Pondering Penang

“Hi.  Is this your first visit to Canada?”

The lady at the airport inn in Richmond beamed with friendliness in the elevator.

Ingrid and I looked at each other.  We were both quite deeply tanned in spite of our daily slatherings of sunscreen.  I managed to stammer out, “No.  We live here,” feeling odd about having to say it.

An uncomfortable silence filled the elevator.  Ingrid repeated it, more to reassure us than anything else, “Yes. We live here.”  Unaccountably embarrassed, the lady mumbled something as she got off on the floor before ours.

So we are almost home, and having booked a total of 123 hours in transit in the last six weeks, we will certainly be content to stay there for a while.  

A total of 41.5 hours in the air means that we spent a nice big work week in the stratosphere deepening our carbon footprint.  Another 51 hours of sitting on Malaysian buses gave us adequate time to yearn for stricter driver licensing.   A mere 7.5 hours spent bouncing around the South China Sea barely gave us any sense of that body of water, but 23 hours of waiting in airports between flights was nothing but 23 hours of waiting in airports between flights.

So in the end we are left with some general impressions of Malaysia and its people.  

Malaysia stands well along the path to development, but it seems a country oddly lacking in culture, perhaps because of the long history of various colonial masters.   But there is an irony here.

While comparing the SE Asian countries we’ve visited, an interesting perspective emerged on the colonial habits of various European nations.  In brief, the English left a relatively benign mark on this peninsula compared to that of the Dutch in Indonesia.  

Having developed the road and railway infrastructure, a civil service, a corps of engineers and other professionals as well as political leadership among the indigenous people, the British walked away from this colony with a handshake.  Their legacy to the people of Malaysia was a polity with the traditions, structures, and capacity for democratic self-government.  

The Dutch, on the other hand, had a much simpler approach to colonisation: extract wealth.  Whether characterised by the iron fist of Jan Coen or the ideological purity of corporate profiteering of the Dutch East India Company, the traditions established by the Dutch were those of colonial overlord, not of democratic partner.

 

After WW II as the Japanese occupation ended, the Dutch returned to continue mining the Indonesian archipelago’s wealth and found an armed militia that fought for independence.  Offering no colonial legacy other than corporate greed, the Dutch did not end their occupation with a handshake, but with bitterness, blood and the establishment of the continuing culture of repression of the Sukharno and Suharto regimes.

But here’s what seems ironic to me: the result of these disparate approaches seems to have been the continuation of indigenous culture in the islands of Indonesia and the disappearance of that culture on the peninsula of Malaysia.

And here is my parting thought on independent travel.

Just as our friends and family shape and enrich our lives at home, so the people we meet on the road enrich our lives there.  These are other adventurous souls – for the most part decades younger than us – who are out exploring foreign cultures on their own terms.

Godfrey & Izumi spearhead a project to protect and save heritage seeds from the rainforests of the tropics.  Invaluable work.  

Pacman is a 31-year-old F-18 fighter pilot who has a consuming passion for preserving the cultural artefacts of his native land that has led him to work with museums nation-wide. 

Buddy Winston spent 10 years writing Jay Leno’s opening monologue, but now spends his time exploring the world on his own terms, disillusioned about his home, the USA.

Ernest Wesley, the only Liberian I’ve ever met travelling, took the time to educate us about the terror of life in his country, using kindness and youtube to reveal the most awful things.

Marcus & Smaragda, our neighbours in the next cottage for several days, are two young doctors from Berlin travelling with their infant children and characterising a new generation of physicians: urbane, worldy and educated.

So this time as we approach home and the celebration of our youngest grandchild’s fifth birthday, I am left with one over-arching question:  why is everyone getting so much younger?

Burkas and Bikinis

This time the speedboat became entirely airborne before it dropped hard onto the oncoming wave.  The German woman’s wooden seat broke in two and the gunnel bit her back, throwing her crosswise to her knees in the bottom of the boat with a cry of outraged pain.  The craft continued to leap and twist, powered by twin 150 Mercury outboards that seemed as unburdened by the weight of us twelve tourists as our young skipper appeared unconcerned with our distress.

