Daily in Asia

Jim Thompson's House

Day 4.

We've been here a few times now. It's always worth it because it's just the most chic place in Bangkok, featuring charm, beauty, finesse, local flavour and mystery (where/how did he disappear in 1967).

Jim Thompson arrived in Thailand during the war and fell in love with the people, the culture and the crafts. He made lots of money selling Thai silks back in New York, but instead of returning home decided to make a home for himself here by literally building a home -from combining old Thai teak houses. The result is beautiful.

Sadly his shop now seems to have turned almost exclusively towards the tastes reserved for mainland Chinese tourists. We didn't buy anything this time.

Now we're off to get the train to Trang.

Thai Time

Day 5.

I'm sure we've all experienced something like this: rush to get plane - arrive at destination - get through immigration - beat queue for best taxi - get stuck in traffic - begin fuming.

In a way, it doesn't matter the destination, or the cause for the trip (holiday/convention/expropriating charity funds), we can't help taking our mind-sets with us and if our mind-sets live within a rushed, panicky 21st-century city then we see our destination through these ridiculous glasses.

So when the rattly overnight train from Bangkok took an hour and three-quarters longer to arrive than scheduled, or that the minibus driver from Trang was 27.39% more over-cautious than I would be on the country roads to Satun, or that the speedboat broke down as we left the harbour making us return to the quayside where we occupied the next hour with offerings of fruit juice not made from fruit, or that the remainder of the cramped hour -and-a-half journey, or that the resort is still under construction, or that the wi-fi is intolerably and excruciatingly slow, then... I have to remember, we're on Thai Time.

Thai Time, like Emirates Time, Mexican Time or Kenyan Time, is when the request/task takes twice or even three-times as long than it would in London, New York, Tokyo or Hong Kong. It's about frustrated, tutting consumers for whom time is money and for whom the wasting of it is nearly as criminal an act as beastiality or treason (these, of course, can be thoroughly justified given enough money).

Actually, the litany of woes above and any other complaint normally associated with an -insert country here- Time is nothing more a perceptual thing. Yes, it may take a little longer to get all these things done, but they will get done - eventually. So Thai Time is really an unhelpful imaginative comparison between expectations of time.

Here I am sat on a beautiful beach on a 'difficult-to-get-to' island in a 'difficult' country, but these difficulties are only mine. Everyone else seems perfectly contented with the way things are. That's not to say things couldn't be improved, but it's their business. I'm not here to 'save time', but to spend it.

And if it takes the magic fingers of the wi-fi that wrap around my i-Phone hours and hours to transport this simple bloggy nonsense to the world beyond these shores, then maybe that's a good thing.

Things Done to Towels

Day 6.

Once in the Land of Thighs it is possible to see that many of the more obvious things on public display have deeper significances. The ubiquitous presence of His Divine Majesty King Bhumibol Adulyade in posters and beautifully framed pictures, for example, is not merely a reminder of who's in charge, matey, but is a link with the wider shared Tai heritage, a confirmation of Buddhisty philosophical values in a Thai version of the doctrine of Manifest Destiny, and a current and potent adherent political statement all wrapped up in one. It seems that one of the worst insults round these parts is to question a chap's patriotism and love for all things regal.

Another symbolic Thai reference with philosophical depth that is perhaps identified more obviously by most visitors, is the religious iconography. Buddha images are everywhere; for worship and for the obtaining of merit, for teaching and reinforcing of central cosmological ideas within the Thai mind, and to justify social harmony within a clearly inequitous society. That religious symbolic art is so pervasive is symptomatic of its philosophical adoption. That mythical Garuda half-man-half-birds and Singha lions appear everywhere signifies that these creatures are ever-present links to that greater, more mystical reality - the one that transcends the here and now, the mediocre ups and downs of life, the mundane self-doubting of the individual and the vulgar vagaries of politics and society.

It is also symptomatic of the plain fact that there has not, of course, been a complete reformation of Thai religious thought along the lines of that experienced in Europe in the 16th century and after. This aspect of Thai life and thought has continued through wars, famines, revolutionary sea-changes of Governments, kings and prime ministers. There also appears to have been sufficient freedom of thought for most individuals to fully express themselves in their own style without being coerced into adopting tenets of faith with one fearful eye on the rack or the flames: it's your business.

Which naturally brings me to towels. I've seen some astonishing towelic creations over my years in this place of keenly-adopted iconography and religious philosophy. I'm beginning to think there is something deeper to this towel origami than meets the casual western eye, but no-one has explained this ancient eastern art to me. Please offer your in-depth suggestions into the secret language of meta-towelling.

