Porous borders, vibrant cultures
By Carolyn Hong
January 2014 ALL OVER THE PLACE
For those who live far from the country’s borders, as most of us do, the country’s demarcations appear solid. But those who actually live there know a different reality.Lines on the map frequently don’t correspond with life on the ground, and this is particularly true in Borneo, which has a very long and complex history. For one, the people living on opposite sides of the Malaysian-Indonesian border aren’t always strangers to each other, unlike Peninsular Malaysians and their neighbours. Borneans...
Carolyn Hong
lives in Ba Kelalan sometimes, in KL sometimes. A former journalist who once chased the big stories for a regional newspaper, she now hunts for the small stories in Malaysia’s smallest places.
