As 2026 dawns, I don’t have any predictions or resolutions to offer, but I do have a New Year’s wish to make. And that is for other, more troubled parts of the globe to be more like the region that I first visited and then came to call home for the past 25 years. I define that as what is sometimes referred to as “the Malay world” – the area of South-East Asia that includes Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia, and arguably also the southernmost portions of Thailand and the Philippines.
This historically sea-facing and trading archipelago contains numerous ethnicities and most of the world’s major religions. Yet, it is similar enough for two people speaking the “bahasa” (languages) of Malaysia and Indonesia to understand each other easily, and for arguments to crop up regularly about which country can truly claim ownership of popular dishes such as the coconut and lemongrass-infused local curry, rendang, sugar-drenched satay or the fruit and vegetable salad, rojak.
On a geopolitical level, the Malay world was considered to be real enough for Indonesia’s President Sukarno to call for the creation of a Greater Indonesia (which would have included Malaysia and Singa
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