Daily in Asia

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.

Singapore's Formula 1 Night

Day 20.

It's possible to over-egg the pudding, to take a good thing and, by adding too much, turn it bad. Imaginative architects are particularly prone to this trend, or maybe it's their insistent clients who demand they 'add value' or include features beyond the original commission -or take them away.  It's also possible to get something 'just right', to achieve balance and then accolade. Such was the 2012 Singapore Grand Prix.

On paper this motor race has got it all -a nighttime street circuit around the floodlit
concrete canyons of a stylish, modern, tropical city. The streets are closed, stands and barriers erected well in advance, professionalism sought and achieved. There's little to beat it as a televised sporting event.

The common grievance against this Grand Prix, however, is that it's boring. It is precisely because it is a street circuit and that there are few opportunities to overtake that the charge of predictability can be leveled: the race leader at the first bend of the first lap can very often stay there until the last. There are several straights in the circuit, but they are relatively narrow. But the biggest and perhaps most justified complaint is that there are few places outside the stands to observe the race and that even the view from the stands is inadequate. It's also expensive -pit grandstand tickets being US$1000, with 8 friends in the Bay grandstand at a little over US$200!

Arriving in Singapore by bus, it quickly became apparent  that something big was about to happen. Within the next 24 hours some of the mightiest racing car drivers on the planet would compete for the title and the points in another battle for the championship. Arriving in the city on the Saturday night, we peered over the bridges near the bay onto the illuminated circuit, ready for more practice runs and as bright as noonday. We had to go.

The next evening John Zobrist and meself took ourselves down to the Marina Bay, towards the lights, the police roadblocks and security, towards the palpable excitement – the expectation of an unrepeatable global event. Although parking was surprisingly easy, access to the grandstand, however, confirmed our fears: we would definitely not be able to get anywhere near any of the grandstands without a pass, a simple piece of plastic. We even enquired to a stony-faced official after return tickets! A nice steward told us that many of the hoi-polloi without access would be heading towards Marina Square shopping mall. 

Several vantage points offered snapshots of the track and we would have been happy to be near the event, but by following our nose we found a near-empty tennis court: the Australian manager opened up the space to the public, including a blue hand stamp, a set of earplugs, screened live footage and the first cold beer and an unrestricted view up and down the Raffles Boulevard straight for S$100. We and the two dozen or so other caged birds couldn't believe our luck!

It was immediately clear to all the moment the cars came alive on the grid: great high-pitched roaring screams, the sinister arousal of a giant bee-hive, echoed throughout the cityscape – it would be seconds before they suddenly appeared around the Republic Boulevard bend. Following the flashing lights of astounding the snarling Messerschmidt/Mercedes SLS AMG safety car these reined-in racehorses weaved as they warmed their tyres, barely controlling their excitement and determination. Two minutes later they began, the deafening sound obvious to all filled the ears and quickened the blood. The one minute it took to follow the plodding safety-car (racking up to 280 km/h on the straights, by the way) was followed by a 20-second pass when the cars were racing.

Taking photographs of passing cars at those speeds requires a lot of technical know-how, a modicum of patience and a ounce or two of luck: at best, I managed two out of three. Just before the off the humid air above the pits seemed to shimmer with the incessant amateur flashlights of crowd.

Despite the largely-ineffective ear-plugs, by the end of the 309 km race as the charming Sebastian Vettel raised his enormous magnum of Mumm champagne a different roar could be heard -that of the appreciative crowd, an audible cheer of approval from the excited observers all around the circuit. Instantaneously, fireworks exploded into a cacophony of colour, noise and celebration, as if the preceding two hours had alone been insufficient.

We left the inner city as quickly and painlessly as we arrived. Compared with similar events in other countries this was a miracle of organisation: no traffic jams, not dangerous crushes of people, no touts and no problems with the law -either the keepers of it or those that break it. But the logistics for this event were incredibly straightforward –most fans of F1 at Singapore would have flown in and walked from their hotels to the stands. 

This is my first F1. I felt like a virgin on a first date. There is, quite simply, an extraordinary effect to be had in seeing the cars hurtle down the track at speeds over 300 km/h and braking 100 metres before a corner, of knowing that that car is a stylish Maclaren and is therefore Lewis Hamilton or Jenson Button, or that the red Ferrari chasing them is the angry Alonso, that the speedy Red Bulls are Webber and Vettel -right there in front of you. The event attracts its fair share of loonies, even rich loonies, in their Ferrari shirts, Ferrari ear-muffs (that pick up commentary, you know) and Ferrari knickers most likely. People wander around murmuring to themselves when news comes in of a sudden pit-stop, hold their hands in the air at a crash and cheer or shake their heads at a change in leadership. Formula 1 racing may not be everyone's cup of tea, but believe me it's infectious.