Malaysia: Only Half the Truth

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Kuala Lumpur

The closest I've ventured yet toward the equator. Magenta paints a wispy horizon of the broadest sunset I've ever seen as the plane skims over the orderly regiments of palm tree plantations. I lug a thirty kilo suitcase along the curbs of Chinatown to a relatively quiet and windowless guesthouse the far end of Central Market. My shirt smells of sweaty cheese. Asians find westerners smell milky, a delight to mosquitoes. Super-sized shopping malls, fly-overs, 2 and 3 story colonial facades speckled with mould, undaunted rats the size of handbags scurry among the shadows, the result of a poorly considered drainage system, and cockroaches relax, strolling the crumb filled cracks, taking in the night air.

Noon next day, dressed the tourist, I board bus 11 from Medan Pasar, crawl through the persistent traffic of Little India north bound to Batu Caves, a Hindu shrine in the city's outskirts. A rocky hillock rears above the motorway. A giant gilded statue of Krishna stands over two hundred feet tall before a stairway climbing nearly three hundred steps into the recesses of the small mountain. Monkeys scramble about colourfully painted statues of concrete beauties and yogis, snatching plastic bottles and discarded coconut shells. Devotees receive blessings from young holy men pot bellied, wrapped in loose mustard cotton, holding trays bearing flower petals and small clay oil lamps.

Late afternoon I leapfrog the motorways to reach the National Museum. Displays tell of the Portuguese attack at Malacca in the early sixteenth century, a century of counter attacks taken by the Johor Sultanate with aid of the Dutch, who once successful, become in turn the focus of ensuing battles over territory and resources until British diplomacy arrives via Goa, when a half dozen Sultans are swindled into accepting cooperative administration, and all trade in the Straits of Malacca under British jurisdiction. A member of the commonwealth, much of the laws and systems that remain in place today are a copy of Britain's.

The narrator is no longer a youth, turned thirty, he challenges himself to new and unlikely feats of courage. Returning through Central Station, exiting the back doors, zigzagging the blocks of Brickfields, locating the YMCA, the 7-11 and following down a dead-end according to on-line directions to a discrete orange shop front, #23 Chakras Gym, Sauna & Massage. A dark staircase leads to a low light lounge where he pays a man behind a desk and receives a couple towels, a key and directions to the lockers. Middle aged men of yellow and chai complexion pose in plastic lounge chairs, their eyes follow the hairy chested boulet. He climbs to the rooftop where he finds an empty chair amid the jungle of fragrant blossoms and opens his book, Joseph Conrad's Short Stories and studies Il Conde, A Pathetic Tale, the narrative of a Bohemian tourist mugged at knifepoint in a trattoria within earshot of the Opera House in Naples. Putting aside this diversion, he spies amid the voluptuous flora a black handled kitchen knife jutting from a flower pot a few feet from his grasp. A sadistic notion shivers the hairs at the nape of his neck. Returning to his chair after a refreshing soak in the Jacuzzi, a Malay seats himself next to the boulet and strikes up a typical conversation. He was schooled in Canada, in Hamilton. They have something in common besides the colour of their bath towels. The Malay is not attractive but he’s polite and friendly. The two share a love of travel and discuss European capitals, customs and influences. They lounge in the bubbles and after dark retire to a back room, both innocents, they giggle upon hearing the lusting and wrestling groans from the next room. A half dozen young athletic men enter the sauna distracting the foreigner. He excuses himself and approaches one of the young studs by the door to the steam room, smiles to him and leads him inside. Suddenly the steam room is crowded, unwanted shadows reach, attempt to caress and fondle. The showers, the lounges, saunas, Jacuzzi, garden, everywhere has become crowded. The muscled young man, skin smooth like a seal and fair, on holiday from Saigon grins nervously, he is shy, concerned his buddies will see him. Meanwhile the narrator is overexcited and his equipment confused. The moment is lost, the awkwardness and futility overcomes him and he kisses the boy good-bye, no thought of exchanging numbers, holding to the last scraps of his dignity, believing it would be tacky to pick up in a sauna. The Malay and the boulet have a good laugh, dress and find their way to the local’s Alfa Romeo parked out front. He drives them to an upper class neighbourhood to a popular late night trattoria where they order curry and sip tee tarik.

