The greatest thing about visiting Malaysia is due to it’s multi ethnic culture and it’s long history of colonization. As a result, English is well spoken in this country in comparison to a lot of the other Asian countries where they literally do no understand you at all. The local Malay language has some similarity to English such as Polis is Police or koperasi is cooperative and so on.
In 1511, the Portuguese invaded Melaka which is a port in Malaya. Melaka (Malacca) still has some Portuguese culture left from those era. In the early 17th century, the Dutch East India Company was established and they colonized most of Malaya and Indonesia. The British colonized Malaya (name before independence) from 1771 (Borneo) and the Main peninsular 1786 until 1963.
Even though the indian and chinese traders came during the 15th century, Majority of the Chinese immigrant came to Malaya during the mid 19th century to mine the tin mining operation. Just in case you are not aware what tin are used for, during pre second world war, all canned food were coated with a layer of tin to prevent the cans from rusting and aluminum were introduced later in 1957. The Indian population were immigrated by the British to assist with the road construction and the plantation.
So Malaysia has a long history of colonialism and that introduced to a lot of bilingual society.
Kuala Lumpur means Muddy River Estuary due to the number of estuaries and the muddiness of the water. Kuala Lumpur used to be also a major mining town together with Singapore, Penang and Ipoh. You might know the actress Michelle Yeoh, she is from Ipoh and her distant Nephew is a good friend of mine who lives in Singapore and he has the same last name as her.
