ASIANOVERLAND.NET SYDNEY TO LONDON DAY 58: PENANG TO LANGKAWI, MALAYSIA

Day 58 is the 17th and last day in Malaysia, refecting Malaysia's enormous geographic and cultural spread from Sandakan in North Borneo to the island of Langhkawi, which is closer to Thailand than to mainland Malaysia.

Langkawi, the Jewel of Kedah, is a beautiful island and an archipelago of 99 islands, 30 km off the coast of northwestern Malaysia. It is an administrative district of Kedah, with Kuah its largest town. Only four of the 99 islands are inhabited.

The main island is 25 kilometres from north to south and slightly more from east to west. The coastal areas are flat, alluvial plains, with some limestone ridges. Two-thirds of the island is dominated by forest-covered mountains, hills, and natural vegetation.

The island's oldest geological formation was the first part of Southeast Asia to rise from the seabed more than half a billion years ago. The oldest part is observable to the northwest of the island, where the exposed outcrop consists of sandstone (quartzite) in the upper parts and shale and mudstone in the lower parts. 

Langkawi was historically home to Austronesian peoples, such as the orang laut or sea people, originally from the southern part of the Malay Peninsula, and Malay people.

Langkawi has long been closely associated with or part of the Kedah Sultanate. Legend tells of a great snake ular besar, the custodian of the Langkawi Islands, to which a new king of Kedah must sacrifice a virgin daughter whenever he ascended the throne, or when war was declared with another state.

The island of Langkawi was called Lóngyápútí in the 14th century by the Yuan dynasty traveller Wang Dayuan. When the Ming dynasty admiral Zheng He visited the region, the island was marked as Lóngyájiāoyǐ, on his maps. In the 15th century, it was known to the Acehnese as Pulau Lada ('Pepper Island').

In 1691, the French general Augustin de Beaulieu went to the island of "Lancahui" (Langkawi) to buy pepper, but was required to obtain a license from Kedah's heir apparent before the chief of Langkawi would sell pepper to him.

In 1821, the Siamese army invaded Kedah and attacked Langkawi. In the first attack, the locals burned down the granary to starve the Siamese army. The Siamese nevertheless captured the island in May 1822, killed its leaders, and took many islanders as slaves, while others fled. Before the Siamese invasion, there was an estimated island population of 5,000, and much less after the invasion.

Langkawi was recaptured from the Siamese in 1837. In 1840–1841, the Sultan of Kedah, who went into exile after the Siamese attacks, was allowed to return by the Siamese. Langkawi islands' population recovered afterwards. However, the Orang Laut (sea people) who fled after the Siamese attacks, did not return to Langkawi. 

In 1909, the islands came under British rule following the Anglo-Siamese Treaty of 1909, which also transferred Kedah, Perlis, Terengganu and Kelantan from Siamese to British sovereignty.  The middle of the channel between Tarutao National Park and Langkawi became the Siamese border, with Tarutao to the north forming part of Siam, while the Langkawi islands to the south came under British rule. During the World War II, Siam resumed control briefly as British Malaya fell to the Japanese.

Langkawi was a haven for pirates, who attacked junks in the northern part of the Strait of Malacca. Between December 1945 and March 1946, the British cleared the pirates' land bases on Langkawi and Tarutao, and continued to rule Langkawi until Malaya gained its independence in 1957.

Langkawi remained a quiet backwater until the 1990’s, when it became a major tourist destination and grew rapidly to receive over three million tourists a year.

Malaysians have been colonised by Europeans for 500 years, and have been dominated by corrupt UMNO Malay governments since gaining independence. The corrupt UMNO Malay Prime Ministers, Mahathir and Najib, even fought elections of the basis that they accepted they were corrupt, but claimed they were not as corrupt as their opponent.

The new Prime Minister, Anwar Ibrahim, has spent half of the last 20 years in prison on false sodomy convictions, which demonstrate that the Rule of Law does not yet apply in Malaysia (the Rule of Law also doesn’t apply in most other countries in the world).

On the same day that then opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim had his jury acquittal of sodomy overturned by the Court of Appeal, which convicted him without a fresh retrial and immediately sentenced him to 5 more years in prison, Flight MH 370 disappeared and became a huge news story which swamped the Court of Appeal’s amazing decision.

In this corrupt environment, Malaysians have taken to self-deprecating jokes to demonstrate their plight.

I wrote a joke about Flight MH 370 but I don’t know where it went.

At the Langkawi Air Show, the Malaysian UMNO Prime Minister Mahathir (Najib) announced that Malaysia would send an astronaut into space and asked for volunteers. A Malaysian Indian volunteered and the Prime Minister asked how much it would cost.

“One million ringgit lah!!” said the Indian.

A Malay also volunteered and the Prime Minister asked how much it would cost to send him into space.

“Two million ringgit lah!!” said the Malay, “I have four wives and many children to feed”.

A Malaysian Chinese also volunteered and the Prime Minister asked how much it would cost to send him into space.

“Three million ringgit lah!!” said the Chinese, “One million for you; one million for me; and one million to send the Indian into space”.

When I told this joke to a group of Malaysians including a Malaysian Government Minister, the Minister asked me if I had heard about the Malaysian car crash which killed an Indian, a Chinese and a Malay. The following day he met the Indian in the street and said he thought the Indian had died in the car crash.

The Indian replied: “When we met God, he said we could have our lives back if we paid 10,000 ringgit, so here I am!!”

“What happened to the Chinese guy?”
“He’s still haggling over the price”

“What happened to the Malay guy?”

“He’s waiting for a Government subsidy.”

My final word on our final day in Malaysia, is that the Malaysians are great people who have a rich, diversified history and culture. But they deserve better Governments, judges and other leaders, than they have had for the past 500 years.

↑ Day 57 ↓ Day 59