I don’t know what sort of impression I leave. Typically I misjudge those of others. I recall once studying a model on the human character conceived of as an iceberg, only a narrow peak rising above the surface, a minimum of traits shared with passing ships, while the bulk lies submerged, hidden. I knew directly the hotel staff was gay, two Malays staffing the reception counter, one young and pretty, slightly effeminate, a loyal and hard-working fellow from Malacca and nick named Jemimah, the other solid and more serious looking, buzz cut, a tattoo along his defined chest and quite short as is typical of the natives of Sarawak; top and bottom, a happy jigsaw, I reckoned. They wanted 38 ringet per night, 12$ for a windowless cell, a broken TV, a springy mattress of loose coils and neither air/con nor breakfast included. “I’ll pay for one night but then I’ll have to move.” “You must pay for two nights, sir. It’s the law. You must give 24 hours cancellation notice.” “Let me speak to the manager.” “He is upstairs. He’s paralyzed.” The manager appeared, fair skinned, dark haired, with a British accent and spoke rather firmly that I was required by law to pay the two nights. Fine, at least it was quiet. Next morning I’m brought to life by a drilling and vibrating humm, next door a shop is receiving a facelift, and guests clamber down the old staircase, along the hall and out into the day. When I return late evening the manager, Tobias, invites me for a drink at Liquid along with the younger staff, Jerry. Tobias, I learn inherited the guest house from his ex Swiss boyfriend nearly fifteen years back. He’s half Welsh, half Kuwaiti, gay through and through with a half dozen boy toys of similar appearance, young, smooth, quiet, Thai, moans about his ex wife of six years and his twin daughters recently graduated from university, one a recent proud mother, the other stubbornly single. The May bank holiday has filled the dance floor with topless youths in designer jeans and factory direct Gucci sunglasses, arms flailing, hips gyrating, a painful looking aerobics class. Entry and drinks come at western prices, I sip as slowly as the warm evening allows. My eyes are drawn to a tall slim Malay dressed smart head to toe in black, his wide smile sparkles like the Cheshire cat. I feel unabashed admiring his grace, my gaze unable to lose him, I introduce myself and we dance beneath the air/con’s merciful breeze. The music has evolved since I first began clubbing, the beats have increased, while my moves have slowed pace. I perch at the back bar and shake my head in disbelief at the next generation grinding, shaking, limbs akimbo.

I like this city, surprisingly modern, organized, affluent, tolerant. I explore the mosques and temples of China Town and Little India, delve into the markets as far as Chow Kit, dark wet lanes, counter after counter nearly cleared at day’s end, a few plastic bowls of fish or sliced open squid, fruits as diverse in colour and shape as a coral reef; passion fruit, dragon fruit, star fruit, durian, razuputan, mangosteen, tamarind. Nearby I discover an Iranian café, smoke a shisha, sweet apple tobacco and recall my travels to Egypt. Above the traffic, palms sway in the breeze, a half dozen tracks humm, criss-crossing a city half George Jetson, half Gilligan’s Island.

