Sad News: Malaysia Falls 45 Places (!!) In This Year's World Happiness Index

With the historic showing at the 14th General Elections last year and that 'eating curry laksa in Kuala Lumpur' being ranked the second best food experience in the world by Lonely Planet (yay?), you would think that Malaysians will smile more this year.

It turns out that Malaysians are not happy, like, at all!

In the recently released 2019 World Happiness Report, Malaysia was ranked the 80th happiest country in the world.

That's not too bad, right? Until you learn that we were ranked 35th in 2018 - which means we dropped a shocking 45 places in just a span of one year!

That makes us the fourth happiest country in Southeast Asia, after Singapore (34th), Thailand (52nd) and the Philippines (69th).

In the previous report, we were ranked second happiest in Southeast Asia.

Sigh, how times have changed.

This year's report -- based on data collected from 2016-2018 -- saw a total of 156 countries being polled, with the focus being on "happiness and the community: how happiness has evolved over the past dozen years, with a focus on the technologies, social norms, conflicts and government policies that have driven those changes".

In case you're wondering which country topped the list, it's Finland. It's a bit hard to feel unhappy when you have views like this, right?

Rounding up the top three are Denmark and Norway.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, South Sudan, Tanzania, Afghanistan and Central African Republic were ranked as the unhappiest nations in the world.