A few fun fact about Malaysia:

1. it’s a country with Islam being the official religion, but everyone (except muslim) are free to practice other religion.

2. pork are allowed to be sold everywhere, and muslim themselves need to know whether the establishment sell pork or not. They can pick restaurant that is halal certified to be safe, but restaurant isn’t required to have halal certified to operate, thus non-muslim can eat the haram meat without restriction.

3. the 3 ethnicity that share the largest population are: Malay, Chinese, and Indian, then kadazan-dusun for Sabah and Iban for Sarawak. There is a lot of other ethnic minority, including indigenous people. We of course allowed to practice our own culture without hindrance, to the point we celebrate it together, with no worry about cultural appropriation.

4. while Malaysia is a religious country, it’s not full-on theocracy(yet). Here we practice the Westminster parliamentary system, inherited from british, while similarly we also have royalty placed above the parliament(which we call Agong, akin to King), which mostly serve a ceremonial role. As of yesterday, the parliament is now an independent entity that doesn’t need the involvement of royalty.

5. Agong is basically a role take on by Sultan, which they take turn to be on that role every 5 years. We have 9 Sultans.

6. while the official language is Malay, english is widely spoken among the city folks, as well as mandarin and tamil.