PETALING JAYA- Actress Maya Karin, who has acknowledged that her two year marriage is on the rocks, is not about to go into hiding despite facing difficult times.

She attended the Environment Integrity Forum at the Malaysian Institute for Integrity yesterday where she made indirect references to her domestic woes.

Taking the stage, she said she had not expected to give a speech and admitted that her mind had been on "personal matters."

She gamely continued to talk about the importance of the environment and later planted a tree on the institute's grounds along with veteran actor Tan Sri Jins Shamsudin.

She also posed for photographs with the crowd after the tree-planting ceremony.

In an interview with The Daily Chilli later, Maya acknowledged that she was trying hard to save her marriage to Steven David Shorthose, 41.

The couple were married in August 2008 in Italy.

Shorthose is a mathematics teacher at an international school in Kuala Lumpur.

"My marriage is going through a rough patch at the moment," said Maya, 31. "But we're trying to see if we can work things out."

The star of Pontianak Harum Sundal Malam, however, declined to say the cause of their troubles.

"It's not true that we're having problems because of cultural differences," said the Malay-German beauty.

"Being a child of mixed parentage myself, cultural differences have never been an issue to me."

Neither was there a third party involved, she added.

"I'm not naive about relationships," she added.

"It can go either way. Maybe it won't end the way I want it to. So I'm preparing myself mentally for a possible divorce. But let's try not to get there."