TikTok ‘ghost mall’ indicator of problems with Malaysia’s failed Silicon Valley
- The Malakat Mall was built in Cyberjaya, dubbed Malaysia’s Silicon Valley, but is now a district full of abandoned shops and restaurants
- Cyberjaya was developed in 1997 as the brainchild of former two-time prime minister Mahathir Mohamad, but the area has been described as a ‘failure’
In August, a 24-year-old content creator named Aqlan Rosli shared a video online in which he walked through a modern-looking mall full of well-stocked shops and a food court – without bumping into anyone at all.
“There are so many shops that are beautiful,” Aqlan says in Malay in the video. “They are renovated and it seems like thousands upon thousands of ringgit was spent only to have no visitors.”
Aqlan’s video garnered over 2,000 comments, many of which were from locals who said the mall was so empty because the shops were “too expensive,” while others said there wasn’t a good enough reason to visit.
Local media went on to dub Malakat Mall an “abandoned ghost mall.”
In late November, I travelled from Singapore to Cyberjaya to check out the mall myself. Was it really as empty as Aqlan’s video made it seem, I wondered, or did he just catch it on a bad day?
I met up with Aqlan in Cyberjaya, where he lives. Aqlan, who describes himself as an entrepreneur, told me he made the video as he felt “pitiful” of the people at the mall.