Two weeks ago, I was in Amsterdam and you couldn’t find a more liberal country than Netherlands where the coffee bars serve more than caffeine and where the people speak several languages just because they have to, situated as they are in the middle of Europe.

Even then, I sensed a growing unease about the influx of immigrants and foreigners. The young driver who picked me up spoke of the difficulty he had of getting this job �" he’s been at it for five months �" and he also spoke of how local folks in Amsterdam were getting weary of their city being overtaken by tourists.

Global brands like Uber and Airbnb are changing the shape of local economies and Amsterdam is one good example of how local residents no longer feel the city is theirs because a lot of apartments and homes within the city are being let out to tourists.

Amsterdam is a wonderful city for travellers. It’s walkable and bikable and you can also hop on and off on canal boats. On the day I took to explore the city, I headed off to the Rijks Museum and by sheer chance, I walked in through the back entrance, somehow missing the long queue of visitors at the main entrance.

To catch a glimpse of the “Night Watch”, the famous painting by Rembrandt (painted in 1642), I had to peer over the heads of countless visitors and wait my turn to see this remarkable piece of work up close.

A week later, I was in Kuala Lumpur and in this very spread out capital city of Malaysia, I too sensed growing unease about foreigners. Locals talk about neighbourhoods being taken over by this ethnicity or that. Service staff are all “foreigners”, locals do not want to take on such jobs anymore �" a common refrain in this globalised world we live in.

Read the full story here.