by David McMahon © 2011

A British-style pillar box – but this one is outside the Custom House in George Town, the main city on the island of Penang in Malaysia’s Pulau Pinang State.

Dave adds:

“As you can see, this pillar box is still painted the traditional pillar box red colour and still bears the Royal Cypher of King Edward VII. (This contrasts with, say, Ireland, where the boxes have been painted green since 1922, or Israel, where the cyphers were ground off after the end of the Palestinian Mandate.) In fact, it’s identical to the Edwardian pillar boxes in the UK except that it doesn’t have a base.

“Although the concept for the photo was Kay’s, she made me take it as it involved crouching in the road! If you look at the non-existent base of the pillar box, you’ll see that it’s standing in a recess in the pavement – the bollards on either side are on the pavement, but the pillar box is on the road. Bizarrely, the slot faces the road rather than the pavement.”

Author: Dave McMahon

Dave left school at the age of 30 with the odd O-level (like Ancient Icelandic) and a doctorate in something so obscure even he can't remember what it's about. He then joined the FCO. Dave has travelled to most European countries (including several that don't exist any more, though he denies responsibility), as well as Bangladesh, Barbados, Thailand, St Vincent, UAE, Laos, and many more. Having managed to escape from London in 2001, Dave's now resorted to taking unpaid leave to stave off the evil day of his return.

Back in 2003, we published an article by Rowena Carr-Allinson about her trip from Bangkok to Singapore by train. She did it in style aboard the luxurious Orient Express. Sadly, such a grand trip was not on our agenda. We took the somewhat shabby KTM Intercity from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore – Service No.1, the Express Rakyat.

We’d not seen much of Malaysia’s countryside before as we have always flown into and stayed in Penang or KL in the past. This six-and-a-half hour journey was intended to fill this gap in our experience. We could, of course, have simply flown from KL to Singapore but we wanted to try something different. The train is much cheaper than flying – a first class seat costs a mere RM 68 compared with AirAsia’s cheapest rate of RM 109 when we looked, and that was excluding AirAsia’s baggage surcharges. And also, by the time you factor in the long trip out to KL’s Low Cost Carrier Terminal, the waiting times at the airport and faffing about with security etc, the train only takes an hour or so longer and is a lot less hassle.

There are night trains which ply the route and offer sleeper cabins, but we travelled during the day so we could enjoy the views. More about that later – be prepared for a lot of rubber plantations and palm trees.

We had booked first class seats in an air-conditioned carriage. There was plenty of legroom and the seats were comfortable. However, the decor and furnishings were generally shabby and a bit grubby. The carriage would benefit considerably from a bit of a make-over. They did, however, have a large flat-screen Samsung TV at the front of the carriage showing films such as The Golden Compass and promotional information about their services. Watching films might have been an entertaining way to pass the time, but “watch” is the key word here as there was no sound.

Smoking was not allowed inside the carriage, but at the front there was a place to stow luggage between ours and the next carriage. There, they had thoughtfully provided a little pull-down seat and an ashtray for the puffers aboard.

About an hour down the track, friendly staff came round and offered free drinking water and a snack. Neither of us ate ours as they looked like some kind of unappealing buns. Mine had a picture of corn on it while Dave’s had chocolate. We thought we would simply give them away to other passengers, but the first two of our neighbours whom we offered them to politely declined so we quickly got the impression that the locals didn’t particularly like the food either.

The train continued to clank, clatter and whurp its way through palm trees. And more palm trees. There seemed to be quite a lot of new construction going on too, of what looked like bridges and roads. There was also one site which looked as though they were building a new airfield.

We rattled past more palm trees. And more construction sites. So much for this treat of seeing the Malaysian countryside. We also passed through some towns. The rubber industry was very apparent in that there was an abundance of large Dunlop signs and hoardings. In one small town every second business seemed to be in the motor industry in one way or another – car sales, traders, repairs.

Back in the countryside we saw some brand new villas, juxtaposed with corrugated iron dwellings and traditional-style wooden houses. But each new villa was isolated and seemed to be in the middle of nowhere. It made me wonder who would want to live there, but I could only speculate. Perhaps they were for plantation managers? I expect the owners would live somewhere more accessible and probably in something a bit grander.

The temperature inside the train was fine. I’d brought along a thick, fleece jacket and a pair of socks as I really dislike sitting in a refrigerated atmosphere. Thankfully I didn’t need them.

There were two toilets at the rear of the compartment. One was a Western-style “sit-down” toilet, the other was an Asian-style squatter. Both were equipped with grab-rails – thankfully, as the train lurches from side to side quite alarmingly on some of the faster stretches – and were relatively clean, roughly on a par with some of the UK’s seedier InterCity trains. Both also had sinks with full hand-wash dispensers. It soon became apparent why the dispensers were full – neither of them worked. However, Dave managed to dispense some himself by opening the dispenser and getting some liquid out of the bottle. And then he discovered that there were no paper towels.

