One, two, three, four, what are we fighting for--

[tevere]

Next stop, Vietnam! Well, actually, I'm already in Vietnam, but-- *waves hand*. Details.

The Boy and I have just spent a delightful couple of days in Ubud, Bali, and another couple in KL. Most of the focus of our trip so far has been, perhaps unsurprisingly, on eating. (Take that as my Yuletide story hint!) In KL we were forced to take two breakfasts every morning just to get even a tiny sample of the total tastiness on offer. Roti canai, jook, vegetarian laksa and laksa asam, zong, kuey teow, black sesame and red bean mochi, okonomiyaki, natto, simmered daikon-- Yeah, I know, our lives are hard.

There was one odd thing about KL that I noticed this time, though. All my previous trips to KL have been alone, but on this occasion The Boy and I were almost aways together. And you know what?

It was like I was invisible.

Completely fucking invisible. "Can I help you, sir?" "Sir, are you interested in--" "Sir, this way please--" Even when I was the one standing forward at the hotel check-in desk (or the airline check-in counter, or at the restaurant), brandishing my credit card, the person inevitably looked right past me to speak to The Boy. I didn't really notice it the first time. The second time I commented on it, and The Boy and I had a little chuckle together. By the end of our visit, it was really starting to feel like some kind of sick joke.

I'm just hoping it was an unrepresentative sample. (Can anyone else comment on this? I've never noticed it-- consciously, at least-- in either Indonesia or East Timor.) Quite frankly, it surprised the hell out of me-- hammered home that certain level of privilege I enjoy otherwise, I suppose.

The other thing that made me somewhat-- surprised? uncomfortable?-- was the fact that the National Museum's gallery devoted to 'Modern Malaysia' (i.e. Malaysia after the colonial period, with a particular focus on the struggle for independence) made no mention of Chinese or Indian Malaysians during this period-- not even of the race riots in the 1960s that targeted non-bumiputra Malaysians (predominantly Chinese). There was a single sentence in the exhibition that attributed Singapore's separation from Malaysia to the need for 'racial unity'.

So there I am, invisible again.

Hmm-- I was going to post some Yuletide recs (including my own Espera POV Yuletide gift!) and some thoughts on Ho Chi Minh City (like Jakarta! crossed with Phnom Penh! with ten times the motorbikes!), but--

--it's time to eat again *g*.

For those of you who celebrate Christmas or other festivals at this time of year, I hope you had good ones!

Comments

[From: frangipani]

Sorry for the late comment on an older entry, but I live in Kuala Lumpur and was mulling over your post for a while.

Service staff here tend to take women less seriously from the get-go anyway, and class and/or race privilege disappears when they're in the company of men, because the staff assumes that the woman is accompanying the man (and thus, as an accessory, you're not that important). I've noticed that when I'm out with mixed-gender groups of 20 to 30-something professionals for meals or drinks, the men tend put themselves forward as the ones who'll pay the bill first -- sometimes, though not always, insisting on paying (partially or wholly) for the women's drinks or part of their meals. Which annoys me, because more often than not what they see as chivalry is really treating a woman as if she's a less capable child (and seriously, at my age I am not about spend what I can't afford). When the bill is delivered to the table, the waitstaff automatically hands it to the nearest man, even when I'm sitting right there. It is also an assumption here that expat women are here on behest of their male partners' employment -- in short, even when the women are the ones paying, it's actually the men's money. These are all part of a deeply-embedded sexism that reinforces the notion of men as women's guardians, which I think has been exacerbated by the process of conservatism over the past few decades.

I am often angry at how the 13 May riots is either completely invisible in official narratives, or presented as a near-apocalypse that engulfed the entirety of Malaysia (it happened mainly in Kuala Lumpur, though I am not excusing the terrible nature of the riots). When I migrated to Kuala Lumpur, I started hearing stories about 13 May that I never knew through my history textbooks -- there is obviously a deep well of pain and lost knowledge that was never officially recorded. What I learned about the riots beyond the untrustworthy textbooks were always oral histories, and it's only recently that artists and journalists started preserving stories and retelling them. On the other hand, I was born in a state in Malaysia with a completely different set of cultural and political norms with regards to race relations (East Malaysia has no truck with this "three main races" social contract nonsense), and the policies that came out of the time and their re-interpretation over the decades have been absolutely devastating in terms of setting up social and religious barriers where there were none before.

[From: tevere]

Mahathir visited East Timor recently. I was chatting about it in the car with a Bangladeshi friend, who'd had the opportunity to speak with him personally during the trip. Our different perspectives were interesting: my friend saw Mahathir in terms of his role as the architect of modern Malaysia, and more broadly as a powerful symbol of development in the post-colonial landscape of South-East Asia. Whereas my mother is Chinese-Malaysian and was growing up during the race riots and that period of strong Malay nationalism. The oral histories she passed down to me were of discrimination and distrust-- so different to the clean 'forging' of a nation that my friend had seen (enviously) from Dhaka during his own childhood. While I can appreciate Malaysia's rapid development, when I visit KL I guess the first thing I try and see is traces of the environment my mother grew up in, what made her who she is. (There's a lot about my mother I didn't understand until I'd lived in Asia-- what seemed irrational in Australia suddenly made sense in the Asian context.) So I'm always surprised to see that particular aspect of history wiped away as though it didn't exist-- it means so much to my my mother's identity...and I guess mine too. But I see from the links that people are interested in reclaiming 13 May, so I'm going to read those pages eagerly. Thanks!

With regards to the sexism-- ha, you know, I read your comment at KL airport right before boarding my Air Malaysia flight back to Bali. I enter the plane: cabin staff are silent. My partner walks in behind me: "Welcome, sir! Enjoy the flight."

Living in Indonesia I noticed that Malaysian conservatism (and the perception that it was increasing, even as Indonesia was liberalising) was a frequent topic of discussion in the media. It's interesting that Indonesia views it as a threat-- that it might spread. (Although how? It's not like Indonesians consume a large amount of Malaysian media, as far as I'm aware. Cable TV is from Singapore; the soaps and movies are locally produced. Can domestic workers spread a conservative ideology back to their home country? Or perhaps there's the fear of radical Malaysian figures influencing the conservative Muslim groups in Indonesia-- Noordin Top syndrome?)

[From: bravecows]

Something similar to what you experienced in KL happens to me when I (Chinese Malaysian woman) am out with my boyfriend (white British man) in Britain -- not quite as bad as cashiers looking past me when I'm the one paying, but he's the one people speak to when we are accosted. It didn't happen when he was visiting me in Malaysia because of me obviously being a local, but it does happen when I'm hanging out with male friends here. So there's no escaping it. *glum*

[From: tevere]

Ah, sexism-- everpresent wherever we may go *sigh*. I'm also aware that there are a lot of factors that influence the degree to which I notice sexism. Like you say, race plays a factor-- as does being a local (speaking the language, an obvious appearance of familiarity) or not. For instance, in KL I took the lead over my partner because I'd made the bookings and I knew my way around. Whereas my husband grew up in Indonesia, so when we travel there I let him take the lead. So perhaps the sexism gap between, say, Malaysia and Indonesia isn't quite as large as I perceived it to be; I simply didn't experience it as much in Indonesia because I never put myself in a position to be rebuffed.