Three men walk into a hawker centre and ordered the same combination of dishes: beef rendang and long beans, all atop a mountain of white rice drizzled with lontong gravy from the nasi padang stall. They discovered that they were charged different prices for their plate of rice, despite ordering the exact same thing, from the exact same stall, and the exact same makcik.

Welcome then, to the curious world of “Malay pricing”. Known to Singaporeans as a racially-motivated form of price discrimination, Malay pricing, as you would expect, commonly refers to those who look, or are Malay being charged a cheaper price for the same item than your Chinese Singaporean.

To try and make sense of what happened during that fateful lunch, a little experiment was conducted...

© 2020 by Rice Media. Published online in Singapore by Rice Media, recorded by Storyside 2020.