I have experienced Malaysians as such as a very friendly people, regardless of ethnic background. On Tioman as well. Mostly you would have a nice chat with the people you meet, whether travellers or people who live there, and some of them even had a beautiful smile waiting for you. If they didn't want to have too much to do with someone they just kept themselves to themselves; I haven't really seen much of any kind of confrontation.
All the stranger was the behaviour of one Malay guy there. I haven't seen this kind of behaviour otherwise during my time there. Actually, he was a nice person, working at one of the chalet places, and has always been very helpful and efficient, more than many others. But after he'd had a beer or two he would completely change his personality. In a bad way. Some people just should not be allowed to drink...
One really nice bar had just recently opened near the place where I was staying, and I ended up there for a few beers almost every night. The guys running it were lovely people, and you had a beautiful view of the sunset from their little stage construction where they had placed a couple of chairs. And they already seemed to draw in a regular crowd every night. One of them was this guy.
After a few beers he would start making his rounds and chatting with the girls here and there. The more beer he had, the handsier he would get. Mostly it would not go above the usual London pubcrowd level that I was used to, so an evil stare would usually do the trick, for me at least. He would further try to chat up some of his favourites, one by one, and inevitably they would get annoyed and send him off, when he would mostly shout a few moderately rude abuses and move on to the next. At this point, if this was London, he would probably have been denied any more alcohol, and most likely been banned from the establishment, no discussions, no buts, no ifs. But not here...
For some unknown reason he had picked out a woman I had been hanging out with, and decided he had to make sure she knew what he thought of her. Without provocation he would regularly come by and call her old fart, gradually getting worse in his choice of words, and then adding a few gestures as well to drive home his point. She tried ignoring him, then talking back, then moving to the opposite side of the place out of his way... and inevitably he would follow. Until she had too much, stood up and pushed him. Imagine, a fairly strong European woman, and a skinny little Malay guy. He went flying over the tables in the most beautiful impression of Looney Tunes I have ever seen! I can still see it, it was as if the whole thing was shot in slow motion. His long hair sailing, legs slowly rising, arms flailing while he tried in vain to keep his balance... A most satisfying sight after an evening of most unpleasant disturbances throughout by that guy.
As slow as that had seemed, he was up again in a flash though, ready to fight back, but if nobody had dared to interfere or say anything before, now they all sprang into action in the blink of an eye, and held him back. A bit of a struggle, a few more ugly words, but they dragged him away, and got everyone to calm down again. They did not send him off though, so he would come over every now and then again, start saying something, but now someone would usually hush him, and this time he would listen.
When she had calmed down too, and sat down, the first thing she said, with a satisfied sigh, was "That felt good." I think most of us would agree, I at least found it hard to hide the grin when she sent him flying...
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