The following night Tobias brings me to a rave around the block from the famed Petronas Towers. A scene unfolds familiar the gay world over, a packed dance floor, heavy bass, ump, ump, ump, a crowd of voluptuous muscle Marys, tight shirt twinks, over-the-hill-and-clinging-on trolls, money boys and lady boys, the majority of them tripping. I feel the room’s energy drop suddenly like fish in a tank it’s water suddenly emptied. I chat with a familiar face, drink one last beer, and excuse myself early, asking myself for the umpteenth time why do I subject myself to this, a predictable suspended artificial happiness, a sad gay utopia, confined to the dark inebriated noise, marginalized by our own lack of imagination. Isaac’s awake when I return to the guest house, having a smoke in the toilet, wrapped in a bath towel and smelling of shower gel. “How was the party?” he asks. “I should’ve gone to the bar with you,” I hint not for the first time that I like his company. He tells me about his hectic schedule covering a half dozen business ventures, electrical engineer, interior designer, independent entrepreneur and soon to take over the guest house. A vine of red flowers winds over and across his right breast. He shares his coming out story, a tale from his early twenties, waiting at the airport late one evening for a flight home to Sabah that is cancelled, how a fellow passenger, a handsome dark Spaniard asked Isaac to come back to his hotel. Why not, he shrugs his shoulders. He lay next to the man unable to sleep, shaking until early morning undid the first move. We did everything, Isaac says with a big grin, It was wonderful. They spent the entire weekend together and before parting exchanged numbers. Issac placed the note in an envelope inside his rucksack. A few days later he found a flight to Sabah where his far flung family was celebrating a reunion, relatives on his father’s side from across Malaysia and India, and on his mother’s side, relations from the Phillipines and Spain. “Isaac, I’d like you to meet your Uncle.” His mother couldn’t figure why her son, usually outgoing and friendly, reacted so quietly towards her youngest brother. She grew suspicious. “Do you know him?” she asked. “Did you know he’s gay?” She could read from her son’s expression what had transpired but limited herself to just one question, “Are you gay, Isaac?”

Taman Nagara

I’m on holiday. I take the morning slow. I find my way to Starbuck’s for overpriced coffee, free air/con and wifi, followed with a plate of nasi goreng or curry ayam at a colourful street stall down a shaded back block. I stow my suitcase at Central Station and lug my rucksack to the coach station where I’ve just missed the midday departure and am forced to wait another three hours for the next trip to Jerantut, gateway to Taman Nagara. Jerantut is a comfy, relaxed transit point with affordable, stuffy hotel rooms home to voracious bedbugs. I discover next morning an itchy as heck dot to dot covering my entire body. After breakfast a gang of fewer than a dozen backpackers pile into a long motorboat to shuttle us three hours down river to Kuala Tahan, head quarters of the national park. Upon arrival a young Malay woman in a silk head scarf seated behind the desk at a floating restaurant explains the many tours on offer, boat rides, water falls, treks of varying lengths and abilities, night safaris and visits to aboriginal villages, all at western prices. Sore muscles, a limited budget and high humidity prescribe however a moderate walk on the jungle’s edge, passing a curious gang of monkeys and a black and blue bird twice the magnificence of a peacock strutting in the underbrush, figure-eights danced by lustrous butterflies, a soundtrack of hidden birds and piercing cicadas, to a canopy walkway, the world’s longest, reportedly, swaying over twenty-five metres above the forest floor. A trail south of the river follows the rise and fall of a creepy crawly terrain strewn with fallen palm leaves and an obstacle of tree roots. Deeper in the jungle lies Gua Talinga, a cave whose narrow muddy crevice leads to a low cavern crowded with fuzzy little bats. I come close enough to photograph, close enough to see them rub their eyes. An hour before night fall a loud crash announces the forward regiment of a lightening storm. Wind lashes the canopy. I hear the creaking of old trees, roots uplifting, trunk snapping, falling, burying the undergrowth. I arrive at the hide moments before the heavens release a heavy downpour and for several hours it does not let up. A British couple share the jungle hide. Joanne reads from the visitor’s log two entries warning of a strange man who lurks nearby the salt lick in the middle of the night and when illuminated by startled hand torches screams menacingly. I burry into my sleeping bag listening to layer upon layer of wild calls, imagining what creatures, birds, frogs, insects are calling to one another and more than once am woken by a less than rhythmic cooing, whistling, croaking or rustling. By morning, disentangled from my caccoon I find a dozen dozen more rosy red bumps punctuating my skin. The walk back is wet and slippery, the air warm and moist like an obscene phone call. I forego a visit to the aboriginal village, Orang Sali, where a camp of tarpaulins lie slung across palm thatched huts, children scamper among clothes lines and the hot scent of cooking fires lingers on to the path. Guided tours offer the visitor an opportunity to test a blow dart and pierce a stuffed tweety bird from five metres distance. After lunch on a floating stage set out of a Survivor episode I can do little more than lounge in the shade, recover, watch the parade of motor boats zip up and down the muddy current and read my novel, a poetic creation of Alfredo Vea, a practising defence attorney and Vietnam war vet. Evening I’m invited to share a drink with two young women on a package tour from Hanoi, Quinn and Nicky, and their guide, Stanley, a big boned, even bigger mouthed Chinese Malaysian. Nicky introduces herself mid afternoon in the dorm when I peel off my sock to discover a blood stain and a wee black leech. “Don’t worry, it’s healthy,” she says, “Honestly, they suck out the toxins.” Over beers at an upmarket resort the edge of town we talk of forest spirits, of a missing girl who survived two weeks alone in the jungle feeding herself spring water and praying to Allah. Nicky shows me pics of their day’s journey to a waterfall and tells me of her trip last year to Sumatra. I’ll be happy to leave the tourist trail of Peninsular Malaysia. Conversation turns to eating habits of Vietnamese and South Chinese, the markets, the animals soon to have their heads chopped off. Nicky says she's had two pet dogs stolen. In the evenings men hidden by shadows and the anonymity of a speedy motorbike cruise the neighbourhoods with a large net in hand searching out an unsuspecting hound off its leash.

