Week 8, Malaysia
HEY THERE: from Penang, Malaysia, where the sun is bright and the people amazing and the beers cold and the sea covered in some gross, thick, oily scum that makes swimming an iffy experience. But we can't expect everything.
School holidays! Being a teacher is the closest experience I've had to being a student - I try to look like I'm working when really I have no idea what is going on; I bitch and whine about what I'm made to wear; and most of all I look forward to the weekends and holidays. Like, I think I was pushing small children out of the way to get to the door at the end of Friday's lessons. Then i untucked my shirt and ran down the hallway screaming 'Down with homework!' at the top of my lungs.
Friday arvo we caught the train from Bangkok to Surat Thani, then bus on to Krabi - you know, I never saw myself as a train-traveller sort of guy. Back when I was fifteen I took the Ghan (or maybe the India-Pacific? They're all the same) to Adelaide and while it was nice (I say that in the same way your mum says that about your friends that she doesn't really like - 'Frank? Oh, yeah, he's... nice'), overall it just seemed a bit quiet and sterile and dull. I mean, most of the world seems quiet and sterile and dull when you're a sullen fifteen year old but still...
- I digress. The point is that Thai trains are awesome, loud and jangly with little seats and massive open windows that send you billowing back into your seat, and hawkers with warm beer and cold curries stalking up and down the aisles, apparently sold on the idea that the best way to convince your customer that they want your product is TO YELL AS LOUD AS YOU CAN AT THEM THAT OF COURSE THEY WANT YOUR COLD DAY-OLD CURRIES ON POLYSTYRENE PLATES. And then to assume that they probably want to be horrendously over-charged while they're at it.
Those giant open windows were a blessing: I'm sure that plenty of ten-year olds have lost arms or heads or whatever else they supposedly stick out of windows so often that Sydney trains have had to be converted into glass-and-metal fishtanks, but the breeze was amazing. What is travelling without the wind in your hair? We were hoping to catch some light in the afternoon and watch the countryside pass by; a late departure meant it wasn't to be but instead we got the inky-black silhouettes of swaying palm trees up against the purple-bruise sky. It was like the creepiest scene from the best Vietnam War movie you never saw. Then after a couple of hours of backgammon, warm beers and cold curries the Bed-Nazis came down the corridors in green fatigues and surgical masks and converted each of the seats into a bunk and covered the windows with awful metal grating. Very army-style.
We woke early and watched the sun rise over the jungle. Can I say that again? We woke early and watched the sun rise over the jungle. Who the fuck am I, Doctor Livingstone? But that's what we did. By afternoon we were in Krabi, where giant limestone formations jut out of the ground at every opportunity. Inspired by my dad, who - along with my uncle - accidentally jumped a couple of hired motorcycles into a river in outback NSW a couple of weekends back, we hired another moto and spent a fairly pleasant weekend riding around the beaches and caves and little pools and waterfalls that dot the region. I think that's all a person needs to lead a very happy life, actually, just two simple things - a motorcycle and a map. A means to go, and a reason to stop.
Yesterday we thought we'd try and beat the travel vendors, who were offering the nine-hour trip from Krabi to Penang for the faintly outrageous sum of 650 baht. So we resolved to make our own way across the border. We rode in buses, mini-buses, taxis, boats, and in the backs of pickup trucks. It was a half-success. We got here for 250 baht less than they were offering, but it took fifteen and a half hours. Fifteen and a half. That's, like, 930 minutes. It's a long time. But it was a pleasant way to waste a day, and sitting on the ferry watching the bright lights of Georgetown approach slowly it felt like the longest pilgrimage anyone's embarked upon in, let's say, forever. We made Marco Polo look like a pussy.
And Malaysia is what I never imagined it would be, which is to say, brilliant. It's very wealthy - it more closely resembles Australia than it does Cambodia - but the people are so friendly and funny and cheesy (right now, in the internet cafe I'm sitting in, which is on a beach, there's a sign that says 'Don't Sit Down With Wet Pants! And Don't Wet Your Pants in Here! :) Haw Haw Haw' - like, they even wrote the cheesy laugh to their own cheesy joke, with a cheesy smiley face to top it off). Perfect strangers would walk up and start conversations with you in Thailand but they would always end with 'So... you want to buy a suit from my friend?' or 'So... you want tuk-tuk?'. Over here people are actually interested in our well-being, will stop from their busy day just to make sure that we know where we're going, how to get there and how much it should cost, or even just stop us just to say hello and ask us how we are. And that's nice, being said hello to.
So two more days on our whirlwind tour of Malaysia (bleh, the only thing I hate more than people who go on whirlwind tours is people who use the phrase 'whirlwind tour') before hitting Singapore to meet up with my good mate Kenny for fun-filled days of trying to avoid being fined and moaning about how we can't afford to do anything in Singapore. Good times!
Lachie
NEXT WEEK: Melaka! Laksa! Tofu sambal! Singapore! $500 fines for not flushing the toilet!
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