Malaysia, Truly Asia!!!

This post is for Anisha particularly. She put a comment on my previous post that how come I never said anything about Malaysia. ;-) As opinionated as I am, it is rare that I don’t have comments on a place I’ve been to.

Malaysia is my favorite country in Asia.

One of the reasons that I love Asia is because it is still developing, not that easy to live or walk around. Malaysia is kinda in between. It is quite developed in terms of infrastructure. I believe majority of the residents are middle class. Meanwhile, as a fast developing Asian country, it has its own chaos - cars, traffic jam, rush hours in the mornings, busy city centres, food courts, etc. What I loved the most is the foodcourts downstairs the MC office. Food there is cheap, delicious and of a big variety to be chosen from. I also love Asia Café among all the places I’ve hanged out together with the MC and the recent MC alumni. I really loved the ‘yum cha’ Anisha and Huilin took me in the afternoons.

Since I speak English and Mandarin, so do most of the Chinese Malaysians, it was easy for me to go around. KLCC is indeed an impressive place to be - of course I mean the shopping area particularly. I love shopping so much that I feel I am really hopeless. My suitcase is current 23kg and I am still shopping a lot in Australia. I can hardly close my suitcase with my big ‘topshop’ coat on top of all my clothes in it. I actually have left something to be taken to The Netherlands for some of the AP MCPs at IPM 06. ;-) Thanks God that it is in The Netherlands.

What I miss the most is the laughters of Anisha, caring of Huilin and sweetness of Swee Li. I cannot remember ‘Charlie’ much since Ren Qiang only appears in the evenings and rushes back right after the MC meetings. It was good meeting Bonnie (he is now famous across the network after all his facilitation experiences at AP conferences and IC 05), Stephanie (I wish you all the best running for the Thai MC 06/07) as well as Shooks! I hope I get to see all of them in next March - May when I am in Asia again. I’ll definitely fly to Malaysia then Philippines from Holland.

What was the most impressive was attending the dinner hosted by UNICEF and Standard Chartered Bank. I am so proud of AIESEC Malaysia doing HIV/AIDS initiatives with such a broad reach. I can almost say that the biggest influence Standard Chartered bank got to make on HIV/AIDS initiative is through AIESEC Malaysia’s reach to the countries get involved in the ambassador program as well as the universities in Malaysia. It is indeed one of the most relevant and powerful experiences young individuals should get to go through.

So I’ll definitely go to Malaysia again in March. And what I will be doing is shopping and lying on the beach. So Anisha, you should take me there! ;-) Miss you guys!