When in doubt, buy a couple of coconuts and put on a hat!

Day 10.

It has been raining a bit today. When I say, 'a bit', I mean raining in a tropical way a bit today, which really means a lot because we're in the tropics. So I should have said, it rained a lot today. I should have said, it has been raining a lot ALL day.

Enough prittle-prattle! We hired a cheap hire car, about as cheap as chips (if you've ever had expensive chips, that is) and droveded round this sun-kissed island of Langkawi. Ah, the beautiful bays and beaches, the green mountain summits, the radiant forest tree blossoms could all have been seen had it not been bloody raining so hard. We dodged raindrops between gift shops and mountain stream walks, between a cheap lunch of Phatprik next to the deserted bay of Black Sand Beach (Pantai Pasir Hitam) and the unbelievable Galeria Perdana.

I will have to stop here and rant a bit about this place. You may question my motives because we didn't actually go inside, but I just couldn't bring myself to dip into my pocket and pay for the privilege of seeing the gifts awarded to the Prime Minister Yang Amat Berhormat Dato' Seri Dr. Mahathir bin Mohamed and his wife.

I've never met Mahathir and if I did I'd no-doubt be won over my his 87 years of political guile, but I cannot abide this man because of almost everything he stands for. To have held the position of prime minister for 22 years alone must make him one of the most corrupt, self-serving political reptiles on the planet. He did little to avert put inter-racial conflict in 1969 and once in positions of power promoted Malay interests over all the other ethnic groups in the country. He used religion, ie Islam, as a means to maintain power and legitimacy and smeared or jailed any serious political opponents. He sold off as many as 50 government-held utilities and firms each year to whoever was paying and made Malay compulsory in educational institutions, thereby making Malays largely unemployable outside the country. And then there's his interference with and jailing of Anwar Ibrahim, which deserves a whole-other blog.

Yes, many recent policies and initiations have brought success within the country, but many would argue that these were achieved largely in spite of him. He's an anti-Western, anti-Semitic bigot who seems to have acted on the wider world stage merely to meet his domestic ambitions and stir the pot.

So, we did not go to see all the lovely lavish gifts awarded/given to this man. Having said all that, the attraction was packed with Malays. I presume they all saw a different side to the man and the motives behind these lavish expressions of love and admiration. Maybe he really is a darling who has only the dear, dear love of his country at heart, but I think not. He's the kind of bastard that makes me want to rant and fume and uncontrollably swear!

 

So anyway, I bought a silly hat and two smashing, large coconuts. That's the right sort of gift for a bloke like me...

Clash of Cultures, Blend of Cultures

Day 11.

So here we are, two expat Brits who have their abode in Hong Kong, taking the Australian-built ferry from the enchanted, but once-cursed, island of Langkawi and heading to Georgetown, Penang, the concession for British protection for the sultanate of Kedah and eventually the first British possession of the Malay States.

Georgetown, of course, takes its name after King George III, the reigning monarch at the time the East India Company set up this far eastern centre to better organise the trading of spicy commodities. It also became a fortified base to keep thum Frenchies out of the region.

On board are Malays, Europeans, Chinese and lots of Saudi Arabs. On the TV screens is playing John Carter, the recent Disney adaptation of the 1964 novel by the American writer Edgar Rice Burroughs mostly set on the planet Mars. Next to us the Arab couple are reading the Quran (as are the rest if they're reading at all), the Memsahib is reading A Game of Thrones by George R. R. Martin, the obese resident of Santa Fe, New Mexico who is now very famous and presumably also very rich. I am reading A Study in Scarlet, the first Sherlock Holmes novel by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle published in 1887. The Chinese, headphones firmly plugged in, are keeping themselves to themselves playing games on their iPads.

Some of the men are in shorts and some in long trousers. Some wear peaked hats or light trilbys -so-named after a stage adaptation of George du Maurier's 1894 novel, Trilby, in which performance the style of hat was worn. Some of the ladies (guess who?) are in stringy tops and shorts and some (guess who?) are completely hidden behind their burqas so that it is difficult to make out that they have clear, deep-brown eyes.

Outside the rainy swell is somewhat increasing and from time-to-time the ferry swerves left and then right, presumably to avoid obstacles in the sea ahead. We saw a lot of wood, great big pieces of timber washed down from jungle rivers, on our previous ferry journeys -it would not do a vessel, even as large a catamaran as this, much good at all if it were to make contact with submerged tree trunks at these speeds. I now know where the life jackets are. The crew recently came around offering grey plastic vomit bags: so-far I'm not aware of anyone using them.