Perhentian Islands

From eight the next morning til mid afternoon I’m sandwiched between rucksacks, a handsome young French couple plugged into their ipod and the minivan’s window with a view of lush palm groves, patches of clearcut, small technicolour villages, old toyotas vanishing under encroaching weeds and easily the most diverse array of road kill I’ve yet to come across on my travels. Mid day we pull into a canteen from any village operated inevitably by the same private tour agency monopolizing much of the country’s transport. Minivans congregate here and travellers file through a bland overpriced buffet before being ushered into the next van destined for whichever attraction. Earlier than I’d reckoned on, a turquoise stretch of horizon appears between the buildings as we approach the harbour. Two distant green tufts, the Perhentian islands, come into view. Caucasians of a dozen flourishing and spoiled democracies pile into speedboats paying without a grumble a substantial sum for a mere twenty minute ride. We skip across the waves laughing as we attempt to photograph one another bouncing up and down, hair flying, waves splashing. The young French couple disembark at Coral Beach, a stretch of sand painted pastel in the evening light, plastic garden chairs gather round tables at a row of restaurants advertise dive courses and bungalows perch invitingly on a rocky shore. Around the north tip and tucked in a west facing bay, an Irish couple and I clamber into a small boat that taxis us across the fragile coral of D’Laggoon. A single guesthouse occupies a small spit of beach, the bungalows and lodge and restaurant tucked under the shade of voluptuous palms.
With snorkel mask and fins I glide over the coloured sea floor, spy a stingray camouflaged in the sand, a bulbous eyed frogfish perched unfishlike on a rock eyeing my unfishlike features. A school of soft electric blue longtom, each nearly a metre in length, thin as toothpicks, swim leisurely just below the surface circling me. Wide eyed and silvery, a school of trevally linger past, a butterfly fish striped black, white and yellow catches my eye before disappearing in a narrow crevice. The cutest little false clown anemonefish, orange with thick white bands wriggle in and out of an anemone’s swaying purple tendrils. Pink, green and blue coral shades of wrasse, whiteband maori, parker painted slingjaw wrasse and parrotfish munch like herbivores on the coral’s fuzzy surface. It’s a wonder only metres from the tourist trade, an amazing contrast to submerge my vision an hour or two while the sun cooks my backside. Morning, before the sun has scattered the low wisps of cloud, I sink once more into the bay’s nooks and crannies to witness miniature sharks, shy yet menacing to catch a glimpse of feeding at high tide.
Like Noah’s ark, everyone has arrived to the island get-away in pairs, boyfriend and girlfriend, husband and wife, even a curious same sex couple from somewhere quiet, plaid and Scandinavian. My singularity, an entirely natural state, feels odd. A passing comment left to linger between my ears swings in a hammock under swaying palms. What am I running from? The overwhelming status quo that brainwashes an increasing swath of the population, a happy couple working, saving, mortgaging a new home, building a family, looking forward to their next holiday. I’m escaping a picture hung in the back of my mind, a scene where if I enter, I’m bound to fill the desk, the shelves, the driveway with a never ending Monday to Friday, a mindless commute, a cozy rainy afternoon with a complacent and contented lover who reminds me it’s my turn to walk the dog. Foreign vistas, exotic aromas disappear behind cookbooks or inside the TV set. There is no longer the challenge to communicate my basic needs in an unknown language. Expression is easy, understanding is easy, the din of conversations at nearby tables pounds my eardrums. There are no more mysteries. This picture’s as familiar as the back of my hand. I’m afraid to succeed in that life, to grow contented, to close the door on unknown adventures. I’m afraid of living among my peers, to see clearly my financial weakness, my academic shortcomings and complete lack of business savvy. I fear befriending the earth embracing vegan lesbian, the young corporate climber, the liberal minded suburban couple, the carpark full of luxury SUVs, the ageing queer community eyes rolling in wonder of another generation of newly outed club kids. I could stay locked at my desk, burrow inside a den strewn with hardcover history books, but headlines, images, products of the outside would filter through. And what would I have to do to remain content, how many pretty things I’d have to buy, consume, digest, to live with my choices in life.
That is how I argue the logic of my lifestyle, single, unfettered, responsible only to myself and to a much lesser degree my employer, see that I’ve food enough, shelter, clothing, work enough to pay the bills and travel til my body exhausts itself. A will stronger than any other urges me on to see, taste, smell, touch, to hear as much of the world as my feet may pass over so I can ignore the headlines, the images, the products that will one day inevitably creep into my after work hours and respond with confidence, no, that’s not how it is. Being single is no different from having a partner to sleep next to at night in so much as they are less a choice and moreso a consequence of circumstance. One moment a luxury, a hindrance the next, taking a partner into the unknown back country of East Asia has the potential to cut lines of communication with locals, to remind you constantly of a life waiting back home. As it is doors to possible futures are closing everyday, and mostly with a sigh of relief I continue regretting only when good friendships anchored to a finite point fade away. Isn’t it lonely? Since puberty or perhaps earlier when self awareness first reared its nasty acne ridden head I’ve always felt apart, too quiet, too sensitive, too easily placed on the peripheral. Surrounded by others’ thoughts and directions, I rarely experienced my own truth. Until I leave all what’s familiar and, immerse myself in the upside down, strangely ordered unknown, lose the ways of thinking and seeing and learn with new eyes, can I hear myself and and understand what I am supposed to do.

