Toddy Travels #3

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We sometimes get an acknowledgment of who we are and where we sit in the pecking order of life. For instance, the newly promoted executive may get the keys to the mythical executive bathroom.
But it’s what we don’t get that can also define us, as I found out in my first few days at work.
You will never guess what it was (wasn’t). Go on, have a guess and I shall enlighten you a little later......

Harold

My building has 15 levels and about 130 apartments. It’s difficult to know just how many of them are occupied. At night only about a third of the building is lit up. I have no idea how many are occupied on my floor as I haven’t seen anybody else since I have been here. I do know though that next door is occupied. Their balcony is covered with plants and has a rather large satellite dish hanging off it.

The other day I was admiring the view from my balcony when I heard a chattering noise coming from their jungle balcony. I stare into the foliage and see some movement. Towards the other side of the balcony is a monkey in a cage. I can barely see him through the plants. He notices me and puts his hand on the top of the cage and taps it a couple of times. I immediately name him Harold.

Harold cannot be happy. Stuck in a little cage all day and all night is a terrible thing for a living thing to go through. We put people in cages to punish them in our society. Harold has committed no crime yet there he is, caged.

I have a vision of heroically jumping the one metre gap to the other balcony to set Harold free. I would negotiate my way through the plants and open his cage. He would greet me with a hug then attacks me.

Hang on, that doesn’t seem right.

He then climbs on my head and starts biting and hitting me. Just then, the owner turns up with a the sight of a tall man stumbling around the foliage on his balcony with a screeching monkey clamped to his head.

Ok, right.

Perhaps I’ll make a donation to Green Peace instead.

Toddy drives a car

I have a meeting with Rozita, an engineer who works for our client. Their offices are a couple of kilometres from us so I take the Toyota Prado for my first drive in Borneo.

Mark explains that it is very simple to get there. He gives me instructions. It’s basically one left turn and then follow the road all the way.

I leave the carpark and get lost.

While I’m driving around and not getting to my meeting, I look at the traffic on the road. I find that cars are a good measure of prosperity. Everyone likes a nice car, and most people will drive a car that is in line with their economic situation. Here, there are plenty of newer cars. Most are the local Protons or Peroduas, but there are quite a few Japanese cars as well as European makes like BMW and Mercedes. There are also quite a few four wheel drives and people movers.

I think of the other Asian cities I have visited. The roads are quieter than Saigon where all the drivers use the car horn as a communication tool to let other drivers where they and what they are doing. The cars are a lot newer and better maintained than in Kathmandu. There are also less motorbikes here than both those cities. The one thing they have in common is that nobody, buy nobody uses their indicators.

I finally give up and give Rozita an SOS call. She guides me to her offices. Rozita is our liaison with our client and will help us with any requests for data or other information. She is a Malaysian lady who refused to meet with me a week ago. It wasn’t personal. It’s just that’s she’s six months pregnant and didn’t want to meet with me until I had been here a while and not exhibited symptoms’ of swine flu. I will tell you about the paranoia here with swine flu on my next blog.

Unfortunately for us, Rozita goes on maternity leave in two months. She is great to work with and very helpful. She is a very open friendly person who laughs a lot. Her replacement while she is away knows little about the project and will be of limited use. We will have to suck her dry of information before she leaves.

After the meeting, I give my security pass to the guard at the gate. He returns my driver’s license (No, I didn’t understand why I had to give him my license either).

I walk a short distance to the car and unlock it with the button on the keyring. It beeps and opens. I place my stuff in the back seat and shut the door.

The car starts to beep continually. The lights flash. I have two buttons on the keyring, a white one and a red one. I press the red one because I reckon that’s for the security. Nothing happens. The beeping continues.

I thought I had used the white button to lock and unlock the car. Now I’m not so sure. I point it at the car and press the white button.

Beep, beep, beep......

The guard at the gate has looked up to see where the noise is coming from. He starts to walk slowly towards me.

I push the red button again. Then the white one. Then the white and red one together.

The guard gets closer. The beeping continues.

I think maybe it’s a combination of the buttons that stop the bloody beeping. I start using different buttons combinations.

Red, white, red.

White, red, white.

Beep, beep, beep.....

The guard is 20 metres away and is looking very interested.

Maybe you have to hold one of them down for a while? I now go through combinations of white and red, sometimes holding a button down longer, sometimes not.

Beep, beep, beep.....

Perhaps it’s an SOS type code like red, red, red, white, white, white, red, red, red. You know, like Morse code.

Stupid idea. No way that could be it.

I try it anyway.

It doesn’t work.

Then I wonder if all the doors are closed properly? I start racing around the car opening and slamming the doors with one hand while the other continues the button combinations.

Beep, beep, beep...

The guard arrives.

“You have trouble with your car sir?”

I am still door slamming and button pushing.

I turn to him and start to say something glib about cars and modern technology when the beeping stops.

“Errrr......no, everything is fine”

I hurriedly leave the car park.

Put in my place

So, did you guess? What unusual thing did I not receive that would to indicate my relative value in the office..........

........toilet roll.

Mark was presented with a new roll of toilet paper when he started work. It seems the toilets in this office are BYO. Noni too got handed the dunny roll as she moved to the 3rd floor.

