I've gone from finding perl an absolute joy to program in circa 2005 to now (2019) where I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole. The sentiment seems pretty natural and common.
netty's buffer management libraries do a good job at what you are looking for. Having an instance of the pooled allocator that is configured to prefer "direct" i.e. off heap memory might just be the thing.
Disclosure: I am based out of the Indian subcontinent & have deep professional ties with the bay area for little over a decade.
I myself would assume that the skill levels at 90th percentile of all developers from India is well below the median levels of the valley. The distortion is partly contributed by the number of graduates entering the industry. The main contributor of this situation would be people's motives. There is a huge difference between aspiring for fame & world domination/peace v/s what is deemed as a high income job (the notion of "high" is relative to national income levels).
So the obvious answers are as follows: there is fundamental difference in the calibre of people that depends on their motivation and there are dominant motivations that varies by geographies.
What would be interesting is to stop looking at this as a US v/s SEA thing and instead pick a region from any first world country where dominant motivation of developers is to just get by and see how it fares against the valley.