a result, we lost our natural environment. Pristine forest were raped for the more so called yielding oil palm. Leaving behind polluted water catchment and rivers from over fertilized crops due to impatient estates owners. Lesser green leaves from oil palm trees raise surface temperature and denying wind flow compared to cooler rubber plantations. The more compact soil in an oil palm estates permits faster surface run-off, accumulating sediments in water ways creating flash floods downstream.

Now I may sound more like writing an environmental engineering report!

Though I might point out all the above that in physical scene, our country may seemed like moving fast ahead through rapid modernization, but the calmer and progress growth of the people is something more we need to look at. A healthy population in mind, heart and soul should be the key to a healthier development of the country. We need to be listened at heart instead of over giving the necessary.

We need to be thought the intermediate approach, about living in a mediocre life but pushing for the afterlife, not the other way round. The soul require more feeds for this. Insyaa Allah.

p/s. One other thing! Did I mention that all hotels that we stayed have high speed wi-fi? They really do. From chalet style to multi storey kind of hotels, the wi-fi coverage was simply amazing. Can we have those in Malaysia's public area for free?