Malaysia
A WORLD of CONTRADICTIONS
Malaysia – Arrival
The Culture Shock Begins
Malaysia as I was quick to discover was a land of broad cultural brush strokes and glaring contradiction to the life I had known up to now.
A young unworldly twenty one year old stepped of what was passionately known as the freedom bird onto the hot cement tarmac of Butterworth Air Base in Penang Malaysia that July day in 1986.
The sun glared ferociously up off the white cement as the contents of this Boeing 707 expunged themselves into for most a new world. A world that would prove to be my first culture shock. One of many I have to say in the years to come.
The Passport – The Shock Started Here!
Picking up my hand carry on I filed out of the aircraft with my passport and immigration entry pass in hand I had not payed a lot of attention to it other than filling in the required information, name, visa number etc.
Filling down covering my eyes from the bright afternoon sun we headed across the hot cement into Butterworth Customs & Immigration. Lining up we filed through as I have done a thousand times since I’m guessing. I made the front of the line and handed over my passport to the waiting customs officer. Hot, tired and a little dazed by all the activity around me I had my passport stamped and handed back to me.
Third Class Exemption
I looked at the stamp which immediately hit me and I was shocked to see what was written with the triangular stamp I was now looking at. Third Class Exemption! What? I’M not even 3rd class in this country? I was immediately taken back and this has stuck with me since then.
I have to say I was young and Nieve for sure but regardless if this was what I believed it to be or not there were defiantly a class system that was very evident in Malaysia.
There were many things that were immediately very different and were going to take some time to understand.
Ethnic Makeup of Malaysia
In my first days in Malaysia there was so much that was strange. The Air Force people would wear rubber thongs( FLIPFLOPS) out on the flight line to service their F-5 Fighter Aircraft. This was even in our pre Work, health and Safety age we have today a shock. We wore Tee shirt, shorts and high ankle GP boots and we thought this the minimum. Its certainly a different world today!
They operated a squadron right next to us but we had very little to do with the ground crews all the time I was there. I don’t know if it was us or them but Yes we never met or talked to them. I would expect they spoke English to a point but never chatting I never knew. They had fighters and the Recce Version pictured. This cad cameras in the nose.
Racial Separation Obvious
I could see pretty quickly there was a separation between the MALAY people which were Muslim. This was the first time I had encountered a country that was over whelming guided by religion. My first memory of prayer calls were likely the next day recovering from a very drunken welcome to the base from my workmates I met some characters that were lets say original in their concept of life and how it was lived, but that’s another story maybe.
The Malaysian Bumi’s they were referred to (Bumiputras) from were generally the ones that had the top jobs in the Airforce, banks and businesses. Anywhere where there was a desk and a tea pot we found the Malay sitting their. It was certainly something I had never encountered before. Australia although an inclusive society to a point even back in the 80’s It still has a long way to come to be a modern multi ethnic accepting community.
Malaysian Chinese & Indians
Malaysians 30 Million inhabitants are primarily these three groups but there are a lot of smaller ethnic groups on Sulawesi. I want to focus on these three for now to give you some context.
The Muslim Malays, the Bumy’s number nearly 80% of the population and the Malaysian Chinese Community number about 6.6 Million and the Indian community 1.9 Million and then there are the minorities making up the difference.
There was and probably is an separation of what different races and do generally. I saw the Muslim Malays doing the top level jobs, the Chinese were often the lower manages and highly present in the financial sector like banks and the Indian Malays seemed to do the manual labor jobs and less skilled.
In my time in Butterworth and Penang there were more hints of cultural separation as I understood at the time. I am writing from memory so maybe its now all different but this is what I saw back then.
I traveled the sites of Butterworth and the Island as we called it, Penang and Georgetown. I didn’t even know it had a different name from the island for a while. Just shows my ignorance and lack of international knowledge. I hop e the kids of today are more worldly from school. I can remember learning any history other than the first fleet and western explorers. It was as if the first nation peoples never exited but I digress again so that’s maybe for another story.
Shopping in Malaysia – Whats Bartering?
It was time to get out and discover more of Malaysia and shopping was a venerable challenge both in the shops and markets as well as back in the Airforce Community. No matter what you purchased the question was how much did you pay? Let me warn you it was impossible to escape this inevitable question because someone always wanted to tell you “You Paid To Much!” I got one for OR My Mate So and So got it for generally five to 10 percent below the price you paid. It was just part of life.
