Georgetown and on to Singapore.

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Colonial Georgetown, on Penang Island in Malaysia. I caught the ferry which was very cheap and very busy, a short walk away from Butterworth station. On the other side I headed straight to the bus station, and asked which one of the new and airconditioned buses would take me to Georgetown. I asked several people, and always got a confused look, and at the most the question, “Which part of Georgetown?” I changed tack and caught a bus to a street that apparently had a number of internet cafés. I thought I needed more information about this part of the world before I knew what I wanted to see.

I walked through a busy couple of streets, mainly selling t-shirts, and eventually stopped a young couple from the UK to ask if they had seen any internet places. We chatted for while. They told me to catch bus 101, as it went to the beach. They had been travelling for four months around south east Asia, and reminded me of so many people in their early twenties who were doing the same thing. We agreed that there was no doubt an internet café somewhere nearby, but could not remember seeing a specific one. When they walked on I saw that we had been standing talking right underneath a sign that said ‘Cheap Internet’. I discovered that I was actually in the middle of Georgetown, and that I needed to look harder than I thought to find the colonial remnants. They were there, I soon found out, but not in the quaint, preserved way I had expected. The t-shirt shops, for example, were housed in Victorian terraced shops.

I booked a room in the Blue Diamond Hotel, on Chulia Street, the main street of the traveller/internet/t-shirt district. It was really cheap, and had more colonial charm than I had seen so far - high ceilings, walls that went so high then replaced by wire grills, slow ceiling fans, cold water showers, and even the furniture had a faded, aged charm, although it was more 1970s. I used the hotel internet, and was entertained by a couple of tourists shouting at the owner of the hotel for not arranging their visa for the next country they were visiting. I had some surprisingly good Mexican food in the hotel courtyard, and listened to a surprisingly bad covers band; you would be amazed at what they did to ‘Hotel California’.

22 November

Next morning I bought my onward train ticket to Kuala Lumpur from an office by the ferry port, and caught bus 101 to the beach. I guessed where I needed to get off, as the driver didn’t know what I wanted. The narrow beach was quite dirty, but had some colourful boats bobbing away to distract. To get to the sand and water I needed to walk past newish suburban houses and apartment blocks, then through rows of home-built huts, where people obviously made their homes, and groups of locals asleep in hammocks or chatting in small groups under shady palm trees. A man threw a ball into the sea for his dog, and I almost stepped on some prehistoric-looking sea creature - a cross between a crab and a coconut, with a long pointy tail. Back in town I researched my next destination, Singapore, and had some more Mexican food. I met a man from Stroud, who thought he might have heard of the Wapplingtons. Although he also swore the Imam at the local mosque had finished his call to prayer, as if to an appreciative audience, with the words, “Thank you very much.”

I caught the ferry back to Butterworth and waited for the night train to take me to Kuala Lumpur, where I needed to catch another into Singapore. On the platform I met two English lads called Ben and Tom, who had met in Thailand. Ben was from Somerset, and knew Wells well. He was also planning on catching the same boat as me to Indonesia, which was an amazing co-incidence. Tom, from south London, was fairly quiet - he explained he was on the run from the Thai authorities after a fellow traveller had written-off a hired scooter that Tom had acted as guarantor for. On the train, which arrived an hour late, which didn’t bother us that much as we had a few hours in which to make our connection, our beds were already made-up. An elderly Malaysian lady across the aisle from me was waving to her daughter through the window above my bed, so I drew the curtains and opened the window so they could talk. When the train left she politely offered me a drink from her water bottle several times, which I declined. After a while I realized she actually wanted me to open the top for her, not for me to drink it.

23 November

In KL, as we world travellers call it, Ben and Tom thought they had alighted at the wrong station, as they couldn’t see me on the platform. I had already gone on to find the ticket office, as I had heard the early train sometimes sells out. The office wasn’t to open for another hour, so we met up and had some breakfast - we had arrived too early for breakfast in bed, as I had had on the Bangkok to Butterworth train. Tom and I ate in McDonalds, but mainly because Ben had chided us for even contemplating the idea - he objected to the place on ethical grounds. Tom produced a little netbook from his backpack, and we all checked our emails then bought our tickets with no problems. Tom at this stage wasn’t sure of his plans, but he decided to join Ben and me on the leg to Singapore.

The next train was a bit rattly and worn, but not too busy. There were only a handful of other tourists on board. The trip was about eight hours, and halfway through, at 12 noon, I went to investigate the restaurant car. The people in front of had bought some delicious-looking rice and vegetables, and joined others eating similar food at the tables in the carriage. When I was served, however, there was apparently no food. I did have a feeling that there was no food for me, rather than they had run out altogether, but there was little I could do, other than accept their substitute of a curry-flavoured pot noodle imitation, which was never going to taste very nice. Not a very nutritious day thus far.

Immigration was again a painless event - except for Ben. Customs discovered a long, ornate smoking -pipe in his luggage, and wanted to investigate it further for signs of opium. As this could take some time Tom and I got back on the train for the final part of the journey deeper into Singapore, and agreed to meet Ben later at a hostel recommended by the guidebook. When we met up as arranged, Ben said the customs people were very friendly, and had bought him dinner and paid for his bus trip into town once they had found no trace of drugs. Another traveller I later met said she found them not so friendly when they threatened to fine her $1,000 for not declaring half a pack of cigarettes when she had crossed the border.

