Travel Tales 3 - Missing Identity, Something about the house, and trying to score free bowling games (Malaysia)

Credit to the 'Cringel' crew for this great picture of a night market in KL



Matthew and I were heading back from the local sports club. A few games of bowling, and a few embarassing atempts at snooker left us shattered. It was a bright and sunny afternoon - the sky a blanket of deep blue, where pockets of white foamed into small cotton balls to make clouds.

We followed a stretch of road that curved into a sizable bend, tip-toeing through the rough patches of grass and foliage that made for a sidewalk. Coconut shells planted themselves under the shade of trees from which they had fallen, and sometimes you couldn’t see them from the grass. I found it hard to trust the ground as it bobbled with uncertainty. Matthew was a few paces ahead, and I could see him struggling - his body bent forwards, scouting for those dreaded coconut shells. One slip could send you into the road and onto a passing car. I never really worried though, as the idea of dying by the carcass of a coconut seemed absurd at the time. But with hindsight, I suppose it was a little dangerous.

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My relatives’ house sat on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, and the main roads were busy throughout the day - spilling onto the highway and into the capital. When you veered away from the main roads and down into the estates, the markets, shops and stalls however, the scenery became less busy. I was always aware that any judgement made on Malaysia was made through the eyes of an outsider. Someone who didn't live in the country, and who wasn’t affected by it in the long run. But even with this knowledge, I couldn’t help but fall for the house, it’s estate and the life around and just outside it. To me at least, it seemed almost perfect.

I enjoyed how some of the houses looked chalk-drawn, white and soft around the edges. They all had black iron gates, tiled patio’s and long leafed plants in big decretive pots sitting by the entrance and around the lawn. This was my relatives estate - rows and rows, turnings and exits of these houses. All the white paled with boredom under the sun however, but a lot of families kept flowers, and those pots varied in all sizes and colours, adding a messy uncoordinated look. Personality came from these small individual touches, and it was echoed throughout Malaysia. Rarely were the buildings special. At most they were simply big boring shapes, and they looked even worse with the heat. But those pots, there were always pots sitting somewhere. I grew to love the sight of them, and wondered where they all came from.

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The longer I stayed in Malaysia the harder it got to keep a distant relationship with the country. I was always at a distance of course, having never lived there, but this very fact began to irritate me. England had grown distant itself, and the life I was living never really felt like mine. For the first time, England didn’t feel like my home. And perhaps it was the vulnerability of loosing England as a home which led me to consider what Malaysia had to offer. I was 18 at the time, and life suddenly became real with adulthood. All my other past visits saw a much younger me worrying about young things, like what toys I could buy in Malaysia and for how much. Now I was questioning what I wanted, what I didn’t want, and what I felt I couldn’t have in life. The Malaysian blood that ran through me was suddenly important, and being Malaysian without knowing Malaysia felt bizarre. My curiosity began to rise over the course of the vacation, but it wasn’t something I truly considered until the vacation was over. England never felt the same again.

Back at the house I was covered with sweat. Matthew and I were used to the heat by now, but sometimes our bodies forgot where they were and perspired when we did simple things like walking. Matthew was wearing a navy blue t-shirt picturing a Lego man donning an afro. I always remember him with it in college, and sometimes I wanted to ask him what it was about the shirt that made him love it so much. Questions like this would randomly pop into our heads when the days were quiet with little to do. There was a beauty in the uneventful though, because it localised you to a certain degree. Having aunties and uncles walk us around their typical haunts, and the lesser known places outside the tourist circle felt more real than any theme park or attraction could ever hope to be. I sometimes worried whether Matthew saw it the way I did, but he seemed to take everything in his stride. Deep down I think we both shared the same affinity for finding the joys in the smaller things, and we bonded because of it.

My heightened interest in Malaysia extended to my relatives’ house. Sometimes it felt like the other way around, as it didn’t take long to figure out a house as it would for a country. Malaysia was a word and a loose concept to me. I still didn’t understand if after all, but I could appreciate the physicality of walls, floors and windows much more easily.

