Recently, Malaysia topped the ranks in being the most loved country in Asia, beating other popular tourist destinations such as Thailand and Japan and South Korea.
It’s no surprise why.
We have a smorgasboard of food, cultures, friendly folks, and a beautiful mix of islands and skyscrapers.
A surprised tourist recently took to his TikTok to share how impressed he was after having visited Malaysia.
@fredbundytravel began his video sharing how he believes that people are really confused about countries like Thailand and Malaysia, and often have the perception that these countries are Third World countries.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with that term, ‘Third World’ refers to economically weaker nations. ‘Third World’ countries are generally represented by lack of basic infrastructure facilities, high poverty, and economic instability.
“Third World countries have bad hospitals, its like very poor and dirty. But look at this place, the whole city centre looks like this,” he said, amazed.
READ MORE: US traveller praises M’sia as “underrated” travel pick, “10 times better” than Singapore
In his one-minute video, he could be seen walking around The Exchange TRX.
“Southeast Malaysia is so much more developed than people think. Like look at this place man. Its just stunning.
“It is more modern and beautiful than any place I’ve seen in Western Europe,” he said.
His TikTok video which has since racked up 580K views had Malaysians thanking him in the comments for refuting the misconception that Malaysia is a Third World country.
“Thank you for saying this! My husband is British and I’m Malaysian and he always says I’m from a third world country,” commented a TikTok user.
@moonlight shared that “Malaysia is considered a developing country versus developed countries like Japan and South Korea. We are not there yet but we are catching up. We are not a Third World country”.