So bartering. There were always negotiable prices on everything. Nothing I found was immune from the bartering process generally except fast food places buying curry and Roti for breakfast. (Yes we did eat curry for breakfast). You always asked the price of something say a shirt or a watch. There were unspoken prices as I understand it but I cannot verify this to be true ok.
Malaysian Shopping Price Pecking Order
There was a pecking order from the given price and how much you could negotiate off. The Muslim Malays were said to always get the lowest price. The next in the pecking order was the Chinese Malays then the Indians. I find this hard to believe because Indians are insatiable negotiators but that’s what was generally accepted by myself and my workmates.
There is more however, the RAAF were also next along the pecking order and we were always well distinguishable from tourists. Haircuts were probably a start but we all had what was affectionally called a MUM. It was a RAAF blue bag sewn together on the base with RAAF materials. They were with us always to carry anything from food and booze to fireworks and Walkman with our music tapes. Yes remember them. Plastic boxes with tape inside.
RAAF Days In Malaysia
Day to day life in Malaysia was filled with laughs and hard work. In the RAAF we often had exercises starting in the early hours of the morning testing readiness. We would be tasked with loading and building live weapons and get them loaded on the Mirage IIIO aircraft we operated. The Armament fitters were there with all the crews at the beginning of the generation as it was called. We had a set time to build the weapons then load them but this is not as simple as it may seem. Often the weapons were ready but we were required to wait for the other trades, engines, airframes and even electricians and radar to resolve issues in the broken aircraft from the previous day which had to be fixed and ready to fly.
Once the Aircraft were loaded and the time recorded and reported to headquarters we generally did not fly the aircraft. It became a waiting game to be allowed to download all the live weapons including R530 Radar and Matra 550 IR missiles, Mk 82 500Lb bombs plus the twin 30MM DEFA cannons in gun packs in the fuselage again with live ammunition. Once approved we had to pull it all off and pack it away which was some task in itself. The grumbling would start late in the day when the bulk of the trades could be seen enjoying a BBQ and a few well aren’t beers and we were still working. Could they help us? No! But we grumbled anyway. “This is the life!” As many of my Arab workmates would say in some years to come.
Malay Weather
General Life on Butterworth was good it has to be said. We would go to the mess for breakfast across the grass between the roads that were lined with palms. The air was generally cool in the mornings but heated up through he day. The blue sky would transform to a sky full of angry clouds late in the afternoon. You could nearly set your watch against the afternoon storm. The rain was something I had never seen in this volume. The rain was so heavy you couldn’t see 100meters. I have only seen rain like this in Thailand many years later but it was impressive.
The days were sticky affairs and more so in the wet season (Monsoon). We would start our days with a coffee in the smoko room and back then it was a smoky room as well. We all had these large white porcelain squadron mugs the size of pint glasses. We would give the mug to the Malay Indian coffee boy. That sounds so wrong now but that’s what Sammy was called. He was a lovely old man, he was probably in his 40s but we were all so young everyone looked old.
Day to Day RAAF Work – Armourers
We would go out on the flight line and do a FOD (foreign Object Damage ) walk and look for screws and other objects that would get sucked into the ATAR engines in the Mirage III’s. Once complete we would head either into the flight line to start flight line operations or back into the maintenance shed to service guns, launchers, bomb racks and the Martin Baker Mk 4 Ejections seat. We as technicians rotated though all the different bays to ensure we know the inner workings of the equipment we worked on on the line with the aircraft. We rotated through these over a six to 9 month period. Some of the guys worked over on banners. The banners were towed behind a jet for the others to shoot at with live guns. It trailed a long way back and would be dropped on the grass next to the runway by the tow aircraft before it landed itself. We had Lear Jets to do this sometimes but I remember Mirage aircraft doing the but of the work with a pod loaded on the center line station of one of the Mirage IIIO’s.
Malaysia Continues in the next Blog Post #2
One response to “Malaysia A World of Contradiction and Amazement!”
[…] Lemak is the most popular rice dish in Malaysia. Rice is steamed in coconut milk and pandan leaves to give it a rich […]