One mildly interesting break from the palm trees, more palm trees, the terracotta-coloured earth and the construction sites was Paloh Station. This is a neat little station with colourful flowering shrubs. The station-master obviously takes great pride in the appearance of the place. It made me think of Bhowani Junction. The book is set in 1946/7 in a small railway town when the British were pulling out of India. Most of India’s railways were run by Anglo-Indians – people who fitted into neither the Indian nor the British community and therefore formed their own, much of it built around India’s railway network. But I have digressed. Paloh just looked a little bit different from the norm in that it was so pretty.

We later passed through Kluang station. It looked as though the station was sited in a grubby old part of town, but there were modern skyscrapers in the middle distance and relatively high hills in the background. A man was sitting on a bench accompanied by two identically dressed little boys. They were well scrubbed up and squeaky-clean looking. I surmised they were waiting for the arrival of someone special.

The train continued its erratic drum beat, lurching and shoogling towards its destination and as we approached Singapore, the conductor handed out immigration cards. Then a cleaner came round to remove the rubbish bags, which had been thoughtfully provided for us at the start of the journey.

The train halted one last time at Johor Baru, where we were checked out of Malaysia. And then we took the short final journey across the causeway and into Singapore!

As we struggled to get our luggage off the train a very helpful lady in uniform (on closer inspection of her name badge, we discovered that her name was Joyce and that she was an auxiliary police officer) pointed out an unused trolley and even went and fetched it for us. We then made our way towards Immigration. The passage through Immigration was relatively straightforward (helped by Joyce advising us that we could take the trolley through) although Dave was held back as his handwritten (and hand-corrected) passport was thoroughly checked. After a short delay we were allowed to proceed, although Dave found that he was admitted for only 30 days instead of the 90 usually granted to Irish passport holders. (UK passport holders get 180.) Customs was similarly simple – just a matter of passing our bags through the scanner. And then Joyce was on hand again at the end to point us in the direction of the taxi rank.

In fact, the only snag about the Woodlands checkpoint and train station was the complete lack of toilet facilities. Dave went on a long hunt to try and find one, but in vain – he eventually managed to find someone to ask about them (yes, Joyce again!) and was told that the nearest toilets were at a snack bar just over the road from the exit. We decided to hold it in until we got to the hotel, which was a relatively pleasant 20-minute journey away by taxi.

You can book this train trip online and even choose your seats. To sum up, if we were to be travelling from KL to Singapore again, I would definitely choose to go by train rather than air. It’s a lot less hassle and provides a relaxing interlude from busy airports.

You can find out details of train times – and book seats online – on the KTM Berhad website.

Author: Kay McMahon

Kay has been an expat for over 20 years. She set up the British Expat website more than 10 years ago, whilst living in London and missing the expat life. These days she spends much of her time lugging computers and cameras around the world. (Dave gets to deal with all the really heavy stuff.)

1. Malaysia held the record for the world’s tallest buildings from 1998 to 2004. These twin towers still hold the record for being the world’s tallest twin buildings. What is the name of these twin towers?
2. In terms of population, and taking administrative boundaries into account, what is the largest city in Malaysia?
3. To date, Malaysian athletes have won a total of four Olympic medals – all for which sport?
4. What is the name of the luxury railway service that connects Kuala Lumpur with Singapore and Bangkok?
5. Where was the first centre of European-style banking in Malaysia situated?

Check your answers here!

Author: Kay McMahon

Kay has been an expat for over 20 years. She set up the British Expat website more than 10 years ago, whilst living in London and missing the expat life. These days she spends much of her time lugging computers and cameras around the world. (Dave gets to deal with all the really heavy stuff.)

If, like me, you are a seasoned expat, you will have heard that unique brand of local English, Manglish, many times. You will probably feel you can understand it, at least most of the time. You may even be cocky enough to use it on occasion. Let’s face it: which of us hasn’t added “lah” to the end of our sentences; or said “can” or “cannot” on their own? But do you know why many Malaysians speak English (how to put this?) a little differently from how we do? Read on to find out!

Manglish (and its close cousin, Singlish) are in fact examples of a phenomenon well known to linguists and English teachers like myself, called “first language interference”. This means quite simply that speakers of a second or other language will try to express things in that language the same way they do in their native tongue. If the two languages are closely related, that sometimes works fine. But it can produce usages that are either incomprehensible or, as with quite a lot of Manglish, understandable but odd to our ears. We know roughly what the person is trying to say; but we also know that in Britain (or Australia or even the United States) we just wouldn’t say it that way.

