In Malaysia it's all about ethnic groups. Since the first moment we entered we had to face the reality that 3 main different ethnics groups are living together but somehow separated, mixing in some cases, staying on their own in others.
Out of curiosity, since the first ride we took coming from Singapore, we started to count the ethnicity of each driver.
Tomorrow morning we are leaving by ferry to Thailand, so we can declare finished the competition!
And the winner is... wait, wait! It's more complicated than it looks.
We got the following rides in about 1 month of travel:
Malay: 14
Chinese: 11
Indians: 8
Pakistani (all from Peshawar): 3
Thai: 1
You might think that Malays are the winners, but actually we should relate the number of rides to the percentage or population by ethnic groups!
Better would be the percentage of car owners by ethnic groups, and then to take into consideration the ethnicity in each region of travel, but it would get too complicated for a funny game, and I don't know where to get those data.
According to Wikipedia, Malay are about 60%, Chinese 24% and Indians 7%. If we divide the number of rides by the percentage we get:
Malay: 0,23 rides (for each point of percentage)
Chinese: 0,46
Indians: 1,14
Surprise! The ranking is actually reverse and Indians are the winner with more than double the rides of Chinese and 5 times more than Malays!
So our conclusion is that if you are hitchhiking in Malaysia, you have more chances to get a ride with a Malay, but actually Indians are the most generous!
Davide Vadalà
