The difference between West and East Malaysia

I did a little bit of research about the differences between the Malaysian culture in West and East Malaysia. I have researched this difference by living in KL, travelling around Peninsular Malaysia and travelling around Sabah.
One of the things that was pretty remarkable was the difference in the knowledge of the English language. In West-Malaysia almost everybody speaks at least some basic English and most of the people speak it very well. Not only in the more developed areas or touristic places, but literally everywhere I have been. One example is the city Taiping, not very much tourists go there because there is very little to see except for a mangrove forest. I went there because it was on the way from the Cameron Highlands to Kuala Kedah and a nice place to stop half way. Me and my girlfriend were literally the only white people in the city, where we walked around the entire day. Our hotel clerk told us that he saw some Germans the week before, but that tourists don’t visit very often. Despite that, everybody we asked something or talked to could speak English very well.
That in contrast to places on Borneo were I had to try to talk in Bahasa and use my hands to point to buy food at the markets. This displays the huge gap between the development in the two parts of the country.
According to Demery & Demery (1992) in 1970 the household income per capita was twice as high for Chinese and Indian people than that of the Malays. But after that poverty has gotten less for all groups, but especially for the Malays it got better. In 1984 only a quarter of the Malays were still living in poverty. After 1984 it only got better, with urban poverty falling to almost insignificant levels. Paddy farmers and fisherman stayed behind though, and poverty among them still is the largest. You can see that poverty is so much bigger in Borneo to simple things. Buildings are old and grey and not very well maintained, people sell fruits like bananas which they harvest themselves, on the streets, dirt and waste is everywhere and people are walking around in old and shabby clothes. Things you don’t see that much in Peninsular Malaysia, and definitely not in KL.
I have been diving on the east coast of Borneo, at the islands around Semporna. There is nothing else to do for tourists than dive, so there are a lot of small dive schools in the little town. There are a lot of small islands of the coast and they are great diving spots (one of the best in the world). So on a few islands there are very exclusive and expensive resorts, and they are built next to the small huts of fishermen. When we were diving we would have lunch which the dive school had prepared (most of the time noodles), on one of the small islands. When we were having lunch, little children would come and sit with us. Our dive masters explained they were Philippine children left on the island all alone. Their parents took them with them when they illegally crossed the border from the Philippines in small boats. Malaysia has a very strict law against illegal people and deports them straight away. But the law also states that only illegal people of ten years and older can be deported, so the small children stay behind. They have no one else to take care of them but themselves, so they stay alive on the island by eating fish and begging some food from the divers. I ate a lot less after hearing that story, just so the children would get a little more. And to emphasize that their live on the island was pretty hard, the children, in age from five to ten, didn’t want to share the food they got from us with each other. I think that’s one of the things that have made a deep impression on me and that showed me that Malaysia is still a developing country in some ways. The difference with West Malaysia was striking.
Another sign of the poverty on Borneo is the fact that pirates are still active in the waters between Sabah and the Philippines. In April 2000, 21 people were kidnapped by a Philippine terrorist group. All victims were eventually released. Two weeks before I was diving around the islands in Semporna the army shot 11 pirates who were aiming to rob tourists. The army is stationed on some of the islands off the coast to protect tourists. When sailing around the islands at Semporna you continuously see boats with heavily armed soldiers passing by. On Pulau (island) Sipadan the army has occupied an old resort. I have been to that island and heavily armed soldiers are walking around the island. As a tourist (only 120 tourists a day are allowed on the island because the eco-system around the island is protected) you can only go to a stroke on the beach of 200 metres, when crossing that border you would be brought back at gunpoint.