“Can” and “cannot” are commonly used by Malaysians as one-word sentences (or questions). Have you ever heard these, say in a shop or restaurant, and wondered what we would say in a similar situation in our home countries? The answer is not always straightforward. It could be something on the lines of “Yes, we can do that” or, if negative, “I am afraid that’s not possible” or something even longer. What we wouldn’t ever say is “can” or “cannot” on their own.

Let me make one thing clear. I am not saying that Manglish is a wrong or inferior language. It is just different: a variant on standard English. Just like Scottish – the vernacular where I come from – or Cockney; or New York American; and so on. Used in its own context (which for Manglish means the streets, food courts and shopping malls of Malaysia), it is an entirely valid means of communication. Indeed, as we have seen, it can sometimes be cleverer – because pithier – than standard English! “Can/cannot” are one such example. Another, which I love, is the expression “Shall I on (or off) the light?” Grammatical it may not be, but it is elegantly short and to the point!

But back to my original question: where and how did Manglish originate? The answer is: from a variety of local languages. Reflecting Malaysia’s rich ethnic and linguistic diversity, these include Malay, Chinese (Hokkien, Cantonese, Mandarin…) and Tamil – or often a mixture of these. “Can(not)” for example is clearly related to the Malay (tak) boleh, but it also has Chinese equivalents. The same applies to “off-ing” or “on-ing” the light (tutup and buka in Malay). “Spoiled”/”spoilt” (used to describe a machine that is out of order) is a direct translation of the Malay rosak. And so on.

Manglish is moreover more than just a haphazard amalgam of English and other languages. It has long taken on an identity and life of its own. Young Malaysians nowadays learn to speak Manglish not because they are translating from their mother tongues, but because they hear and copy it from their parents and others around them. In other words, Manglish has grown into a self-standing language – or, more accurately, a creole (a language fused from two or more languages).

Are you with me so far? I hope so – because now comes the tricky bit. One of the problems we expats face with Manglish is what linguists call faux amis, or “false friends”: words or expressions that look and sound the same as in our native tongues, but are used to convey a different meaning. There are a number of these in common use in Malaysia that can lead the unwary expat astray – sometimes literally.

Let’s take the verb “to follow”. No problem there, surely? Yes, there is! When Malaysians say “follow me”, they usually mean “accompany me” or “go with me”, rather than “go after me”. An expat colleague of mine tells the story of how he ran into trouble with this. His Malaysian friend said: “I know the way. You follow me.” My colleague immediately walked towards his own car, intending to drive along after his friend. He was met with a surprised look – and gestures that clearly indicated that he was expected to get into the friend’s car with him.

Let me finish with my own favourite example. Have you ever noticed that whenever you ask for directions in Malaysia, these always begin with the immortal words “go straight…”? Sometimes this means what it says: you do indeed need to go straight ahead. But very often it does not! I think I finally realised this, after living in Malaysia for a good couple of years, when I asked a security guard in a shopping mall the way to a certain shop. Turning and pointing confidently (with that characteristic, and polite, Malaysian thumb-point), he began with the usual “go straight”. The only problem was…… that straight ahead there stood a solid concrete wall less than twenty paces away, at which point I would surely have to turn either right or left!

The reason for this misunderstanding is that in British or other Anglo-Saxon usage the word “straight” usually suggests that we need to keep going straight ahead for some considerable distance. Whereas in Malaysian usage, “go straight” (jalan terus in Malay) means little more than “you go along here for a bit” or “you go up this road a bit…” – to be followed, if you are lucky, by the real directions. Please remember this when you are next asking the way – especially on KL’s complex highway system, where one missed turn can mean a very long detour!

This article appeared in the January 2011 issue of The Expat magazine
If you’re an expat living in Malaysia, get your free print subscription and free delivery at www.expatkl.com/subscribe

Author: TEG

Starting with The Expat magazine in 1996, The Expat Group has expanded over the years into the leading media company in Malaysia for reaching resident expats, overseas visitors, business travellers and investors. We now publish a large range of websites and magazines, including The Expat and www.expatkl.com. Our writers are all expats living and working in Malaysia, some of whom have been here for as long as 50 years. To find our more about us and what we do, visit www.theexpatgroup.com.

Most people prefer not to think about their own death, naturally enough, but failing to do so and to plan appropriately can be very expensive. Not for you, because you are dead. It’s your family who end up losing out. If you are young, healthy and single you can stop reading now. If you have a spouse (whom you like) and/or some children then the following is important.

