They overpowered the security guards and grabbed the money - but couldn't fit the sacks of cash into their getaway vehicle. The robbers fled, leaving behind more than half the loot.
What a group of geniuses. I wonder what they'll do next? Try to empty a bank vault into a shopping trolley? Steal the Eiffel Tower with a wheelbarrow?
The crime pages of Malaysian newspapers never fail to amuse me. Take a recent decision by law enforcement officials, for example.
Police administrators discovered that a police station was in a high crime area. So they closed it down. I am not making this up. Research showed that the Chow Kit area of inner city Kuala Lumpur contained many criminals and members of the vice trade. The area was "full of contagious diseases," and there were so many unsavory characters on the streets that there were fears for the safety of officers, a government official said. So administrators closed the police base, and moved officers out of the district.
I heard about this from reader Hazrul Nizam, who said: "Whenever you think you've seen and heard it all, politicians come out with something to mess with your bearings."
Hazrul was not the only one to think this odd. A politician named Mohamed Hatta Ramli said if police did not feel safe in the area, what about the public? What baffled him most was the fact "contagious diseases" were identified as one of the main reasons for moving the police.
"The only kind of contagious diseases that are present there are sexually transmitted ones," Hatta said. Why did the government think police were in danger of catching them?
"That kind of thing is a matter of choice," he delicately pointed out.
Maybe the government thinks police officers are weak-willed. Pathetic. Personally, I can resist anything, except temptation. But I know not everyone is as strong-willed as I am. As one of my friends used to pray before we went out on Friday nights: "Lead us not into temptation. We can find it for ourselves." (He was always right.)
One of the special things about Malaysia is that it is simultaneously modern and ancient. For example, in one part of the country, signs were erected to try to stop people from throwing trash on the ground. "People who drop litter will be cursed and never have children," the signs said. The campaign worked like a charm. (They should try this in other Asian countries.)
But fast modernization comes with risks, I know from the Malaysia tales in my files. I'll never forget the officials in Kangar, a town named after a tree, who decided to celebrate their symbol - and then discovered that they had all been chopped down. Embarrassed members of the Kangar Municipal Council of Sabah offered cash to anyone who could find one. They didn't even have a picture of it, and were driven to asking elderly citizens to try to remember what it looked like.
"There were many Kangar trees here, but they have all been felled," Hamzah Abidin, 70, told the Sabah Daily Express. He couldn't remember any details about the appearance of the tree other than the fact that "it had leaves and branches." Not a lot to go on.
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