At the very front of the passenger cabin is the little Arab boy, maybe three- or four-years old and the very apple of their young parents' eyes. He is singing inane and repetitive childish babble to a largely unresponsive audience. Dressed in a white t-shirt with green sleeves and shots, and completely without inhibitions, he mindlessly plays on the enclosed steps up to the fore-deck, quite a dangerous location considering the swell. He has already fallen over twice, but his parents are happy his attention is not directly on them. His t-shirt has a picture of the 1940s cartoon characters Tom and Jerry with the words, "Joy & Happy".

Penang emerges from the sea, first the mountains, then the taller hotels, then the whole city. Happy to leave the ferry, the confused passengers surge out with their luggage onto the cool Friday streets. Despite the ever-insistent taxi touts, it already feels like a pretty, antiquated, culturally-mixed town.

Snaps of the Historic Buildings of Georgetown

Day 12.

The architectural tradition in this town goes back further than the 200 years it has been in existence. Sometimes stunningly beautiful, sometimes decrepit and in need of serious TLC, the streets are full of little gems. The larger colonial residences are a little further from the centre and speak of notable separation from the hoi-paloi: standards had to be kept up, you know...

The Next Train on Platform 2

Day 13.

It's possibly, nay likely, that train travel is addictive: I'm certainly hooked! These journeys have been deliberately made so that we have not shuttled about on the more convenient planes, buses and taxis. Being conveyed by publicly available slow-wheeled carriages down long distances of track is somehow better (but maybe not more graceful) than other forms of transport. There's often more to be seen and better economy to be had by rail. It appears the Malaysian clientele (and we haven't spotted any Malay trainspotters yet) isn't much different to the great en-bussed, but even for them it feels quite good to be going a little slower without the worry of reckless overtaking, stifling traffic jams, the weather or indeed anything other than the ever-changing view. Of course, nothing has broken down and I'm not commuting...

The 'ekspres' from the romantically-entitled Butterworth to Ipoh at the foot of the Cameron Highlands would, in many western countries, be considered an unsatisfactory journey. The train's general state of repair and attention to crucial matters of health and safety certainly leaves a little to be desired: the doors to this, the 2nd-class carriage, do not close -indeed, they cannot without a key. This has the treble effect of negating the air conditioning, of allowing the majority of the juvenile passenger's carriage-end smoke to escape and, when going through bends and the doors are wildly flapping, of making anywhere near the exits quite dangerous places to be.

Not that anyone, least of all the Malaysian Railways staff, appears to be the slightest bit worried about it at all. We're moving in the right direction, aren't we 'Mr Lah-de-dah-Western-Standards'?

It reminds me very much of traveling in Britain by rail in the mid-70s, except those trains were dirtier and the horse-hair stuffed seats were much less comfortable than these much-more modern, individualised and 'would probably-have-been-first-class-back-then' variety. The toilets exude a certain piquance and the interior is a bit on the grubby side, but there's very little graffiti -"Al Hafiz loves Aisha" is scratched on the window sill, but otherwise not one naughty rude word or slanderous reference to a football team is anywhere to be seen!

Like many-a railway throughout the world, 'KTM Intercity: Seamless Travel' appears not to have received sufficient continuous investment. Is there ever enough dosh from passengers alone to keep the old stock rolling? From the mid-20th century, new lines that have justified their investments have become a bit of a rarity and old lines need constant repairing. No matter how much rose-tinted sympathy we may have expended on them, the truth is railways simply do not made enough money on their own to justify the massive amounts of government spending that has kept those publicly-owned wheels a-turnin'. So why keep them? If the roads were suddenly taken away it would be a different matter, but other than in cities state-owned railways are run on national pride, as political necessities and as demonstrations of a whole lot of public sentiment.

Railways are shared experiences. As a kid, I used to half-hate/half-love going to the toilet on British Rail trains, the method we employed to get to Hastings, Margate, Teignmouth, Bath, York (and the historic attractions and museums of London on Sundays). I would fearfully open the well-scrawled doors of the toilets expecting a ghastly mess of human effluence, spent fags and grease-proof toilet paper to be revealed. Most times it would be boringly functional -merely a bit smelly- and I would content myself with looking down the little inspection hatch in the floor to see track and sleepers speeding past. Sometimes it was a jackpot, a horrific disaster of nauseating filth and I would return to my seat happy to report distasteful childish tales of nasty things wot I had seen -surely enough to put you off your Mother's Pride cheesy sandwiches and thermos of milky tea.

