Malaysian tourists in China scorned for calling locals ‘smelly’
The visitors also hurled insults at the locals, damaging the country’s national image amid booming Malaysia-China travel ties
A group of Malaysian tourists is facing intense backlash for filming strangers and mocking locals in China as “smelly”, sparking debate on travel etiquette and national image.
The clips, which also appeared to show the visitors shouting insults in Malay while travelling in the country, were allegedly first posted on TikTok by user @ekyn.wong.
They were later deleted from the account when checked by This Week in Asia, but not before going viral on Malaysian social media, where users panned what they called the guests’ crude and entitled behaviour.
In one video, a woman could be heard saying, “You all stink. You stink. Do you all not bathe?” to a crowd of Chinese commuters waiting to board a bus. Another clip showed her complaining about noisy people on a train.
She also recorded an e-hailing driver in a separate video, saying, “Use deodorant, please. It stinks.”
“You go to another country and bring this kind of manners? So disrespectful. Please mind your behaviour when you are in someone else’s country,” said a user on the account where the videos were reposted, garnering more than 920,000 views and thousands of comments.
The individual added that the “rude” conduct could jeopardise other Malaysians abroad.