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Matthew and I sat in the front room leaning on high rising stools that clung to the bar. The bar had a smooth stoned top to it, and it’s base was made out of well-treated wood. It looked expensive, as did the rest of the interior. We enjoyed the bar the most though, because it brought with it a breeze, and this breeze squeezed through the open and caged doorway in front of it, letting in a cool wind and giving us a good vantage point from which we could observe the rest of the living room. A big Marilyn Monroe print hung from it’s canvas at the far end of the bar. It was always overlooked however, because when you stared forward you were met by towers of glass shelves with mirrored backs - all of which held empty and finely decorated decanters. The bottom ones were full of brandy and whisky. Matthew had opened one a few days ago, and I remember the sight of his dazzled face once he’d smelt what was inside. Apparently, it was strong.

The living room extended into the kitchen - the walls remaining open but for the guest bedrooms - and there was a great feeling of space. The ceiling ran up high where fans buzzed away when the air conditioning was off. The kitchen rose up slightly where glass panels decorated with Koi Carp stood. They cornered off some of the living room to give a sense of dimension, but they never towered high enough to be that noticeable. The bottom floors were made from marble to help cool the house and they were always gleaming under the light of the sun. Even in the darkness of night, lit up by the many house bulbs, they still shined perfectly. We never grew used to floors because they would always keep the palms of our feet cooler than the rest of our body.

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Matthew and I tried to sneak in two games of bowling for the price of one at the sports club. We put four people down in one lane and there was only two of us, which gave an extra set of goes. The club card was kept by the staff whilst you played, and they added the expenses onto it afterwards. I guess it’s not just the number of games you play but the number of people playing as well, as we never got away with it. But I did manage to pass one hundred points in a game, which was always beyond me back in England. Perhaps I’m just a better player in Malaysia. Something to do with the air. The floor did seem slightly uneven though, and Matthew also picked up on this. Not that I’d admit it of course. Managing to beat Matthew at anything should be boasted about, and I kept to myself the outside influences that may have helped my winning.

We remained at the bar for awhile, and I basked in my victory over Matthew in bowling, even if he did beat me afterwards. We paid the difference on my auntie’s club card and collapsed to our beds, waiting for someone in the house to announce the plans for the evening. The evenings usually meant eating out and exploring the markets. Matthew and I knew it was just a matter of time before something would happen, and there was a quiet excitement about that. The combination of a cosy home and a relaxing night life made lounging around seem less of a waste. It was more a way of living in Malaysia rather than visiting it, and for that, Matthew and I felt a little closer to Malaysia than was perhaps intended. This intimacy created a longing that carried onto Singapore - where we stayed last - and I would soon grow to miss Singapore too.

Travel Tales 2 - Dodging traffic and dodging hookers (Thailand)

Credit to Jimbo77. A shot of Bangkok traffic.

The reception area had a faint and mildly distracting hum coming from it’s cream plastered walls and it’s tiled floors. It was the kind of hum you grew used to in humid places - where all the modern buildings would coup d'état the heat through air conditioning. I preferred older structures, as they usually kept a charm about them, and even the most rundown places had some saving grace. Mostly, it came from the excitement of escaping such ravage abodes, but it was these abodes that usually coloured my memories more vividly than the serene ones. The type of memories that make for the best stories and the best kept secrets. They were never that ravage either, and if they were, it usually came from the ignorance of being an outsider. Of course, sometimes they really were just shit holes.

The hotel was a two star affair. It wasn’t new but it didn’t look old. It was a simple building with floors and windows, elevators, a bar and a dining hall. The obvious. The not-so-obvious remained hidden out on the streets of Bangkok, waiting to be unearthed by stupid, arrogant tourists. I couldn’t wait.

My father used to run a business in Bangkok for a few years before moving onto China, and so I used to visit him with my mother and younger sister. I don’t remember much about his work however, as I never asked him about it. One thing I do remember though, was his describing to me a man who worked for him - a pasty white gay Englishman. Not that that was a problem of course, but I was young at the time, and so this sort of thing caught me as bizarre. Until that uncomfortable - yet wildly exciting - honeymoon period wore off and you became accustomed to Thailand’s ‘way’, everything was bizarre.

Matthew and I were in the latter stages of our vacation, and no matter how hard I tried to stay level headed, Thailand was still as alien to me as it always was. But that was what I loved about Thailand in general, it had a way of pulling you out of your comfort zone. It needn’t ever be that extreme, but sometimes you did things you shouldn’t do in Thailand. That was a reward in itself.