As we travel through the Malaysian countryside, between millions of acres of palm oil plantations and jungly limestone crags, it is clear there is a great deal of work being done on the line's improvement and extension. New bridges, mounds of earth and stones, drainage, new stations gantries and access points seem to be next to the track the whole journey. Whichever company gets the fencing contract alone will be sitting pretty for years! The new high-speed railway line being built will link the major cities of this rapidly-developing nation. It is likely this will mean that a newly-boosted rail freight transportation system combined with shorter journeying times will help create a real alternative to the over-used road network. The immense political and financial investment is, therefore, obviously future-bound. Big projects like these create lots of jobs now and further down the line...

So the smoke-filled 2:30 from Butterworth to Ipoh with its broken doors and smelly bogs may be around for a little while longer, like the myriad of tin shacks farms and mud-grey buffalos it whizzes past. But when it inevitably gets finally shunted and left to rot at a nameless rail yard, it is likely most folk will be far too happy enjoying the new smooth-running railway pride of Malaysia to shed any tears.

Tea and a Smokehouse

Day 14.

It must be said that Malaysia is truly a varied land: a country with so many facets it's a wonder anyone has managed to carve a single identity out of what is a cultural/ethnic/linguistic mélange.

Those who has been here for any length of time cannot have helped but notice the propensity for anyone and everyone, private, commercial and, of course, governmental to fly the Malaysian flag - the flag of the mélange. It identifies the glue that sticks it all together, the strong binds of shared interest and common purpose that means this country is collectively going somewhere. And yet...

And yet, there are still great disparities between the rich and poor, between those who have the wealth and power and those that can ill-afford even the tin that roofs their shacks on the edge of town, between the rice and vegetable farmers out in the sticks and their co-patriots who swing past in their Mercs to buy the odd durian. What keeps them together?

Malaya, like the wonderful Smokehouse we are staying at, was a British invention. After gaining their footholds in the peninsula, the power and wealth of these rubber, tin and tea barons waxed greater and greater until the second world war. This stupefying and seminal event proved to be more than just a hiatus. The new Japanese overlords went to work exterminating the Chinese, generally ignoring or encouraging underlying racial aspirations amongst the Indians and the Malay community. Where were the British, their Imperial overlords from far away? The Japanese were there to liberate them: Asia for the Asians!

The occupation by the Japanese Imperial Armed forces may have been one of the most brutal of this planet's history (an estimated 100,000 killed by them in Malaya alone), but this was not a point those waiting in the wings dwelt on. Some years ago I read The Jungle is Neutral by Freddie Spenser Chapman, a history of his attempts to organise a useful guerrilla campaign against the Japanese, mainly up here in the clouded and wispy moss forests of the Cameron Highlands. Seeing the terrain even now fills me with immense admiration for such a dangerous venture. He emphasised the belligerent nature of the Chinese Communists he fought alongside even then.

After the end of the war things in Malaya had to change -the British bigwigs, the Chinese traders, the hard-working Indians and Malays all knew this, but none could agree on quite what it should look like.

As the British took back their mines and plantations, so extant rivalries emerged from within the rest of this multi-ethnic mix. The Emergency of the 50s and 60s was really a communist rebellion inspired by Mao's China. The title, Malayan 'Emergency', was chosen by the British mine and plantation owners to ensure claims for damages would be payed for by insurers who flinched at the word 'war'. At its end, and to the chagrin of many, the ascending and increasingly powerful Malays were a bit too keen to accept their heroic role as protectors of the people and conveniently forget how much the Indian, Chinese and British also did to halt the advance of militant communism in their country.

The race riots of 1969 that left hundreds, if not thousands, dead also conveniently led to the establishment of the current ruling elite's hegemony. No-one except the opposition likes to talk about it: although press and political freedoms may still be curtailed, but the country is undoubtedly prospering, isn't it?

So our Indian taxi driver takes us past the tin-roofed shacks of the indigenous Orang Asli people to the manicured hills of the tea plantations under the gaze of the watchful eye of the hill-top stations. He stops and speaks Malay as we meet folk beside the road. Turning around to us he tells us important points about the things we see in English and chats in Tamil on the taxi radio as we pull over on the single-track road for Chinese families in their new Mercs coming in the opposite direction. He drops us off we pay him for all his patience and assistance this morning and enter the make believe British realm of The Smokehouse. It's like someone's nostalgic, dotty aunty was allowed free-range on a twee, mock-Tudor Surrey golf clubhouse, except there's bigger hills -and no chavs within spitting distance. And despite the flappy flags for Malaysia Day yesterday and the Ringgit we used for currency, I cannot help asking, what DOES keep this mélange together...

