dun be offended... but the hard truth is that RM800 is not going to go anywhere be it a road bike or MTB...

and secondly, you have a big dilemma here, on one hand.. you need a bike to commute to school and it is no sense to buy an expensive bike of any kind to go to school because of security issues...

and if you get one cheap enough not to worry about it while in class... you will find that it is not going to be any good or satisfies you when you ride with friends who has better bikes.. (in fact, nothing will ever satisfy you because there is so called "real friends" out there, you'll understand this later as time goes by)

so, you need to sort that out first before going further ahead...

in the direction of getting involved with the cycling community... i can only say to buy what your group rides if you are undecisive... of course an MTB can still roll with the road bikes although slightly slower...and to make it clear, good cycling groups never leave their mates behind, they will always wait for the ones who have been dropped off the tail end of the group...and if you cannot accept the fact that you can't go as fast as they do...sorry to say that it is mentally your issue as there is no guarantee that riding a road bike with a roadie group guarantees that you can follow them..

on the other hand, if they rode MTB and you bought a road bike... you totally can't follow them into trails.. and that becomes a bummer and you end up being forever alone...

and then back to the question of money... we have nothing against exitway...but usually brands like this will sell for a price so cheap it is unbelievable and they divert your attention by giving you a couple of fantastic components where mostly people will first notice when looking for a bike and cut costs on the rest of the stuff where people don't take note so much.... polygon would at least still be slightly better than exitway and they are sometimes quite cheap...

so, i'd say the best is to save up a bit more... and take the bus to school... concentrate on one aspect only because you don't want to end up "两头不到岸“ if you know how to read chinese... MTB of reputable brands would costs as much as RM1.5k nowadays with entry level parts and road bikes as much as RM1.8k to RM2k as starters...

and to make things clear...i am not saying that the cheap bikes are totally no good... it depends on how content you are with the bike itself... i own a cheapo MTB myself and i sometimes still use it to stroll around town myself...