The hostel was in Little India, which I found awash with beautiful smells and colours from the innumerable little stores and restaurants. I ate a much better meal of curried chicken and vegetables at one of the streetside cafes. Tom and I found the hostel, called The Inn Crowd (get it?), and walked through the front door, trying to find the reception. A woman helpfully pointed us upstairs, but all we could find was a dorm bedroom. Up a small flight of stairs was another door which I tried, but all I found was a couple sitting on a bed, looking surprised and not a bit annoyed that I had barged into their private room. We fled and went to the hostel across the road, which had clearly had a manned reception desk, and looked very new and clean (typical of Singapore). This hostel was called Checkers Inn (get that one?!). After meeting up with Ben the three of us went to an Australian-themed pub, and found out how expensive Singapore was after the less-developed parts of Asia. Ben went to bed, and Tom and I stayed in the pub. Unfortunately I found out that Singapore was even more expensive for me, as Tom, in his on-the-run mentality, didn’t trust the ATMs not to swallow his card, so I had to pay for his drinks (and he was very thirsty). He promised to return the favour with Singapore Slings (a cocktail, not a bandage) the next day.

24 November

The next day in Singapore I went to one of the multi-level shopping centres devoted just to electronics. I had read that the days when you could get much much cheaper goods in Singapore were over, but that for some things, laptops included, it was still a cheaper place to shop. I did my research on the internet, found the model of netbook I wanted, and even the name and location of the store that had the cheapest price for it in the last week, then went along to see it. Sim Lim centre was a six storey building with what looked like hundreds of similar little stores, all facing a central open area, where the escalators carried wide-eyed tourists and canny locals in search of i-Phones and laptops (but mainly i-Phones). Tom, Ben and two English girls we had met the night before came along too; Tom had lost his phone the evening before in the hostel, so he was thinking of buying a new one. I saw, tried out and bought my little red Acer within about half-an-hour, but within this time the others (unsurprisingly) had become bored and headed off to the zoo. That was fine by me, as I had an afternoon of blogging and uploading photos planned, and we had previously arranged to meet at Raffles at 6pm.

Raffles is, for those of you unfortunate not to know, the luxury nineteenth-century hotel in the centre of Singapore. Named after the tiger-wrestling legend who planned the city and later went on to govern most of Indonesia, the low-rise white-walled buildings enclose a refined area of be-fountained courtyards of civility, gin and billiards. It was in the Billiards Room we were to meet, to drink gin, of course! I arrived at the hotel right at six, which seemed to be the best time to go there, just at sunset. Because the light was so good I wandered around taking photos, and only got to the Billiards Room at about 6.20, which was when Ben arrived too. He hadn’t gone to the zoo, but true to his loftier ideals had seen some exhibitions. We had a look at the Long Bar - a more famous meeting place - but decided it too crowded and touristy.

Back to the Billiards Room we sat almost by ourselves on the verandah and drank Singapore Slings. They weren’t as expensive as I had been warned - some warnings put them at thirty pounds a drink, but they were less than half that, and only a little more than the imported European lager that Tom had insisted on drinking the previous evening (I had drunk the excellent Gippsland Gold, also imported, but from near where I grew up in Australia, not Belgium). The slings were delicious, of course, and I heartily recommend them to anyone whether at Raffles or anywhere else (except Iran, of course). Ben copied down the recipe for his souvenir book he was keeping as a record of his overland trip from London to Indonesia, via the Trans Siberian Railway. No sign of Tom. We browsed the gift shop, and tried to guess who out of the people walking through the hotel were paying the presumably high rates to stay there, or who had popped in for the cheaper experience.

The next highlight, which I found a little wet, was the ‘World’s Largest Fountain’: a combined laser and water display, built into a submerged roundabout, and surrounded by Japanese restaurants. Spectacular, but certainly no Raffles. I liked Singapore. Its wide clean streets reminded me of Melbourne, its glassy buildings and transport reminded me of Dubai, and its prices reminded me of London. But by hovering just above the equator its climate was more predictable than Melbourne, and much better than London, and the variety of different Asian food was wonderful (even though I chose to eat at the same little Indian restaurant both nights I was there - good food and cheap).

Ben and I did some food shopping - I was convinced that the 26 hour boat journey we were to take the next day would not have a restaurant - then ran into Tom and the girls at the Aussie pub at about 11pm. Tom was drinking his Belgian beer again, and apologized for not being able to buy me drink (after I had asked him several times) because he had not changed his Thai Baht into Singapore dollars, and was still afraid that the ATM would swallow his card. Fortunately one of the girls persuaded him that his card would not be swallowed, but merely rejected if it was not accepted, so after more encouragement from me and almost pushing him off his chair towards the bank, he managed to but me a drink. We all played pool for a couple of hours, and were joined by a young Australian, who pronounced ‘Australia’ in one syllable, and who was, in my eyes at least, of indeterminate gender. Of course his/her name was Chris, so that didn’t help.

Bed by 2am, to leave at 7am with Ben for the boat to Jakarta, the capital of my next country - Indonesia.

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Comments

[Scott Moncrieff]

Nice to follow your journey - when to you get to Aus'ral'a?

[Noz]

Landed!
I arrived last week, Deo Gratias. Now to get used to THAT foreign land...