Bug bitten and sunburnt, covered in creams, sprays and ointments, itchy nonetheless, I leave the island’s little cove aboard a fast motorboat skipping over sheen turquoise waters past black rubber packs of diving schools and pastel coloured fishing boats with long hooked wings like Trojan water bugs. Th sky fills with a sudden ominous black cloud and pelts our crew, our bags as we reach the river’s mouth where a thick band of muddy brown enters the luminous salt sea. I have to wait a while in a back country scene cut from my favourite film, Central Station, watching nothing in a bright yellow bus depot where old mercedes taxis of a similar yellow park under thick leafy trees and one or two passengers and cab drivers smoke, or fiddle with their luggage. A ratty old bus painted a red unknown since the 70s pulls up, with black vinyl seats hardened by years or rear ends and grocery bags. I find an empty bench and register the half dozen passengers aboard and lose my thoughts to the passing reel of a town’s outskirts, of colourful homes, rusting, peeling, yards balding and running wild with chickens or the odd dumb-eyed cow, square fields of lush green rice enclosed by neat rows of palm. I am the last to alight, following directions to a rust brown white trimmed bus station where most coaches are too bothered to navigate the puddles and potholes and merely pause along the road. Sun is setting. The pavement smells of a nostalgic childhood perfume, rain sprinkled on hot pavement. I while away an hour at an internet café where boys play war games and the older ones chat with girls in far away places. The rain returns, I scurry from awning to awning before locating a supermarket where three nervous giggling young women fumble about the aisles searching a cheap umbrella. Nearby I explore a night market, ducking under tarpaulins sagging with rain water protecting heaps of plastic toys, shoes reflecting blaring fluorescent bulbs and a long block of food stalls. The few criss-crossed blocks of town sink into darkness, the only light pouring out from a KFC next to the bus ticket kiosks where crowds gather, squat, huddle between puddles, watch the parade of night buses and await their ride, coaches from Kutna Hora bound for all points the far side of winding jungle highways. From a restaurant hidden in shadows overlooking the bus depot I watch the streets empty, fewer and fewer coaches pull up, I finish my bowl of noodles and grow concerned that I’ve missed my connection. At eleven my reserved seat pulls up, a chilly arctic simulated air-conditioned and spacious ride, the other passengers sleep under jackets and blankets while I shiver in short pants, toss with each bend in the road, and manage a ten minute ride before arriving back in the capital before six in the morning.
The city is waking, its early risers following their route to work life Kafkaesque cockroaches under dimming streetlights losing sway to a soft blow sky, cloudless, a promise of paralyzing heat. In the afternoon following copious bottles of water and cans of soymilk, a plate of nasi goreng and a much needed nap, I meet my date at McDick’s, Harazul Jeffri Daniel, the tall dark and handsome Malay camouflaged in a night club’s shadows save for his sparkling smile who’d succumbed to my charm and exchanged his mobile number. I’d read the clock wrong, he’s been waiting over an hour. We share what you might term a typical gay date, most of it behind a locked hotel door; romance compressed to a few desperate hours; lust interjected with random conversation. Late evening Danni drives back to the suburbs while Tobias, his Chinese boytoy, a fishfaced optician, and I have a laugh, a Monday night at Blueboy, one of East Asia’s longest running gay bars, over a quarter century. Just don’t take it seriously, Tobias warns me. We arrive at midnight before