But aside from that, there is the same feeling of prosperity, sophistication, and ease with the modern world. I'm surprised at not feeling odd as an ethnic minority. Yes, I'm way in the minority here, but the people here don't care about me. And Caucasians are not so uncommon that people want to gape or touch my hair. This is different from in Bali, where people were pleased but not stunned if we said a few basic things.
Businesspeople tend to fly in one place, then fly out, and have all conversations in English.
We just went to a big department store. There was a greeting card section where ALL repeat ALL the cards were in English. The taxi driver this morning was speaking English about as well as I speak French, and I minored in French in college. Yes, Malaysia was a British colony until '57, but Indonesia was Dutch until after WW2, and I didn't see lots of Dutch language books in Bali. But I figure that a lot of it is American cultural imperialism.