Malaysia: The next shopping paradise?

Pinoys are in-disputably champion shoppers. It’s the kind of skill that wins prizes, as I learned during a recent trip to Kuala Lumpur, where a group of us Filipinos displayed not only world-class brand consciousness and mall-navigation radar, but also the ability to sniff out bargains from over 100 meters away.

The event was the Malaysia Mega Sale Carnival. Launched July 5 and ongoing till Sept. 1, this nationwide sale offers discounts of up to 70 percent on both local and foreign brands (take note: electronic goods are duty-free all year round). Following the lead of countries like Hong Kong, Singapore and Thailand, Malaysia created its own “shopping season” eight years ago to lure more visitors to the country. At present the Mega Sale Carnival takes place three times a year: in March, July, and the year-end sale in December.

No doubt Malaysia first entered the pop consciousness with the movie Entrapment, where Catherine Zeta-Jones slithered her way to the top of the Petronas Towers, KL’s most recognizable landmark. Then Michelle Yeoh surprised viewers by becoming the face of Malaysia’s “Truly Asia” campaign — and letting the world know that she wasn’t just Chinese but Malaysian-Chinese.

Fashion insiders are most familiar with Malaysia’s inexpensive yet ultra-stylish homegrown brands: Vincci for shoes, Bonia for bags, Eclipse for mass fashion, and Zang Toi for high fashion.

We started our Malaysian discovery tour on the flight to KL. The easiest way to get there is through their national carrier, Malaysia Airlines (MH), with its daily afternoon flight from Manila, and two flights a week from Cebu. After operating at a loss in the beginning, the airline turned its fortunes around in two years and is currently updating its fleet of Airbus 330s and Boeing 734s. During the three-and-a-half-hour flight, it was the cabin service that stood out most. They dispensed hot towels in economy, and every time my seatmate leaned on the call button by mistake, an attendant would come running. Sure enough, I find out later that MH has been awarded Best Cabin Staff for over four years now.

Upon landing, KL’s abundance of trees and orderly surroundings echo Singapore’s “everything works” veneer, but Filipinos will feel right at home because of the prevailing mall culture, not to mention the all-day traffic snarls.

We were told in Manila that we were going on a “Shopping Safari,” so we assumed we would be taken to a number of shopping areas and report on the bargains we found there. Little did we know we would end up participating in an Amazing Race-type challenge that would test our endurance and innate love of window shopping.

The competition — in which media from 17 countries as far away as South Africa and the United States participated — was a “treasure hunt” encompassing four malls in KL’s downtown Bukit Bintang area. Two-person teams from each country would receive a set of 20 questions at each mall, which we’d have to answer and submit before getting the next set of questions at the succeeding mall. This meant we couldn’t spend more than 40 minutes dallying at each stop, because we had to complete the entire task within three and a half hours or be disqualified.

Wanting to do the Philippines proud, my teammate (Judith Juntilla of Business World) and I began the Safari at Pavilion Kuala Lumpur, a glorious new mall boasting seven floors of almost any brand you can think of, from Forever 21 to Club Monaco to Hermés. After receiving our first batch of questions, we were reduced to wandering the mall’s fifth and sixth levels trying to answer head-scratchers like “Color in disguise” (makeup shop The Natural Source was promoting a Camouflage Color line) and “This brand has been around for 80 years” (Speedo). The rules stated that we didn’t need to go into the outlets to find the answers (oh, but we wanted to); rather, we had to look at signage and shop windows. Oh, well…

After we were done at Pavilion, we hurried down Jalan Bukit Bintang, fondly known to locals as BB Street, KL’s equivalent to Singapore’s Orchard Road. We crossed half of BB’s stretch to receive our second questionnaire, only to be sent back the way we came. Unexpectedly BB was an additional stop on our safari, and we had to scour both sides of the street for answers.

No trip to KL is complete without visiting BB, with its row of malls, restaurants, pubs, hotels and neon-lit nightspots. Malaysia’s enviable 20.1 million tourists per year is increasing thanks to a fresh infusion of visitors from the Middle East, according to our Tourism Malaysia guide, Viji Arunasalam. Though KL’s malls are usually open from 10 a.m. to 10 p.m., Arab tourists, and now the Mega Sale Carnival, are keeping the shops and eateries hopping until midnight.

Sweating profusely after our humid exertions on BB, our third stop was Low Yat Plaza, a computer and tech mall that looks exactly like Greenhills in its labyrinthine layout of tiny stalls. Obviously this is the place to go for the duty-free electronics I mentioned earlier, but we were too busy surveying signs to really hunt for bargains.

After Low Yat we were so fatigued it took sheer will to proceed to the fourth stop, Sungei Wang Plaza. Our status as under-exercised journalists who report on events — rather than actually participating ourselves — was becoming depressingly apparent. But Viji, our extremely helpful, capable, optimistic guide, wouldn’t let us give up. He practically dragged us to Sungei Wang, where I had enough wits left to register that it was full of edgy fashion boutiques by young Malaysian designers, including Zang Toi, the first Malaysian fashion designer to break through on the global scene. Toi even had an inviting café in front of his boutique that sold boxed pastries.

After Sungei Wang, there was just enough time to collect the last questionnaire, trek to final stop Berjaya Times Square and submit it (blank, because we didn’t have time to check out anything) before the contest ended at 6:30 p.m. Berjaya is notable for being Malaysia’s largest shopping mall, with over 3.4 million square feet of retail, entertainment and dining space. It also houses Malaysia’s largest indoor family theme park, two Imax theaters and Borders Books and Music, one retailer among Berjaya’s 1,000.

In Malaysia’s campaign to woo shoppers, not only are all electronic goods duty-free, you also get an exemption on imported goods costing over 200 Malaysian ringgit (around P2,600). Other ways to get discounts are the Tourist Privilege Cards distributed at the airport, hotels and malls, and a tie-up with MasterCard, the Mega Sale Carnival’s official credit card. Each transaction you make at a participating shop, eatery or spa with your MasterCard entitles you to an automatic entry and a chance to win RM100,000 worth of cash prizes.

As it turns out, I got my own modest taste of that. At dinner that night they announced the winners of the Shopping Safari, and while Viji thought our chances were good, we weren’t so sure because of that blank questionnaire. Then, before we had made up our minds to slink out the door, officials from the Shopping Malaysia Secretariat announced that the Philippine team composed of Erica Paredes and Kat Cruz won a consolation prize of RM300.

Amid the euphoria and high-fiving, I couldn’t believe it when they called my team number as well — Judith and I had won the second prize of RM1,000! All the prize amounts were in gift certificates to Parksons, Malaysia’s most popular department store.

With our own money, we treated our abused feet to a celebratory half hour of reflexology afterwards (RM25, or P350). Then we had to excuse ourselves. Prize GCs in hand, we finally had our chance to go and shop.

* * *

The Malaysia Mega Sale Carnival is ongoing until Sept. 1. For details, call the Tourism Malaysia office at 891-1697 or e-mail mtpb.manila@t ourism.gov.my.

Log on to www.malaysia airlines.com to find out more about Everyday Low Fares to Kuala Lumpur.

For tour guide services, e-mail Viji Arunasalam at vijian59 @yahoo.com or call (016) 698-3079.