[MGG] The Langkawi Entrapment

["M.G.G. Pillai" <pillai@mgg.pc.my>]

The Prime Minister's enchantment with Pulau Langkawi knows no bounds. 
So, during his 19-year tenure, he left no stone unturned to turn it into
a ho-hum hastily-designed, badly-constructed tourist resort in a flurry
of construction activity that proves, in the end, how bad Malaysian
construction can be.  This did not come cheap.  Great no-dam builders,
like the incomparable no-dam builder, Tan Sri Ting Pek Khiing, built
hotels and convention facilities noted not for its elegance or utility,
but speed, so that every international convention or exhibition involves
spending tens of millions of ringgit to make them usable.  Hotels,
poorly constructed in a building-flurry, get most of their business in
the price-gouging during exhibitions and conventions.  One defence
attache checked in two days earlier and left two days later:  his RM120
a day hotel rate became US$120 during the exhibition and then back to
RM120.  Pulau Langkawi has lost its lustre, but is kept going because it
is a Prime Ministerial project.  Like major schemes of this kind --
Putra Jaya and Cyber Jaya are two others -- Langkawi is shorthand
for real property gains.  The villagers sold their land for a pittance
to the Langkawi Development Authority or LADA, which then leased it to
those interested for a hundreds times and more.  The villagers made
little out of the island's growth, often reduced to providing ancilliary
services for a pittance.  Meanwhile, construction of a RM50 million
cable-car up Gunung Macincang is about to begin.  A similar cable car,
built over Bukit Nanas in Kuala Lumpur, was dismantled after the initial
enthusiasm evaporated. 

     The Prime Minister wants the natural beauty of the island to be
retained.  Never mind he wants it after much of it is destroyed.  But
how does this tally with his finance minister, Tun Daim Zainuddin, who
also heads LADA, wanting more five-star hotels on the island?  An
international airport rarely used, international hotels rarely full
except at convention times, these conventions and exhibitions held
elsewhere, all point to a white elephant down the road.  But these
adjustments would come only when the Prime Minister's successors are in
office.  So, until then, there is no setback.  But can a tourist
destination survive for long if the inhabitants feel they are
shortchanged?  Can the destruction of their rural life be compensated
with the arrival of the seventh generation of the legendary Mahsuri,
whose blood turned white when she was killed on false charges? 

     The Prime Minister, however, rushes in where angels fear to tread. 
He believes the Langkawi of the tourist brochures is the reality to give
it an edge over Singapore.  Why?  "Besides hotel rooms, goods and other
services are also cheap."  Malaysia's tourist policy depends not on its
facilities and natural beauties, but on the whims and fancies of the
minister for tourism and culture.  We now plan for a water festival, a
strange animal introduced by the current tourism minister, which like
the smart schools would not outlive the minister's tenure.  The Prime
Minister believes that the rack rates of hotels is the comparison.  Not
so.  Tour groups negotiate special deals with hotels which could be as
much as 25 per cent off the rack rate of a hotel room.  Tourists do not
come into a place because hotel rooms and goods are cheap.  They come in
for a holiday, during which they want to see much besides the hotel
rooms and cheap computer games.  For the Prime Minister to boast of
Langkawi's edge over Singapore because hotel rooms are cheap (they are
not), the lower cost of flats, or Singaporeans invest in Malaysia is
disingenuous.  Indeed, because Singapore invests in Malaysia is no
reason why the tourist from Ougadougou should head for Langkawi. 

     Singapore tourists, it is said, are like birds.  They chirp "cheap,
cheap" at every artifact they see.  But does one go on holiday because
the cost of living in Malaysia is less than in Singapore and hotel rack
rates cheaper?  As a free lance journalist, I would go on these tours,
to cut down on my travelling cost, and stayed at five star hotels in
Southeast Asian destinations, to go about my work.  As my free lance
friends elsewhere in the world living in five-star hotels at a fraction
of the cost.  I have never paid rack rates for a hotel in Southeast Asia
in four decades of travel as a reporter.  The newspapers do not hesitate
to give prominent space to Prime Ministerial pronouncements, usually
without thinking, and so this statement on Langkawi is highlighted.  It
best indicates not Langkawi's tourist potential, but his mental health. 
The transformation of Langkawi began not as a tourist destination but to
feed cronies, courtiers and, occasionally, siblings.  Which is why the
Prime Minister and finance minister makes these statements, not the
tourism minister. 

M.G.G. Pillai
pillai@mgg.pc.my