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ive only been to kuala lumpur and I feel like I'm missing out on the rest of malaysia. my impression of the city near bukit bintang was that it was somewhat empty shopping malls and skyscrapers spaced out by dense blocks of slums and pedestrian hostile infrastructure. the outskirts were unremarkable by south east asian standards. I never felt particularly unsafe.
The racial economic caste system was obvious to me, as an outsider. Businesswise, english speaking Chinese seemed to be the most trustworthy, followed by "bumiputera". Did not interact with laborers from the subcontinent but was warned to keep distance by my singaporean guide.
I saw a monkey in someones back yard. I saw a temple filled with trash. I saw some fantastic islamic and colonial architecture. I saw a guy on a motorbike get smeared on the asphalt by a truck.
One of the best cities for food I've ever been to
There were a lot of russian men when I was there for some reason
Did not really feel like a islamic country in the same way as indonesia.
I've lived in Kuala Lumpur for much of my life, and while there are things I do like about it (not least the food culture) it's definitely not inaccurate to say that the urban landscape there is a bit of a mess. There's certainly far more signs of modernity in KL, but "barely-walkable concrete jungle interspersed with slums" is an apt description of much of it. Some parts of the city are criss-crossed with overpasses to the point it's almost comical - the city has pretty much grown in an unplanned, uncontrolled way since it has expanded very rapidly and it's easy to push through any development you want with a little bit of bribery. For me it's a source of nostalgia at this point, but I feel like I would be remiss not to say that there are far better places to be in Malaysia as a visitor if you want to see the more charming, rustic side of the country.
While I'm not at all the biggest proponent of the affirmative action policies there, the economic disparity between the Chinese and virtually every other group is certainly very noticeable (it is not uncommon for Chinese to be a market-dominant minority group everywhere they go). Thing is, there's a strong selection bias going on with this - much of the Chinese diaspora emigrated with the expectation of finding opportunity elsewhere, and this has ended up having a large skewing effect on overseas Chinese SES.
To some extent I do understand why animosity exists against the Malaysian Chinese, but at the same time it's hard for me to be overly sympathetic. My great-grandfather grew up in China as a child worker shovelling pig shit to sell as fuel, and barely made it into Malaysia with (most of) his family as an unskilled labourer trying to work his way up. The stuff he went through is insane - there's too much to list here, but he had his property confiscated and his brother killed during Japanese occupation, he at one point was burned badly during an explosion at his work as a mechanic, yet despite it all he somehow managed to make a fortune for himself. He possessed a seriously admirable level of tenacity and work ethic, and I can't say he didn't rightfully earn his wealth. It isn't adaptive for a country to penalise that kind of dogged entrepreneurship because of tribal ressentiment at a group's success - especially in a country like Malaysia which can't offer a significantly higher quality of life compared to neighbouring states, these policies end up causing brain drain and emigration of the most productive segment of your population to places like Singapore which offer more opportunities and don't consider your success a social problem that needs to be fixed.
Islam is a far less prevalent religion in Malaysia than it is in Indonesia, so that's to be expected.
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