- December 29, 2021
- Posted by: Stratford Team
- Category: Economy
It has been something of a lacklustre year for South-East Asia. The full reopening of economies and borders many had hoped for in 2021 never really transpired. This time last December my family and I returned to my home in Kuala Lumpur after a holiday we extended on the grounds that we didn’t know when we’d be able to take one again. Sure enough, lockdown restrictions began again in Malaysia in mid-January.
The island we’d visited, Langkawi, has welcomed only 376 foreign visitors since an international tourism travel bubble pilot was launched in November. Indonesia’s famed destination island, Bali, fared even worse: it had only 45 international travellers during the whole of 2021. February saw a coup in Myanmar that ended the country’s brief experiment with semi-democracy and unleashed a wave of military brutalities against civilians, even children, while the end of the year has been punctuated by the misery, deaths and homelessness caused by…