I received not one square of toilet paper. I was not deemed worthy.

Disillusioned, I nevertheless get past my disappointment and bring my own in the next day.
I use the toilets for the first time. They are reasonably clean but very worn and tired like the building itself. My cubicle of choice has a missing lid on the cistern. The handle doesn’t work and I have to plunge my hand in the water and push and pull some plastic bits till the toilet flushes. As I leave I slide the door bolt open and comes off in my hand. I put it back in place as best as I can and take my toilet roll with me.

I luv a parade

Mark and I had heard from a few different people about the so called sordid part of town. Apparently, the bars opposite the Hilton Hotel had a reputation with the locals for women of somewhat questionable moral standards. There was even a suggestion that some of these ladies were in fact “professionals”.
Rumours and innuendo can be misleading and ultimately dangerous to society. Mark and I were concerned about this and decided that we should undertake a fact finding tour to establish just what went on in these areas.

Friday night, downtown Kuching, 9pm.

We stopped at a local eatery before commencing our mission. We were in the Chinatown area directly opposite a small colourful Chinese temple. We were finishing up our meals when we hear some drumming. A Chinese parade is winding its way down the street.

We watch as cars and trucks slowly make their way past, adorned with colourful flags and large prayers sticks. Drummers sit in the back of the trucks. Interspersed are groups of men in matching brightly coloured shirts following a man dressed in a ornate costume. We find out later that these men represent Gods, and their follows are taking them for “a walk”. The God has a metre long metal skewer through their cheeks. The men follow as the God makes his way to the temple, head bowed for a moment in worship before continuing on the parade.

Towards the middle of the parade a small white car with flags flying from the windows moves slowly down the street. It has loud techno music blaring from it, competing and winning against the traditional Chinese drumming. Behind strolls a single lanky youth in white t-shirt and jeans. Hanging out the corner of his mouth is a cigarette. Behind him follows a dragon, weaving and twisting across the street.

The parade continues. A few times we think it has ended, but we hear more drumming and soon more Gods and dragons appear.

As the last of the parade goes past we leave and commence our mission.

A night on the town

Our journey on foot to the dark side of town has some urgency to it. I have announced to Mark that I need to have a leak. We stride onwards, deliberate and focused.

We arrive in a somewhat darkened street opposite the Hilton Hotel. A couple of ladies are standing on the corner outside a 7-11 store. They are young and scantily dressed. They look hopefully towards us as we walk past.

Mark and I confer. Professionals.

There aren’t many places to choose from in the street. We settle on a bar called “The Rainforest”.
It’s dark and noisy inside. A DJ in the corner is playing techno music. The place is sparsely populated with locals. I rush to the toilet to relieve myself. Mark is sitting at the bar when I return with two very expensive beers.

We sit at the bar, sip the beers and commence our research.

We are the only ones here who are not local. There are young women at the bar drinking, dancing and playing with their mobile phones. They ignore us.

So far so good then.

Convinced we are in the wrong place, though have no idea where the right place is, we finish our beers and move on.

A walk of a few minutes takes us to a place called the Piccadilly. It is quite some distance from the Hilton Hotel and the street ladies.

The place is very busy. The music is loud, but not too loud. It is packed with locals and a couple of foreigners. We sit at the bar and try and look cool.

It doesn’t work.

After a few beers we notice that people are buying whole bottles of alcohol. They are given glasses with ice and sometimes mixers like coke and dry. Above the bar are opened bottles of alcohol with long stickers the length of the bottle. On it are written names and a pen mark at the level of the contents.
It seems you can get alcohol by the bottle here and leave the unfinished stuff for later.

Great idea. I buy a bottle of Johnny Walker Black Label. It costs about $70. Not bad at all, considering we are in a bar.

As we drink the scotch, we talk with some of the local girls. The crowd here is quite young, though there are a few older men and women.

Sometime later after finishing half the bottle, I mark it with my name and we move on. We decide before we head back we shall check out the first bar we were in.

It’s about 1am and the bar is exactly as we left it.

Time to go home.

Later we agree that the evening was a somewhat inconclusive.

A few days later we hear about another bar that seems very interesting. It has a Ladies Night with free alcohol for women between 7-9pm.

Now that sounds like a place where we could do some major research....

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Photos

Chinese temple
Worhipped by the walking Gods

Comments

[Jackey]

Travel No.3
Hi Tod, Certainly is a different lifestyle than here in Aussie, very interesting to read, especially the toilet paper protocole. Love to see the photos of places I have never been to and problably never will, and to hear about your new social life, (always time for improvement) ... Keep the blogs coming look forward to seeing them. Take care of yourself, keep out of trouble, well maybe I should say keep out of major trouble as it seems to follow you sometimes. Sad to read about the poor money next door to you, maybe you can teach it some english. Love Jackey

[Rolf]

I see you have finally been confronted with the realisation of your actual position in the world - One of the no toilet roll fraternity and I have it on good authority that the tea lady gets a roll daily. When you come back to Aus you will have a new name 'Tod the rolless'. I not sure about this cat feeding business - you'll have them following you everywhere. However you have to take action on Harold's behalf - Invite some of his larger cousins to meet the neighbour. Good to see your having fun. Should be a good book when you write it. 'Tod the rolless visits the Orient' cheers Rolf