My trip to Penang a few years back prompted all sorts of feelings, mostly confusion and shame. I was accompanying my mother for a medical check-up; she had been diagnosed with lung cancer by doctors in Indonesia but we wanted to get a second (or third, or fourth, really) opinion, just to be sure. We were hungry, so we hit up a tiny hawker corner right across the street. There were the typical Chinese and Malaysian cuisine selections: a variety of noodles, wontons, nasi, curry. I can’t recall what I ate that evening, but until today I can’t—and will probably never—forget my little post-dinner interaction with an older Chinese auntie who was working there.

She’d said something in Mandarin as she gave us a handwritten bill at the end of our meal. I apologised: “Sorry, I don’t understand, do you mind saying that in English?”

• Tags: Indonesia, Issue 34, Yudhistira Agato