the crowds trickle in, chubby expats, skinny ladyboys, muscled Chinese and young Malays dressed hiphop. Fishfaced Charles is mute as usual, Tobias chats with his ex, William whom without any operation has gone as a woman, and stunningly so, for a couple years now. On her shoulders she bears a misspelled tattoo of her ex, Tavias. Her thighs are tiny, her breasts a young man’s chest squeezed into a tight bra, her mannerisms a perfect balance of drama and nonchalance. I talk up a curly haired Saudi at the bar. “Call me Dodi.” He’s alone tonight, having escaped his husband of several months, an overweight Kraut in his fifties. Dodi likes ‘em old and chubby. He tries teaching me a few dance moves, half Arab, half Latin, a lot of fast shaking hip work, a lot of it kinda dirty. Taking a generous sniff of his poppers, a young Chinese approaches me, Tommy, “How are you? Where have you been? Didn’t see you at Liquin the other night.” Another sniff, he gyrates excitedly around Dodi and I. My Muslim friend senses my discomfort and plays the jealous overbearing boyfriend. I told you this place is good fun, Tobias grins mischievously.
I wait over an hour in the same booth at McDick’s, reading Khaled Hosseini’s A Thousand Splendid Sons, a strange title for a story set in post-soviet Afghanistan, scanning the street below for Danni’s charming smile to appear among the jostling crowds. At my request we board the number sixteen for the zoo and share his ipod headphones, an intimacy I haven’t known since high school but after an hour shuffling across the city we arrive to closed gates. Danni, relaxed and good humoured, doesn’t mind my insistence that we visit the zoo, doesn’t mind the busride, doesn’t mind the closed gates. We change course, a quick LRT ride brings us to KLCC, a series of giant air-conditioned shopping plazas below the impressive Petronas Towers, twin structures of glass and steel, subject of a dozen photographers with each passing minute of the day, taken from the rear gardens, a patch of structured green among five star hotels and business trippers. Our conversation feels awkward. Danni jokes around in broken English. Sun sets beyond the highrises, a three quarter moon grows bright a thumb’s distance from the now shimmering towers. We cross the city on deserted routes back to China Town and find a curbside eatery serving the usual array of Malay dishes light in a glass case, self serve meats and seafoods in bowls of spicy sauce, before retiring to the guesthouse where graciously Tobias moves us into a double room at no extra charge. Danni lies quietly under my excited caresses. Strange how fulfilling and perfect he feels to my touch, stretched out beneath me holding tight, drops of sweat bead in dark pools, the texture of his skin so unlike mine. I am all feeling for a moment, like an eddy that doesn’t really exist, twirling, unplanned, water coursing through rapids pulled across the rocks. Danni laughs suddenly, “What?” I ask. “It’s nothing.” “Tell me.” “I was thinking of that guy at the fountain.” He’d been flirting with another tourist back at Petronas Towers and I’d felt uncomfortable and suggested I leave and go for a walk so he could chat him up but no, Danni had said, I’m just being friendly. “What the fuck Danni?” I roll over and lie silent. “Why did you want to sleep over?” He is silent. “Don’t tell someone in the throws of passion you’re thinking of somebody else.” “You asked me what I was thinking about. Why are you so serious.” In the night we each think to hold the other but neither of us does. Next day, once again the gentleman, he helps me with my luggage and walks me to the smoky bowels of a coach station, platform four where I board the bus to Penang. In his next email he writes of how upset he felt to have to say good-bye, how he’d gone home rather than face the day at work.

Penang

A main highway cuts a long straight swath up the west coast along side vast palm plantations and distant rockfaced hillsides climbing with lush jungle. Each drop of rain must spring a tree, a vine, a fern, an orchid, a myriad wild and frenzied flora. Traffic bottlenecks as we cross the bridge from Butterworth to the island, a lane closed in each direction under construction. Smart looking highrises cover the coastal lowlands intersected, spoiled with traffic and flyovers. A local bus drops me two hours later in the Chinese quarter of Georgetown, the narrow back streets lie quiet beneath a velvet sky, fluorescent signboards advertise internet cafes and guesthouses, incense wafts from altars hung on porch pillars, from a community hall’ s second floor sings a man’s voice. In a recommended and satisfactory hostel I meet and chat with a man who’s lived in Malaysia since fifteen years coaching the national squash team and is soon off to Peru for similar employment. The receptionist, an impassive Chinese woman, a face like my hands after soaking in a tub too long, sits sucking the remnants of chicken from between her teeth, suggests a few places I might find some dinner. The sea front food square divided to one side Chinese and the other Muslim is mostly closing up. A few blocks away curbside wallahs serve refreshments, curries, soups to patrons relaxing around wobbly plastic tables. A ladyboy and her chum sit at the next table calling attention to themselves in animated dialogue and making fun with the waiter. I order roti canai and a second cup of tee tarik.

