Going Out in Style
What better way to go into the afterlife than being escorted in a 24-carat casket to your grave? After all, families want the best for their loved ones in life... and death. Right?
Right. Because that's what they're doing in Southeast Asia, in countries like Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Taiwan.
From $100,000 gold-plated caskets to burial plots worth millions of dollars, a growing number of the rich are making their passage to the afterlife with the best that money can buy.
Reuters reported that clients for such lavish, luxurious funerals are mainly ethnic Chinese who make up more than 40 million of Southeast Asia's population. Muslims make up the majority, but their religion frowns upon lavish funerals.
Demand for luxury funerals among ethnic Chinese has been growing especially in Indonesia, which has a small but affluent Chinese community and in Singapore, where luxury funeral companies are running a $22 million columbarium, such as the Nirvana Memorial Center, self-proclaimed as "the largest bereavement caregroup in Southeast Asia."
But that's not all. These funeral services are not just for human beings—they're being offered to cats and dogs too.
Maybe dying isn't that scary after all.
Watch this fascinating video of Malaysia's latest obsession:
