Malaysia - Culture Smart!: The Essential Guide to Customs & Culture

Culture Smart / Cultuur Bewust

by Victor T. King

Culture Smart! provides essential information on attitudes, beliefs and behavior in different countries, ensuring that you arrive at your destination aware of basic manners, common courtesies, and sensitive issues. These concise guides tell you what to expect, how to behave, and how to establish a rapport with your hosts. This inside knowledge will enable you to steer clear of embarrassing gaffes and mistakes, feel confident in unfamiliar situations, and develop trust, friendships, and successful business relationships. Culture Smart! offers illuminating insights into the culture and society of a particular country. It will help you to turn your visit-whether on business or for pleasure-into a memorable and enriching experience. 

Genres: Travel, Asia

168 pages, Paperback

First published June 3, 2008

Reviews

[Danish Prakash · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite similar to the Singapore edition and understandably so, it used to be a single land mass before the eviction but the people and the culture remain more or less the same.

Enjoyed the first half, as usual, with all the history and the "ethnography" of the people. One thing quite struck me was how dated this edition was. There was talk of reading a map or going blindly into a place. I couldn't really understand some of it until it really struck me. The second half, again, was a little boring but it still had good reading material on the nitty-gritty details of doing communication and business with the Malaysian people. It's a fascinating multi-ethnic country and I was talking to my manager just the other day about how the Malaysian people were able to overcome their ethnic differences, to whatever extent, and cultivate a civilized society. I was really ignorant about developed, in general, South East Asian countries are. I'm enlightened now.

[Doug Witzig · Rating 4 out of 5]

I recommend this book to anyone planning to visit, do business, or live in Malaysia. Particularly helpful: Chapter 9 - Communicating and the Appendix: Useful Apps

[Trena · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is approximately a wikipedia-level discussion of Malaysian culture and how to avoid causing any major offense. It's a quick read of about an hour (and I wish I'd read it before I was on the plane and had packed possibly offensively short above-the-knee shift dresses for a business meeting in this Muslim country) and gives a skim of an overview.

Dislikes: There's a little too much space allocated to the titles for royalty--it's unlikely your average traveler will come in contact with such an august personage, it was more like the American reverence for monarchy--and not enough pronunciation info for the simple phrases provided.

Overall, I was glad I checked this out from the library and gave it a whirl, but I wouldn't recommend buying a text like this.

[Waqas]

knowledge