1st Letter from Malaysia

Dateline Kuala Lumpur
March 18,2009
11:20 PM



Dear June, John Mark, Jerusalem, Joanne, Kent and Dianne, Doreen, Tim and Nancy,Ate Eileen and Kuya Ray, Frances and Tino, Anne and Manny, Ate Beng, Medy and everyone:

I thank our Heavenly Father for the continuous protection He has given us daily. Finally, we came through to Malaysia without trouble.
We left Phuket Island at 8:30 PM by bus to Haatyai, a southern municipality of Thailand, near the border with Malaysia.
The border is heavily guarded by both Thai and Malaysian police guards and soldiers. A big portion of southern Thailand where the
Muslim militants have been operating to destroy peace has been cordoned by the Thai Royal Army, so penetration of the area has become more difficult. It has not completely stopped ambushes
and bombings, but sealing off the area has lessened violence within the southern portion of Thailand.
We stopped in Haatyai for around five hours, and I had one hour to re-view the city. I remember the year we were here - June, our children, and me.. It was 1996. We came from Singapore by bus, through Malaysia (visiting Genting Highlands, Kuala Lumpur, Ipoh , Penang, and Johore Bahru(, and then southern Thailand (Haatyai and Songkla). At that time, there was no war yet between
the Muslim insurgents and the Thai military-police. It was very peaceful going around Haatyai and Songkla. Today, one has to be more careful. Sign of the times.
We crossed the Thai-Malaysian border at noontime, and had three stop-overs - in Perlis, Butterworth and Ipoh.
I remember Ipoh well because of our dear friend Miss Chow Sow Leng, a Malaysian nurse who joined Campus Crusade for Christ Malaysia in the early 70s. She was trained in the Great Commission Training Center (GCTC)of Campus Crusade for Christ together with me in 1976. We graduated together from GCTC. She is from Ipoh.
The road from the border to Kuala Lumpur, and from Kuala Lumpur to Singapore, is very good. It is wide, like our North Diversion road - end to end, border to border (Thailand and Singapore). Some portions of the road are as wide as the presently-being-widened Commonwealth Avenue in Quezon City, known to be the widest road in the Philippines. Malaysia and Thailand have very good and wide roads, and both countries can be very proud of this.
The Malaysian and Thai countrysides are verdant in summer, compared to Cambodia's fields which are brown.
Both Malaysia and Thailand have tapped their rivers for irrigation,
and their ricefields have water even during the dry season. No wonder that they are self-sufficient in rice and vegetables. They also grow rubber trees and palm trees (for palm oil).
We arrived in Kuala Lumpur at around 7 PM. Here, we met
a kind man named Adel a tourist from Lebanon in his 60s. He was in Manila recently for a visit. When I asked him where can we stay for the night, he led us to Pudu Hotel where he is staying, reasonably priced, nice and clean. Then, after we brought our things to our room, he accompanied us for dinner in an Indian restaurant. After dinner, he brought us to Chinatown's Night Market. It's a clean and nice place.
During our conversation (Romy and I) with Adel, we talked about tourism. He told us that Thailand has from 10 to 15 million
tourists a year, and most of the tourists from Europe and Asia go to the islands of Thailand like Phuket, and the Crabi islands. Thailand has only very few islands where tourists can go, but the Philippines has 7,100 islands!
So, why is it that Thailand leads ASEAN in tourism - with 10 to 15 million tourist arrivals every year. The Philippines can only get 2 million tourists a year.
Adel gave us his answers which will be a subject for an article about poor Philippine tourism.
God bless you all!

Norbert Mercado