Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.
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You have made Malaysia sound very charming! I had already planned to do a combined Singapore-Kuala Lumpur trip at some point in the not-too-distant future, and you’ve inspired me to want to visit more of the country! I’m nowhere remotely as well-traveled as @2rafa, so I’ll almost certainly hit you up for some tips and recommendations once my trip idea actually starts congealing into concrete plans.
(EDIT: I picked a random spot in Malacca on Google Street View, and I’m immediately confronted with a food truck advertising, in English, “Luojia Stinky Tofu.” I am committed to being as adventurous an eater as possible during this trip, but I may have to draw the line at anything where “stinky” is considered a selling point.)
It is very charming, and I'm glad I made you want to see more of Malaysia! I'd be happy to offer specific recommendations at any point, but will say upfront that many locals see Ipoh, Georgetown and Malacca as nice towns, and I would agree they're must-sees if you're interested in cultural sites - the old-town areas of Georgetown and Malacca have been inscribed as UNESCO world heritage sites, if that's worth anything to you. Penang in particular is widely acknowledged as having good food (though any discussion about which city/state has the best food in Malaysia inevitably devolves into a regional flame war). For more natural things to do, I distinctly remember climbing into a wooden boat as a kid and having a local man sail my family and I around the coastal mangroves at night, seeing the swampy thicket get lit up with thousands upon thousands of fireflies. There are a number of places in Malaysia where you can do this, I won't claim to know which one offers the "best" experience.
From a brief google search it looks like that food truck is selling the Changsha variant of stinky tofu, which is a popular Chinese dish made by immersing tofu in a brine of fermented milk, meat and vegetables, then deep frying until it's black and crunchy on the outside. I have tried it before and think it's really good when done well, but isn't necessarily a core part of Malaysian cuisine (it's more associated with Mainland China). Still, it’s nice and there are a lot of very fermented foods in Malaysia that are worth trying, anything with shrimp paste in it for example - also, there's some Malaysian takes on stinky/fermented tofu as well.
This is a big ask, but if you're from the area, can you outline the general cultural and economic circumstances of each Southeast Asian country? I have thought that someday learning a language of Southeast Asia could be fun and enlightening on how other (poorer) cultures see the world, but I'm not sure which one yet. Indonesian/Malaysian seems like the easiest one of them, and it gets bonus points for being a relatively well off nation, sharing a language with Singapore, and also giving me some insight on how Islamists view reality.
The other option is using my kanji knowledge from Japanese to learn some Chinese, but I cracked open a textbook a few months ago and thought "dude, screw this".
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