Sun, sand and surf and Ingrid

Ingrid reached out to help the whimpering woman to the cushions on the opposite side,then wrapped an arm around her to comfort her.  Eventually the captain moderated his speed, and the barks of pain from the German became less frequent as we made our way across the rolling South China Sea to the island of Perhentian Kecil.

The guidebook says this: “The Perhentian Islands are tropical paradise.  Full stop. “

Actually that writer stopped too soon.

The Perhentian Islands are indeed paradisiacal.  The wonderful shades of blue of the skies and the ocean, the breaking waves, the green and dense jungle covering the mountain slopes, the hot days and evenings cooled by the ocean breezes.  It’s the kind of place you see on “Survivor” stories, one of which was filmed nearby.

In fact on our first night here, a beer at a beach-side restaurant helped me to the conclusion that from time to time all the events of the moment hum sweetly together and create a wonderful harmony of the spirit.  The susurration of the surf washing our feet from time to time as it broke in tiny bubbles beneath our table and the reggae sounds trickling in from the bar down the beach seemed in fine consonance with the dancing light from the tiki torches along the sand.  

Awesome body surfing adds meaning to the day.

Then, to improve the shining moment, the moon rose full above the neighbouring island just as the sun set behind us.  A fat moon closer to the earth than it has been in 18 years, round and bright and perfect and playing its light through the clouds let us stretch our legs in a moment of languorous pleasure we will not soon forget.

 This is the tropical paradise the guidebook writer exulted.  Here’s what she left out.

The trash.

Normally the white cap signifies a "haji,"

Every chalet and guesthouse along the beach produces a prodigious amount of trash and copious sewage.  And they have no way to manage it.  This has in no way inhibited the pace of development, and there are buildings going up everywhere with a wonderfully cavalier attitude:  “Beelding codes?  We don’t need no steenking beelding codes.”

New development is entirely unconstrained by concerns about drainage.  The area between chalets fills with stagnant water above which floats the miasma of sewage, and through which glide monitor lizards up to two meters long, and fat, well fed rats.  

The wonderful big tides that bring us such great body surfing also bring in a daily load of flotsam that then sits along the high water mark, undisturbed by rake or barrow.  The beach carries trash streaks and every business owner remains fully focussed on maximizing profit: it is free market enterprise in its full glory unfettered by rule or regulation.  And it is more than a little stinky.

So the ocean is beautiful.  The climate is perfect. The food is relatively inexpensive and tasty and nutritious.  The young international backpacking women outnumber the men very considerably, and the bikinis are sexy and a welcome relief from the burkas.  

The body surfing is the best we’ve ever encountered.  But this place – like so much of Malaysia – suffers from some kind of compulsive developmental rictus, capitalism on crack.  Garret Harding’s Tragedy of the Commons was seldom far from my thoughts.

And you will notice that I got bikinis and burkas into the same sentence.

Religious Observance

Any Muslim in any shop or public place sells buys or drinks liquor or any other intoxicating drink shall be guilty of an offence and shall on conviction be liable to  a fine not exceeding RM 5,000 or to imprisonment to a term not exceeding three years or to both and to whipping of not more than six strokes.

 

OK.  There are some ironies here.   That sign was on the same island where we bought beer: three for $3.  

It has been a few days since I’ve seen another white face (assuming mine still qualifies as white – this sun at 1 degree north of the equator seems to want to darken skin).  Last night a nice lady at our hotel responded to our request:

“Can we find food near here?” with

“Do you want Malay food or white food?”   

White food.  I didn’t even know there was such a thing.  But a glance into the street helped me: there was a KFC at the corner and a MacDonalds across the road.  White food. 

We chose Malay food.  

We have spent a lot of time on buses recently, another 11 hours yesterday, and we are now accustomed to the look of panic on a local’s face when he or she thinks we are going to need help in English.  We have fallen into the habit of just wandering through restaurants looking at food to choose.

But today I found a new faux pas.  Ingrid & I had been shopping in a grocery store in this most northern city in Malaysia, Kota Baru.  Not only is it the most northern, it has two other quirks:

• The locals enjoy birdsong so much they broadcast it from speakers mounted in the streets, and
• It is the most traditionally Islamic city in the country.

 The birdsong presents no issues. It is simply delightful.

