Better, Different, Worse...
The Inevitable Questions
At some point we can't help but make comparisons between where we were and where we are. Inevitably there are the questions about what is better about the new place. Now these are always subjective judgements but there are some things that are definite improvements and some that are definitely things that are less good than they were in the UK.
Better - the IT applications.
Different - Food.
I know that many people would suggest that the Penang is the food capital of a very foodie country and I do have to admit that we have had some great food since arriving and it has all been amazing value - let's face it, in some cases it was insanely cheap (we just had lunch out today for four people at a Nasi Kandar cafe and it cost less than £5 including drinks! What the hell!). However, the food in general has not proven to be better than that in the UK... (I'm going to take a step back and wait for the controversy to start...)
A pretty good Korean donburi bowl
No, honestly, I think people seriously underestimate the quality of the food in the UK. I've had conversations with the long term expat staff where I work and they are disparaging of the UK food scene but clearly know very little about what is going on now. Just thinking about where I live in the North East, there is within a 3 mile radius; a pretty good Vietnamese café; a woodfired pizza and taco restaurant; a great higher end restaurant focusing on local ingredients and classic Northern recipes; a clutch of authentic pizza places; a national award winning ice-cream producer; a whole host of excellent fish and chip shops; an authentic Mexican street food restaurant - I could go on and on. This is just a small part of what is available in a small part of a much bigger region and even this is not representative of the whole country. Yes, you can get very bad food but that is not your only option and yes, it is more expensive in general but then the wages are higher in proportion to the cost of living, so it balances out.
https://www.omnicafe.co.uk - The Vietnamese cafe in a North Eastern coastal town - go figure!
A selection of the dishes and the exterior of Lobo Rojo - authentic and excellent Mexican food in North Shields - yes you read that correctly - North Shields! I'm telling you - thinks are not what they once were...
What I will say is that food in the UK is much more diverse than food here in Malaysia - yes, you read me right - more diverse. You can actually get good Indonesian food (there's an Indonesian cafe a five minute walk from my house in the UK would you believe) and examples of most other cuisines in the UK, especially if you are in a bigger city. What you can't do here is find a decent pork pie (not that I as a vegetarian would want to) or Yorkshire pudding - or not that I have found. The quality and cost of South East Asian food is better on the whole, but that's pretty much where it begins and ends.
What is different is the amount of eating out that is done. Eating out is not far off being as cheap as cooking at home out here in Malaysia, so we do eat out or get take out far more often.
Sidebar - there are no Michelin starred restaurants in Malaysia! There are 166 restaurants that hold one or more stars in the UK...
Okay this is due to the fact that Michelin currently do not review in Malaysia but it does show something about the depth and quality of the British food scene.
Worse - General Infrastructure.
Although not as well developed or with the depth and resilience of the UK, Malaysia is rapidly developing its infrastructure.
This is a sweeping generalisation (but then again all the comments included here are generalisations - this isn't a detailed piece of socio-economic research) but on the whole the infrastructure of roads, power, water, public transport, health etc is not up to the standards of the UK. This is easily explained by the fact that the UK has been investing in this for nearly a century on a national and civic scale and, in the case of key areas, even longer. Yes we only brought our national health service into being in the 40s, but we do spend a large proportion of GDP on infrastructure and civil society. We also have a very extensive civil administration at local, regional and national levels. There are endless criticisms we can make of this system (trust me, I do!), but on the whole it does work to provide a standard of support that ranks high globally.
Malaysia has done a great job of bringing itself into the 21st Century despite a number of key issues that I won't go into here, but on the whole the infrastructure is not as efficient, well planned, well maintained or extensive as that of the UK - it just isn't. There aren't as many state funded hospital beds per capita, the road network is poorly maintained by comparison. The public transport infrastructure in KL is excellent, but it isn't great beyond that. The domestic water, whilst cheap and state supported, is not always of drinkable quality due to the way the system is maintained. Also, when it comes to a local level, road cleaning and refuse collection are not handled efficiently.