Why is it that in a region famous for its coffee beans it is so difficult to find a decent cuppa? I understand that its roasted differently in these parts that typically the packaged product from Yunnan to Sulawesi is not quite to western tastes but I am inevitably served an instant 3 in 1 nescafe or a diluted and gritty mug of sludge. This morning is no exception. Backpacker menus seldom warrant a glance, offering the same banana pancakes, omelette or fry-ups and fruit shakes from Mandalay to Manchuria. China Town on the island of Pinang is a charming neighbourhood. Late morning, unbearably hot, a wander down the old streets, concrete facades of guild halls turned temple interrupt the soft pastels hues with bright in your face Cantonese and Hokkien strips of indigo blue and blood red, gilded eaves and finely carved stone columns with dancing spiralling dragons. A handful of aged with accordian creased faces wallow in the shade and reach a hand palm up to passers by. Little India, a couple blocks of curry and fragrant strands of blossoms, a Hindu temple and a few shops pumping Bollywood beats, lies sequestered to one edge, a contrast to the noodles and incense. An old neighbourhood of stilt houses overlooks the dockyard where ferries bustle to and fro Butterworth. The planks creak underfoot, television sets murmur from within narrow fisherfolk homes, paper money and sticks of incense fill the hot air with a soft Chinese taste. A komodo slinks under the boardwalk out of view. A quiet couple of blocks inland a blue and yellow mosque not unlike the churches found in the Cyclades stands quietly in a courtyard surrounded by old houses trimmed in contrasting colours. Up the road tucked within a compound of two-storey homes and reached through quiet back streets stand Khoo Kong Si, a jewel of a temple, its roofs a series of swooping eaves, dragons and fish poised on baking terra cotta tiles. Stone carvings depict Confucian tales of filial piety. The prayer hall’s interior walls are painted with over thirty saints each mounted a fantastic creature, a griffin, a garuda, a peacock, a tiger, an elephant. I succumb to the gift shop’s display of watercolours, a memory rendered six by eight inches and signed by a stranger shall hang above the toilet where I may recall fondly the tranquility of the streets and the simplicity of the curbside warungs, and a strange sensation of having stepped back nearly a century. I find a seat in a crowded yet spacious old noodle shop, all customers Chinese, served by an old woman who stands over a low counter dabbling among the bubbling steaming pots and jars filled with spices and other ingredients that surround her. Though I’m seated next to her counter, she ignores me. I watch her and her son, old enough to be my grandfather, serve customers who arrive after me. I’ve been told time and again that Malaysians are racist and not simply out of ignorance like most Asian nations but it is shocking that a Chinese whose strongest belief, moreso than any ancestral worship or local custom, is the mighty (insert local currency) yet would refuse my business. To the edge of town lies the museum, a rather large hall housing a few vintage automobiles in the driveway and several galleries illustrating the customs, costumes, furniture and precious housewares and tools of trade of Pinang’s three major cultural groups, the Chinese, Tamil and Acehnese. The second floor houses a gallery of oil landscapes depicting the British hill stations and plantations. Feeling inspired by the old black and white images and with several hours of sunlight remaining, I find my way aboard bus 401 to Kek Lok Si, Malaysia’s largest Buddhist temple, forgetting for the moment that Malaysia is a predominantly Islamic nation and that the Chinese community is focused on money making, not reaching nirvana. Little over a kilometre away but more than an hour by abysmal public transport green hills climb above the city’s edge. I alight and beyond a covered fish market spy a jumble of bright geometric buildings squatting across a low hilltop. Souvenir shops line the approach and occupy much of the temple, each selling the same t-shirts, the same sarongs and factory made crafts, wooden instruments, holy figurines and I was here or there keychains. I spy three monks in the entire complex, one an elderly woman, head buzzed, positioned in an alcove at the entrance to the pagoda asking visitors for a cumpulsery donation. “It’s not really a donation, is it?” She returns me a blank I-just-work-here expression. Another monk lies asleep head slumped on his desk, lulled by a cassette tape of prayer chants. A third monk stands behind a counter in the souvenir mezzanine, presiding over spiritual plastic and aisles and aisles of Buddhist dust collectors. But the grounds are colourful, billowing hibiscus, a trellis of gourds, a nursery of perky potted plants, bougainvillea, cacti, hiding the abandoned paint-peeling look of much of the temple. The pagoda’s thirty metre high vantage point looks across Penang’s Miamiesque apartment blocks and turquoise sea. A friendly taxi driver informs me that unfortunately Penang Hill is closed for repairs so instead I stroll into the town’s main shopping mall and discover cheap movie night in the top floor cinema showing a somewhat painful to watch American kung fu flick starring Jacky Chan and that other popular Hongky.

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Photos

busride, KL
haven't shared headphones since high school

warang, China Town
delicious late nite Malay

Dody & I, KL
shmoozing in the bars with an Arab