However,  as an evangelical agnostic living in a country of Christians, I have done well for years keeping my own counsel, trying to respect everyone’s beliefs: whether Christian, Hindu or  Rastafarian.  But today in the grocery store I really stepped in it: I stood in the wrong checkout line.

At first I didn’t realize there was one line for men and another for women, but the combined weight of laser glares from under three hijabs left me in no doubt I was doing something wrong.  Once I saw the sign, I realized I might inadvertently notice a woman buying a personal hygiene item or one of the sexy nighties from the second floor or – gasp – perhaps even a bra. 

I stepped back from the brink and handed our selection of oranges and peanuts to Ingrid for safe passage past the cash register.

Now as we head back to a vacation place where we expect to see more tourists, find some white food, drink beer and leer openly at cleavage, I feel oddly comforted.

The Pleasures of Independent Travel

Spending seven hours of watching buses, taxis and pedestrians weave among the diesel fumes of Johor Baru’s Larkin Sentral gave us more than one moment to reflect on the pleasures of independent travel.  

Blowpipe hunter explaining palang piercings

Added to the smell of fuel was the sound. Rising and falling through the grinding sonorities of clashing gears and racing engines, the ululation of bus agent voices added a peculiar background sound like that of auctioneers gone feral in the heat.  At first it is an undecipherable  babble of overlapping cries, but after time it resolves into the sound of men and women calling out the names of the towns to which their company’s bus is heading, each hoping that the volume of their cries will create business and taking obvious pleasure in the percussive rhythm of their own voices.

Our reflection on independent travel focussed on the time we could waste when even slightly indecisive about the destination, and led to some philosophical pondering of how life itself follows the same principle.  As if to reinforce the moral prescription to walk the direct path, Allah placed us on a bus ride that could have been scripted by Disney.

After the 7-hour wait, our bus wheezed into the station and let itself down from the air brakes with a sigh of exhaustion.  The door flopped open and we were invited to board by a negligent flip of the wrist by the driver, who descended looking all around as if for help.

Assistance arrived. The station crew joined the driver, and to Ingrid’s dismay they led him back to the bus and began pointing out the purpose of various switches and controls.  Next they helped him to adjust his seat and ensured he was comfortable.

By this time all the passengers were craning their necks, slightly incredulous about the requirement for instruction in these things.  When all seemed in order, the driver stepped out for a final cigarette, then, grinding the butt into the concrete with the exaggerated toe of his leather shoe and commending with a heavenward glance his soul to the same Allah who had placed us all aboard, he mounted to his seat.

Borneo bus driver completing training.

In the first block out of the station he blew his very first shift and then sat unable to find a way to merge with traffic.  His braking technique was equally uneven, but it required constant use as he experienced great difficulty working his way through the maze of roundabouts and one-way streets.    

Once on the highway and safely through all the gears, our driver attempted to make up in velocity what he lacked in skill. The suspension on the ancient bus could not manage the energies of acceleration, cornering or deceleration, and emphasized his every move, so when he carved around corners at speed, it dipped and bounced and rocked over sideways in an alarming way. From time to time he bottomed out entirely, scraping off fragments of bus undercarriage with a big rough sound. 

Not only did he ignore double white lines to overtake on curves, he tended to drive out there on the wrong side of the road for long stretches of S-bends at whim.  The only bright side to this habit was that it was doubtlessly much less frightening for us than it must have been for the poor oncoming cars.

I found myself peering out into the dark and watching for the kilometer boards to Mersing, not allowing myself the certain hope that we would make it there, but at least consoling myself that the opportunities for disaster were diminishing as the distance shortened.

Eventually we did make it to Mersing, thoroughly chastened and ready to embrace the true path of clarity of purpose.  Since it was so late and we knew hotels would be full, we took the first room we found (and the last room open in the hotel), blowing our budget on a $50 room in the combination of fatigue and gratitude.

After the hair-raising adventure of making it from Kuching to Mersing in one long day, the five hours it took us to book and take the ferry across to Tioman Island was an anti-climax.

Fires under captured heads keep them warm to appease spirits.

And now we sit on a tiny island in the South China Sea, about an hour’s walk along the shore from a duty-free shop where we bought a couple of liters of rum and gin to assist the holiday spirits.  Unless you take scuba lessons, there appears to be nothing to do here, so our tenure might be limited.