A vote for kindness

As we drove towards the little coastal town of Kota Besud, the ferry point for the Perhentian Islands, you couldn’t help notice that today was an unusual day.  Bunting was everywhere, people thronged the streets waving flags.  Perhaps a visiting dignitary? a public holiday? News of Baders on Tour coming through? No, in fact it was election fever, and the flags were for the different candidates.  

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How could we refuse to 'vote' with these lovely people!

There were clearly two dominant parties, and as the traffic slowed to a crawl, we could see happy people waving their flags, we opened our windows and cheered with them, and a couple of kind ladies gave our boys some blow up flag each to wave.  We had inadvertently found ourselves supporting the “blue” party (although we did put our blue flags away when we later drove through the predominantly ‘green’ part of town!)

I’d like to say that we stopped to find out about their manifestos and policies, but alas, given the taxi driver didn’t speak a word of English, I’m afraid we made our notional decision of who to support based on the friendliness of the people we’d encountered, and their kindness with the boys.   Still, it did spawn a conversation about voting and elections at home so whilst the boys aren’t exactly counting down the days until they can vote, they do have a slightly better understanding than before we drove through that little town. 

And as we passed through the town again a week later, we saw the town was bathed in blue bunting still.  Perhaps kindness had won the day.