However... Malaysia is starting from a much lower base, but is accelerating much more quickly. If it continues along this pathway then it might become a serious contender on the world stage.
Better - Cinemas.
Yes, that's right - cinemas. Now what I do miss are the independent cinemas back home. Where I live in the UK there is a fantastic, now three screen, cinema within walking distance of my house and there is a brilliant and quite famous independent cinema in Newcastle city centre too, but the multiplexes are nowhere near as good as those here in Malaysia.
We just went to see Spiderman: No Way Home and the tickets cost about £6 for three of us (altogether, not each). The ticket purchase was easy - done through an app (see above) and entirely digital. The screen was just a standard size one, but was still fairly large. The seats were also standard size, but much more like the premium ones in a UK multiplex. It was great!
Different - Environment.
I was tempted to put this into the worse category, but I had to check myself and allow for my personal biases. I love the UK. I love the North East. The place is genuinely beautiful and this is something I've written about at length before. However Malaysia also offers some stunning and very different environments. The main sticking point is the way humans are impacting on the natural world, but then again we are far from perfect in that respect in the UK - there are almost no pristine wilderness areas left in the UK. Everywhere you look you can see the hand of humans at work, but that is part of the fabric of the UK now.
In Malaysia there is overdevelopment and exploitation of the natural environment - palm oil has wreaked havoc on the rainforests. In the UK we are well past that and almost none of our native forest remains, having been cleared over the centuries for use in ship building and creating land for farming.
The biggest issue I have had in Malaysia is the litter, but this was an issue in the UK too. Where I live in the UK there are various groups that actively clean the beaches, which is a good thing but a shame that it is needed. Here in Malaysia groups like this exist too, but the MCO here has been more extensive so their activities have been curtailed and there is also a different cultural attitude to refuse which also complicates matters.
An example of the frustrating state of my local beach in the UK after a weekend of nice weather...
The hills of Simonside and Rothbury
The view out of Batu Ferengi and the National Park in Penang
The arguably more spectacular coastline of Northumberland
This is probably no surprise, but driving here is not a great experience for a variety of reasons. Number one on the list is the Malaysian driving culture, which is a baffling combination of chilled out and unhurried with impatient and aggressive. There is no such thing as braking distance - that's a gap that you can put a car in. You switch lanes at random and shove the nose of your car into any gap you fancy. Parking is... well, done however you like - be prepared to be blocked in or find a car stopped at the side of a major road just because there is a kopitam open that the driver fancied stopping at.
And the mopeds... dear heavens! They are everywhere on Penang and come at you from every angle. They also have a set of rules, or more accurately don't have a set of rules, to themselves. You can carry anything you can fit on one, up to and including livestock and an entire family. You can travel on any clear space, be it the hard shoulder or a footpath. You can travel in any direction, even into the oncoming traffic on a dual carriage way. Stop signs, red lights and other traffic measures are merely optional.
Now before anyone says anything about like 'oh it's just a different way of doing things' let me lay some facts on you - in 2020 there were 1460 fatalities on the UK roads. Compare this to 6172 fatalities in Malaysia in 2019 (the last year official figures were available) and a population that is half the size (but paradoxically it has a higher motor vehicle per capita ownership - mostly mopeds) - this means that there are 8 times as many fatalities on Malaysian roads compared to UK ones.
This is down to a number of factors - the fact that many fatalities occur on two wheeled vehicles; the fact that most Malaysian made cars aren't fitted with the same standard safety kit as their European counterparts; the fact that the driving standards are far poorer and the fact that enforcement of what road rules that do exist is minimal to say the least. The upshot, however, is that driving here is simply not a great. Combine this with the overloaded roads and often poorly designed traffic systems and it makes for a worse experience than in the UK.
If you look closely at the moped in front you will see a small child sandwiched between the passenger and driver... luckily the driver is wearing a helmet - safety first...
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