Malaysian Visit Just in Time for Dinner, Dancing and a Show.

February 16, 2014 / 1 Comment

America is often referred to as a cultural melting pot but I give the Malaysians credit; they’ve got the go-along/get-along thing down to an art. Just like Singapore, their next door neighbor, Malaysians are a mix of Indian, Chinese and Malay. Skin color ranges from dark to light and the three big religions, Christian, Muslim and Hindu are represented with sizable and well-visited houses of worship.

 

The downtown Holy Light Presbyterian Church in Johor Bahru at the southern most end of the country, takes up an entire city bloc with sanctuary, school, sports fields and meeting space. The nearby Hindu temple is ringed by stalls selling strings of colorful and aromatic flowers which attendees present to the dozens of deities who are represented in colorful sculptures.

Observing the residents of Johor Bahru at worship on my way through the country en route to Kuala Lumpur was the first act in one of the most entertaining cross-cultural evenings I’ve spent; sampling the food, music and dancing on a typical Saturday night in bustling Singapore’s suburb to the north.

The hardest decision I faced in Johor Bahru was where to eat because there were too many choices. Each night, entire blocks in the city’s commercial district are turned into outdoor dining rooms. In front of shops closed for the night, long tables are set up and covered with platters of raw and cooked fish, quail, skewers of satay and a variety of pans filled with stews with mysterious but yummy looking ingredients. On the portable stoves behind these offerings, cooks are frying the meat to order and dishing up mounds of steaming white rice.

Mohammed Nasir with his friend preparing John Roti

Hungry, yet still paralyzed by indecision I came upon a man making something I had not seen anywhere else. Mohammed Nasir was parked behind the grill next to the chef. He explained to me that it was a Roti John, a sandwich made from grilled French bread and filled with thin layers of beef, eggs and onions and served with a sweet tomato and chili syrup. Think of it as Cuban sandwich meets French Toast. I ordered one and as I ate, Nasir filled me in on this town where he’s lived for thirty years.

The John Roti sandwich

Father to four and grandfather to one, Nasir, 59, grew up in Malaysia and was educated in Singapore. He is one of the many thousands of Malaysians who cross the border at Woodland Crossing every day to work in the economic powerhouse that is Singapore. That Singapore is a very expensive place to live is one reason Nasir remains a commuter and there’s another; lifestyle laws in the tightly-controlled country can cramp the Malaysian style, he told me. As if to prove the point, he took me on a tour of Johor Bahru’s night market.

Painter Grace Lim and her husband Eric Tan

The streets of Little India, where the market is a nightly occurrence were even more crowded than usual because the Chinese  were still celebrating the lunar new year. Eric Tan, owner of the Tropical Accent gallery took advantage of the extra foot traffic to stage an exhibition of the work of artist Grace Lim, an oil painter who also happens to be his wife.

Grace’s canvases burst with life. I could see that from the street. I went in to have a closer look.  She had more than a dozen paintings on display, nearly all feature woman and children in everyday scenes of Kampong or village life. These images are not so foreign to the residents of Johor Bahru where banana and coconut plantations begin to dominate the landscape just 15 minutes north of the city center. No surprise, then that the locals were pawing through the smaller prints with an enthusiasm equal to mine.

Back out in the street a Chinese dance party was in full swing. As I’d seen during a visit to Beijing, a group of women and a few men were doing an Jazzercise-inspired, non-stop, choreographed line dance to American rock and roll tunes.

Community dancing in Johor Bahru

On the other side of the market, Malaysians were dancing too. This music I didn’t recognize and no wonder.  They were shaking it to contemporary Malaysian hits being performed by locals who had paid for the privilege of singing Karaoke at the Saturday night dance.

Dancing to Malaysian Karaoke 

From the number of people gathered around the plaza, I concluded that dancing is equally popular as a spectator activity. I could have stayed and watched for hours, but finally Nasir led me away, because there was so much more to see.

Oblivious to the activity, the monitor sleeps

In fact, Nasir is a bit of a cat lover and he wanted to show me the pet seller who on this night had two kittens at his little stall. He also featured several reptiles including a lethargic monitor. The monitor was oblivious to the little mice in the container nearby, which will soon be his dinner. Presiding over this bite-sized zoo was a proprietor in dreadlocks who strolled through the crowd with a big yellow snake wrapped around his torso.

A yellow snake is a sure-fire attention-getter.

It was amusing enough to watch him work the crowd, it was hilarious to see the looks on the faces of the passersby as they realized just what the man was wearing around his neck.

Approaching midnight the party was still going strong, though fresh off a plane from New York and still on the opposite time zone, I was fading fast. So I thanked Nasir and said good-bye, blessed to have had him as a tour guide to Johor Bahru’s lively and multi-dimensional scene.  It might have been an ordinary night for Nasir, but for me, a visitor just passing through, it was the kind of an evening from which the best travel memories are made.

 

The food court in Little India

 

View of Singapore from Johor Bahru

 

Nasir (right) is a cat fancier

 

 

Categories: Asia, Go How Know How, Music, Food, Art and Culture, Travel by Land
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One response to “Malaysian Visit Just in Time for Dinner, Dancing and a Show.”

  1. Paul says:

    Another great post, Christine.

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