There is no estate duty in Malaysia, so many people mistakenly believe that they no longer need to consider estate duties, or inheritance taxes as they are called in some places. For most wealthy Malaysian residents that isn’t true. Most will have investments outside Malaysia and frequently those assets will be subject to “death taxes” in the country in which they are located. Obviously the older you get, the more important it is to have your affairs in order, but unhappily people do die at unexpectedly young ages so it is never too early to start planning. Unless you know when you are going to die so can leave planning until nearer that time, start now or as soon as you have assets of a value which may attract tax.

To illustrate what I am talking about let’s consider the example of our mythical client, “Joe Bloggs”, a UK national who is a long-term resident of Malaysia and has:

• A family home in London worth £700,000
• A holiday home in Spain worth €750,000
• A large portfolio of shares in US public companies valued US$ 500,000
• A property in Kuala Lumpur in which he lives with his US national wife valued at MYR 2 million

The first thing to note is that as Mr Bloggs is a UK national he might well be considered domiciled in the UK despite his long-term residence in Malaysia. If he is, then his worldwide estate would be subject to UK inheritance tax at a rate of 40% (the first £325,000 of value is exempt). Ordinary transfers between husband and wife are exempt from UK inheritance tax but only if both transferee and transferor are UK domiciled. As Mrs Bloggs is an US national she will almost certainly not be domiciled in the UK so the tax will apply.

It is possible to establish an alternative “domicile of choice” outside the UK and thereby rid yourself of the liability to UK inheritance tax on your worldwide estate, but it’s extremely unwise to just assume that liability isn’t there.

Even if Mrs Bloggs were not UK domiciled his UK assets would still be subject to UK inheritance tax at 40% due to their situs, so 40% of the value of the property is going to have to be paid over to the UK taxman irrespective of his domicile. We believe the taxman is wealthy enough as it is, but he does seem to be increasingly desperate for money these days. The portfolio of shares in the US would be subject to US inheritance tax.

The property in Spain would be subject to Spanish inheritance tax and also “forced heirship” laws, which mean Mr Bloggs is forced to leave one-third of the property to his spouse, one-third to be divided equally amongst the children and only the final third is the free estate, which he can do with as he pleases. That may not be as per his wishes and is an additional consideration over and above the tax that would be payable in Spain. The Kuala Lumpur property would not be subject to estate duty in Malaysia because there isn’t any.

If he is UK domiciled the whole estate would still be subject to UK inheritance tax at 40%. Also his estate may be double-taxed. Just because you have paid death duties in the country of the situs of the asset doesn’t necessarily mean that the UK won’t tax the estate again on the same asset. In this case that double jeopardy exists in relation to all assets other than the Kuala Lumpur property.

Mrs Bloggs is likely to think rather less fondly of Mr Bloggs if he leaves all these problems to be sorted out by his executors, as not only will the tax have to be paid but it will probably take a minimum of two years to go through the probate process in all of the countries in question and have the assets released to the executors. Only after that can the executors transfer the assets (or dispose of the assets and release the proceeds of sale) to Mrs Bloggs and the rest of the heirs named in the will.

The good news is that to a certain extent it is true to say that estate taxes are voluntary. They are a lot easier to plan against than most forms of tax. In simple terms, the correct strategy is to transfer the various different assets to a company or companies appropriately selected for the jurisdiction in question and then place the shares of all those different companies into a foundation, guarantee holding company structure, trust or the like. By doing this you convert the different assets into the interest in the holding structure which can be carefully structured to avoid any need for probate and, in many cases, any need to pay inheritance tax.

Transferring the assets to the structures would normally represent a sale of each asset so capital gains tax may be payable in its country of situs (not in Malaysia, because there is no capital gains tax). I suppose the only good news to come out of the credit crunch is that values are likely to be historically low, so now is as good a time to do it as any.

What is clear is that either you pay the CGT or your estate pays the death tax. One way or another they get you. While you are alive you can take steps to minimise or eliminate both taxes. Why leave it to chance or to your nearest and dearest to sort out when they are most vulnerable and least equipped to deal with these matters?

If Mr Bloggs is indeed still UK domiciled then he would still be taxed on the value of his interest in the holding entity, so it isn’t the perfect solution for him. But for most other nationalities it may well be no more complicated than the above. If Mr Bloggs is unsure about his domicile then he needs to establish certainty and work towards losing his UK domicile. Again, the sooner he starts that, the better.

One final consideration is that if you have a local spouse who is Muslim, Sharia law forced heirship will also apply.

This article appeared in the April 2011 issue of The Expat magazine

Author: TEG

Starting with The Expat magazine in 1996, The Expat Group has expanded over the years into the leading media company in Malaysia for reaching resident expats, overseas visitors, business travellers and investors. We now publish a large range of websites and magazines, including The Expat and www.expatkl.com. Our writers are all expats living and working in Malaysia, some of whom have been here for as long as 50 years. To find our more about us and what we do, visit www.theexpatgroup.com.