Beginner Guide for attending Raya Open House

(Image Source:Cahaya Kristal)

Malaysia are blessed with multiracial culture yet we celebrate festival of other races together.

1 more week before HARI RAYA, it is not something rare for our Muslim buddy to invite people from different races and culture to their open house and celebrate together with them.

Basically, being invited to an open house means you come to the location the give, eat the food they prepare and chitchat with them.

For someone who going to Hari Raya open house for the 1st time, here are some tips for you.

1.Dress Code:Decent attire

To attend an Open House, you don't have to wear like going for a presentation with a full formal,casual or semi-formal attire are okay. 

a casual attire like long pants,T-shirt and a sport shoes to visit a friend open house is acceptable, of cause you can always be a bit formal with a collar shirt and slack.  The best choice of Dress Code are definitely their traditional dress,especially if you are not a Malay, wearing Baju Melayu or Baju kurung to their open house will give a very good impression to them. By the way since it is Raya, so try avoiding colour like black and pick colourful and don't wear too provocative.

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2.Packet Raya for Duit Raya (Optional)

Whether you are Muslim or non Muslim,you can give duit raya to the kids.If you feel bad for getting free food, you can actually give duit raya to their kids. Of cuz this is optional, is not compulsory for you to give duit raya, skip this if you are having a tight budget.

3.Gift

Malaysian have a habit to bring gift when visiting other people house. You are not necessary to bring something to the host when attending open house, if you feel bad to come with empty hand, it is a better choice to give duit raya instead. However if you still insist to bring something for the host, here are some of the common item people give.

Raya Cookies, you can get from shopping mall. 

kuih kuih Melayu, not recommended because food already provided and it cant keep long.

Hamper & Fruit(Something expensive and unique can leave an impression to the host)

Just beware not to give anything non halal and haram, you will leave an impression in a bad way.

Listed above are the preparation before you go to open house, next are the things you should aware when you arrive at the open house.

1.Greet the Host.

1st thing to do when you arrive to the destination is to greet the host, it is a manner to greet and inform them that you had arrived.Do rmb to remove your shoes when you going in door. Most of the Malaysian do not enter the house with shoes on.

2.Expect to Eat (a lot)

 Now we proceed to the best part, eat all you can. Normally open house serve food during lunch, some might skip breakfast in order to eat more during lunch but skipping breakfast is not a good idea, so the idea way is to have some light dessert during breakfast and digested before lunch to let you eat with an empty stomach.if you wanna try using bare hand to eat like Muslim, remember to use your right hand instead of left hand to handle food.

3.Socialise with other

Nowadays, the common situation after having a nice lunch are most probably a bunch of people sitting in a group, playing with hand phone and socialise online.Make sure you don't do this during open house, people invited you to eat and at the same time, wanted to have a nice chitchat with you,so just keep your phone nicely for a few hours and socialise face to face with people.

4.Tapao(take away)

If you happen to stay till the last of the event,depend on the host, you might actually encounter situation where the host offer you to take back some food.Don't be shy and don't waste the food, you can Tapao the extra food and your action is helping the host from wasting. You might want to bring your own Tupperware if you expected yourself to stay till the last moment.