Rapper Namewee says Malaysian food is better than Singapore's
However, the Malaysian rapper said Singapore was better at promoting food culture, and credited it with making local cuisine famous.
The perennial ‘food fight’ between Malaysia and Singapore has a ‘victor’ (yet again) and it was crowned by Malaysian rapper Namewee.
In a YouTube video published on his channel on 30 July, the 40-year-old rapper was asked to rank popular holiday destinations in Asia based on five categories.
For each category, he had to assign a grade chosen from S, A, B, and C - with S being the best and C being the worst.
The six places chosen were Taiwan, Thailand, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, and Hong Kong. The five categories were food, sightseeing, traffic, safety, and kindness.
To no one’s surprise, Namewee felt that Malaysian food is better than Singapore’s.
However, before you accuse the rapper of being biased, the rank for both Malaysia and Singapore were the same - both scored A.
Namewee said, “This is the one that Malaysians quarrel with the most. Which country does bak kut teh belong to? Which country does satay belong to? Who invented hainanese chicken rice? If Singapore compares itself to Malaysia, they’ll definitely lose.
“But, I feel that they’ve made some things in their own flavour. Their bak kut teh is actually a pepper-based soup. If you ask me if the pepper-based soup is tasty, I’ll say it is. But if you tell me it’s bak kut teh, we’ll argue for almost two hours.”
The ‘food fight’ aside though, Namewee credited Singaporeans for being the ones who really made Malaysian and Singaporean cuisine famous globally.
“Their promotion is really good. Malaysians can’t do it. We only quarrel online with people everyday,” he quipped.
Singapore is for 'working and earning money, not sightseeing'
Singapore may have barely scraped through in Namewee's ‘food’ category - let’s be real, the S grade is the real ‘Asian A’ - but it definitely fell flat in his ‘sightseeing’ department with a C grade.
Cue disappointed looks from Asian parents.
“This place actually doesn’t offer much for tourism,” Namewee said.
He added, “This is a place to work and earn money. If you tell me they’ve worked hard to create tourist destinations, I think it’s okay to go once because you can take a lot of photos - especially the Marina Bay Sands hotel or the Merlion.
“You can take your photos in one day. Okay, two days; there’s also Universal Studios and the zoo.”
Namewee explained that he gave the rating because Singapore's tourist destinations are man-made, and while you can tell that a lot of work and effort were put into it, he doesn’t feel the “holiday mood” when he’s here.
“Singaporean friends, don’t be angry. If it’s really fun [over there], why would you come over to our side to have fun?”
Are Singaporeans kind?
Despite having a national movement to be kind(er), it seems that Namewee isn’t quite feeling it. He described the locals as being meticulous, and possibly rigid and inflexible.
“When you talk to them, whether about business or communicating things, they’ll always tell you, ‘Can you email me whatever we just talked about?’ They’re less about the social relationships,” Namewee said, adding that Singaporeans tend to be more law-abiding and practical compared to Malaysians who subscribe to Confucianism.
He said, “When you prioritise the law too much, your social relationships will be affected… At least they’re not as fierce as people in Hong Kong.”
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