Tag: Malaysia

Malaysia vs Indonesia

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So today was my first day at the Asian Games in Jakarta, Indonesia and I watched the badminton quarterfinals, there were two Malaysian men’s doubles pairs left in the game.

My idea was to find the Malaysian group to cheer for our players because the Indonesian crowd is always crazyyyyyyy and I was certain that there would be a group for sure. Nope. So I was surrounded by a bunch of Indonesians during the first Malaysia vs Indonesia match and didn’t dare to cheer loudly lols. But I saw a man with our flag and a small drum at the opposite hahahaha, very hardcore.

So for the second match, I decided to join the man at the opposite side. When I got there, he wasn’t there but I saw the Malaysian flag so I sat in front of that flag. When the second Malaysia vs Indonesia match was starting, he came back.

Me: hi are you Malaysian?

Him: yeah you too?

Me: ya i saw you from the opposite so i decided to join you cos i was alone there

Him: oh okay okay come come. So we have a very important job here, we are ambassadors of our country now. So there are three components okay, we have the flag, the kompang (a small drum), and the loudspeaker. So when I hit the drum, you will wave the flag okay. You have to wave it because then the camera will record us. And then we have to do some PR work [there was another hardcore Indonesia supporter beside us] to let the other people at the stadium know that we have good relations. Also we have to save our voice cos there’s only the two of us so I will start yelling through the microphone when it quiets down and you’ll wave the flag and yell too, okay?

Me: okay.

After that I had the most fun I’ve had in a while, I think it was more fun than supporting our players with the home crowd in Malaysia.

Every time the Malaysians won a point, he will hit his kompang then yell “MALAYSIA BOLEH!” and I’ll raise the flag and wave it frantically and yelled the same stuff. Then the stadium will be roaring with “IN-DO-NE-SIA” to drain our cheers out.

Needless to say, we attracted a lot of attention: some people were filming us, some people yelled with us, most of them booed at us, and I think we were captured on TV. Soon after, the crowd seemed to realise that we’d shout our motto whenever it quieted down…so after a while there was basically no more silent slots for us to slot in our yells of encouragement.

In the end, it wasn’t just Malaysia vs Indonesia on the court, but also Malaysia vs Indonesia off court, though it was the 2 of us against possibly thousands The Malaysians lost the badminton matches; idk about the latter.

KL – Singapore by bus

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Today I made one of the worst decisions in my life by taking the bus from KL to Singapore. It was supposed to take 4hrs and 55mins but took almost 10 hours.

At first, I was super impressed by the bus terminal. It has so many boarding gates so you feel like you’re going on a plane but no, it’s just plain ol’ (and very unpunctual) buses. On each gate there was a screen announcing the next departing busses and remarks like “on time” or “delayed”. You will never see as many “delayed” signs on a screen. And I couldn’t even figure out which bus was mine cos the code wasn’t printed on the ticket. Amazing bureaucracy work here. Then of course it departed late.

Okay to be fair, it’s not the bus service’s problem that it took so much more longer, it’s because too many people decided to drive into Singapore on this beautiful Sunday. Not so beautiful at the immigration.

There were more people there than at the arrival hall of the Paris CDG airport, I swear. And darn Singaporeans seem to hate all other nations, especially their neighbours. They randomly grabbed some Indonesian and Chinese nationals from the crowd and questioned them; not really sure what happened.

When it was finally my turn, they looked at my Chinese visa and German visa very closely, then kept flipping through the passport. And then an officer announced the last 4 digits of my previous passport number and the officer was like: “that means that the last time she came, she had another passport. “ Wow really, thanks for the analysis but why not just make sure that I’m not smuggling drugs into your country and let me through faster so everyone can leave earlier? I find this weirder than the “what are you doing here in my country?” questions that I got in the UK and Romania.

Made me miss crossing the European Union borders by land transport and absolutely not having to show any form of IDs.

However, the bus ride was pretty interesting:

  • Two ladies almost or the same as my grandmother’s age who were beside me started chatting to me and so we became friends.
  • There was a family with Canadian passports but seem to not understand English.
  • There were two French people who got visibly upset after we have departed for about 6 hours and not being in Singapore yet. Apparently they were just gonna do a one day trip from KL-Singapore. Yikes. We got out to official Singapore ground at almost 7pm.
  • We had to change buses, I’m not sure why.
  • It’s pretty comfy so I slept through the most of the first half of the journey.