4/11/2006
any more reasons to go to malaysia?
Why did Singaporeans rush to Malaysia in hoards over the weekend?
1. Big open space and leisure resorts.
2. Cheaper golf courses.
3. Cheaper food. including oil, sugar, milk powder, flour etc
4. Cheap petrol.
5. Safe and friendly environment.
With the recent developments, with Singaporeans being easy targets for criminals, what else is left to attract Singaporeans to go across when all the things are no longer cheap.
Even all the MNCs are moving out of Singapore and Malaysia to China and India. Does this ring a bell? That they have to be cheap to be attractive? Who would want to go to Malaysia when all things are equal and they did not have anything else to attract Singaporeans.
Who would want to go to Genting when our own IRs are operational?
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12 comments:
I go to visit my friends and relatives, shopping is only secondary. For that reason, no matter how much the local media tries to bad-mouth Malaysia, I will continue make those trips up north. Heck, it may be even be a good thing if all the exaggerated accounts of crime in JB does indeed lead to less flow of Singaporeans into malaysia coz then I will no longer have to endure the traffic jams.
singaporeans go to malaysia for different reasons. some for leisure and pleasure, some for social and some for business.
then there are those who are attracted by bargains. when all the bargains are gone, then this group has no reason to visit malaysia any more.
for business and social reasons, these visitors will have to cut down their trips when the cost of going in goes up, ie when the toll fee gets higher.
so the number of visitors to malaysia will definitely be lesser and the jam will be less frequent.
and the daylight robberies are going to deter casual visitors who see no necessity to risk losing their cars and properties or even lives.
I definitely ain't going to cut down my trips even if they do implement the 20 ringgit entry fee. It's bad enough to be stuck in an overcrpopulated, stuffy island for 5 days a week. To have to subject myself to some more of that on weekends is definitely too much to ask. Here's one person for whom the much-famed Singaporean propaganda has no effect on.
The crime situation is an exaggeration. I have been making weekend trips across the Causeway for a long time. Never been car jacked, never been robbed in broad daylight. You just gotta know how to carry yourself and be street smart, something sorely lacking in Singaporeans who have been so molly-coddled in a supposedly safe, secure environment. For these people, it may be better to stay in their little dot under the sun as if Singapore is such a utopia. My car got broken into at a carpark in Orchard Road once and in broad daylight to boot. Do I think SIngapore is any more dangerous after that happened to me than before. Of course not. To expect me to change where I spend my money and time just because a couple of my countrymen are careless when they were up north certainly sounds a lot sillier to me.
i used to go in every weekend for several years. the further you get from jb the more hospitable are the people, with some exceptions.
i did had a few not too pleasant experiences in jb. once they shafted a ball of clay into my exhaust in a legitimate parking lot fronting a shop which i believe the owner was treating it as his private parking lot.
another time while my friend was reversing into a lot and a taxi driver came, walked out of his taxi and told my friend to get lost. of course we quiet drove off.
once on a road in pahang, almost got pushed off the road by an army truck when there were only two vehicles on the road. the army truck and mine.
the worst was along the east west highway from taman negara to genting. almost got shot by the police who trained his rifle at my car from the back.
but these are part and parcel of travelling in malaysia. and always give way to the royalties by pulling aside for them to pass.
i thought if the malaysians were to think business then they should treat the whole country as an emporium. and to attract more tourists and visitors, it is ok to have a few loss leaders eg cheap petrol, cheap sugar, cheap food, cheap oil etc.
otherwise what is the incentive to attract the border line visitors?
redbean, you gotta understand that in Malaysia, political considerations almost always outweigh business and even practical ones.
i agree with you.
that is why they cannot understand the logic singapore is applying to the causeway bridge. they can only see their gains and do not care if singapore can justify the money spent on the bridge.
then the rest of their politicians will just jump into the bandwagon to score political points with no bearings on the economic pros and cons of a project or issue.
Actually. we should be thankful they have this unconventional way of doing thing. Imagine if they were even half as efficient as we are and with the resources at their disposal, Singapore would be rendered irrelevant !!
they were once half as efficient as we were. and that was reflected in the strength of the ringgit.
then they abandoned english as their lingua franca and teaching language. by so doing, they plucked themselves out from the western world of science and technology.
then they plucked themselves into arabic and the arabic world that has stagnated for the last couple of centuries except regurgitating religious text.
then they alienated their non bumi citizens, either driving them out or sidelining them from contributing fully to the country.
all these are in the value of the ringgit. and the ringgit is now less than half of what they used to be compared to singdollar.
such hard realities cannot be swept under the carpet.
Well, as the cliche goes hindsight is 20/20 but who knows if Malaysia would have been even worse off had they not taken the path they had. You need to have an appreciation for the complex social environment that existed at the time those affirmative action action policies were put in place. And don't forget the journey isn't complete. Who's to say the tables won't be turned 50 years down the road when the S$ may be worth half a MYR.
50 years is a long time. who knows, anything can happen.
in our case, if things go bad, it can go very bad and very fast. we can be a goner in less than 5 years if things are not carefully managed.
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