Green Grow the Palms-o

Day 15.

Green indeed is the peninsula of Malaysia -and Sarawak and Sabah- with palms.

It is likely you have eaten something today that contains palm oil. It's in so much packaged or processed foodstuff bought by Mr & Mrs Joe Average that it's probably nigh-on impossible to go shopping at ...insert supermarket of choice here... without buying something laced with it. If you doubt me, or you're a bit of a purist foody and have already purged it like the pox from your life, then go take a look at your bathroom cabinet or even the cleaning products under the stairs because it's almost certainly in those too!

There are millions of acres of Malaysia now under palm oil cultivation. It had been argued by many that the bio-diversity of this ultra-biodiverse tropical region has been stultified, if not wrecked, because of this monocrop. That may be true, but the same is true for rubber plantations, or mid-west horizon-to-horizon corn production or Ukrainian or Canadian wheat and it's probably more likely there are less diverse still. Yes, there are fewer tigers and orang-utans, but that's not just down to the clearing of forests for palms. Put that down to the pressures of a human population explosion in the last 50 years. A balance must be sought, but not every farmer can establish an elephant sanctuary or butterfly farm in their back yard. Efforts are being made to reduce the use of pesticides/fertilisers and use the farming and processing by-products to make bio-fuels.

Palm oil provides much needed (and regular) income for local farmers. They certainly couldn't grow yams, coconuts or bananas and make the same money, send their kids to school and buy a fridge every now and then, something the rest of us take for granted. And as long as the consumers, ie you, keep wanting to buy this oily stuff and the middle men are giving fairly good prices then there's no reason to swap for anything else.

Palm oil is a good and cheap one for using regularly. In the region it'll be used anywhere from the cheapo breakfast at McDonalds restaurants to the wee local lady on a rickety trishaw that sets out a few stools under a single light bulb and cooks up a Thai storm at 2:30 in the morning. It may not have the kudos of extra-extra-read-all-about-it-virgin huile d'olive, or the delicate nuances of lard, but it has a very high smoke point and is pleasantly tasting for the price.

There's also an argument about the health benefits of palm oil: apparently it contains plenty of wicked saturated fat. This is certainly true, but so does the humble avocado. It's most likely the best solution to this is not to eat so much fried food. Hey Presto!

So there you have it: palm oil grows everywhere here and feeds every one of you there. Maybe it's about time we all got used to it.

Despite them being everywhere, I haven't taken a single picture of even one frond. So you'll have to be content with pictures of the walkway through the wonderful Mossy Forest atop the Cameron Highlands -and not a kilt in sight!.

Next stop, Kuala Lumpur on the Unititi Express, whatever one of those is.

Smog and Tropical Rain in Lovely KL

Day 16.

Kuala Lumpur is not hot -at the moment. It has been raining and the cloud cover has kept the temperature in the 20s. This has meant even a short walk into the local 'village' of Bangsar was much more of a pleasant affair than doing the same distance in Hong Kong.

I have already mentioned Malaysian oil of the edible variety: everyone knows, of course, that the country has grown rich on the blacker and more viscous variety. The centrally-located twin Petronas towers, tallest buildings in the world from 1998-2004, testify to the importance of this national resource. Because of smog and wispy cloud, these buildings were invisible today from our enormous 8km distance.

The smog of KL, like the smog of LA, Cairo or Hong Kong, is largely down to vehicle emissions and the odd power station belching unfiltered fumes. It's not quite as severe as that of Beijing or Delhi or a thousand cities of the world. That is until the Indonesians begin burning their forests. At times in the year the winds from Sumatra blow the tiny sooty particles, from the environmental devastation they call progress, over the sea to this fair land in order to block out the light and turn the midday sun a pleasant orange.

The rest of the time the KL-ers are resigned to the upside-down sea-in-the-sky that occurs during rainstorm time. Many of you will have seen tropical rain in places like Hong Kong. Enormous storm drains have been dug to carry this wonderful pure water into the sea as soon as possible and allow the traffic to continue to flow. Sometimes even the best efforts of mankind are not enough and nature takes over. Unless you've seen this happen it's hard to explain the power of this basic element. Hollywood cannot portray this power, even with its love of apocalyptic spectaculars.

So there you have it. Haven't really done much today except visit a shopping mall, buy lots of nice clothes and have a Thai massage (meself) and pedicure/manicure (Memsahib). So we didn't much notice the smog or tropical rain outside.