Ok, well Malay isn't hard to learn. I probably only said that because to a person who's completely new to Malay, he or she will find it difficult. The grammar structure of Malay is extremely easy but the vocabulary is completely alien to other languages. So for people with a hard time memorizing things, tough luck.
I guess I was fortunate to have an experience of heritage, culture and livelihood which allows me to learn such languages.
@suxerz: Don't local Malay schools teach Mandarin too? In addition, I'm pretty sure you have a significant amount of Chinese friends to help you with that 
Yep, Malay isn't really hard to learn. I see lots of expats here that can speak and understand Malay. There's one Australian at my office even writes his email in Malay a few times - and it's not even bad, at least we understood what he's trying to say.
As for Mandarin and Cantonese; in general, we have 3 categories of schools - Chinese, Tamil and the common public school which I will call national school since I don't know what is the correct translation for it. I'm not really sure how does our education system works now, but 20-30 years ago Mandarin is only available in the Chinese schools and few selective national schools. Though I have lots of Chinese friends, most of them comes from the non-Chinese schools. Therefore, most of them can't read and write properly in Mandarin.
But if I
really want to learn, yeah... it's not hard to find help.
