Welcome – My Dad was born in Penang 🙂
it would be good to hear from yourself and any native friends you may meet about what sort of events happen in Malaysia.
Be careful though with email, internet and telephones – although there is in reality no more censorship than many European nations (they do occassionaly block really bizzare things) the level of domestic surveillance/interception is slightly higher than that in the UK. There are a lot of resources devoted to this (probably why they don’t have enough staff to monitor the aircraft and radars!).
They are a lot more tolerant these days (as SKMM could easily have blocked this site when PVR split into 3 sites) use but there are still many religious people around (more likely to be Roman Catholics than Muslims in that part of the country) who are concerned about some “western behaviour”.
But for all the fear these religions might cause “more free thinking” people as well as the surveillance (it is very easy for them to track down telecommunications due to the way the networks are laid out) there is a certain amount of mischief they will forgive, especially if you are in work/education doing something useful for the country. At the same time those in power want you to at least look like you are following the rules. TBH the situation there is most likely to be the same as Germany in the 1980s during Cold War times, or maybe even today in some more conservative areas of the country.
So if you are careful about how you and your friends behave in public areas you will not have any problems (you can at least often get away with making more noise than would be tolerated in DE or UK!)