It was evening and Matthew and I had already dumped our luggage in our room. Now we had nothing to do until morning. We already explored the fringes of the night-markets a little earlier with my mother, aunt and sister. What else was there to do? Plenty. And if I had more time than a couple of hours, I could have easily spent a few extra days here. But no, there was a routine and everyone on the tour had to stick to it. Although being on a guided tour allowed you to see so much in so little time, you really were left with little else to do expanding away from it.

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A couple of old couches sat near the entrance. They were tattered at their corners, and the colour faded into a murky yellow where the leather had warn away over the years. A tall lamp shone down in a warm radiant glow, spotlighting the entire area into a seemingly different time zone. In fact, the whole reception had so many different lights - on the walls, from the ceilings - that no corner was ever as bright or as dim as the next.

We sat for awhile, pondering what to do. I was tired and Matthew always looked tired - his mid length hair giving him a well-suited rugged look, his eyes deep with bags like they always were. He was a handsome man it has to be said, just in a shaggy way.

Another walk down the markets seemed a little too adventurous for our sleepy heads, and so we did what hindsight would later tell us not to do: pretty much nothing.

Matthew wanted some drinks and I was growing tired of the hotel. He’d spotted a 7-Eleven across the street when we first arrived, and suggested we make a quick dash out to grab some alcohol.
‘It’ll only take a few minutes’ he said confidently.
‘sure’ I responded. I wasn’t carrying any cash and I didn’t like borrowing money from friends. But I didn't want to say no.

Air conditioners were always set to freezing, and once we stepped through the big glass doors and into the open, Matthew and I were hit by the humidity, it’s weight heavy with dampness. Much like the soft droning of the air conditioners inside the hotel, which gave the building a small essence, the outdoors also had a similar sound. Behind all the busybody people and the arguing traffic was an energy. You knew it existed but you couldn’t see it in the form of shapes or colours. When you stood still and silent, you could hear a constant buzzing pass through your ears. It was almost like a breeze, but you didn’t so much feel it, you sensed it. This stayed with me for the rest of the vacation, and you soon got used to it’s presence. The air talked to you in a hot country like Thailand, and that was something special.

As Matthew and I began to the road, I turned around and looked upwards at the height of the hotel. It was an ugly thing resembling an office block.
‘Which room is ours?’ I questioned.
Matthew casually took his hands out of his pockets and pointed somewhere nearer the top. ‘The one with the light on’
‘They’ve all got their lights on’
‘Yep, and one of them is ours’
I looked at him confused, breaking into fits of laughter as soon as I realised he’d finished his sentence, and that there was no more. Matthew was the perfect person to travel with. He was easy going, always open to new ideas and responsive to new cultures.

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Bangkok’s traffic was always an event, especially when you had to cross it. On the other side of the road was a collection of bars that stretched long and ran deep. They were roofed but without walls, leaving the interior for all to see. They were full of middle aged white men - so you knew prostitutes were working their charm around these parts. I suppose the bright red neon lights running across the thatched roofs were also giveaways. But there was no time for that. Matthew and I still had to make it to the other side. Scooters honked alongside vans that tried to overtake tuk-tuks that were trying to zip past taxis. It was the weirdest concept of traffic I’d witnessed since my time in France. Matthew took control - or rather, he tried - giving me explicit instructions to dash across when he said “go”. You learned to listen to Matthew in these types of situations. He was a common sense kind of guy. My life had a better chance in his hands than the other way round. He motioned forward every so often when there was a break in the rush of vehicles. No matter how eagle-eyed he was though, there was always something to get in the way. Shit.

We stood around like a couple of idiots watching the enormous amount of scooters zigzagging through the lines of the less mobile vehicles, wondering if it was possible to cross such a road without dying rather insanely. Matthew studied the locals at work. A woman slightly hunched through old age held in one hand a clear bag of coconut juice with a straw poking out - coconut milk was often sold like this, along with other fruit juices - and in her other hand was a newspaper. She wore a white bandana around her forehead and looked like a labourer of the land. A farmer of the city. I assumed she worked at the markets selling fresh food and fried snacks. She must have been about fifty, and she moved with such grace and carelessness that Matthew and I were left speechless. How she made it through all of the traffic in one piece was beyond me. It was times like these that put you out of your depth just a little bit, making you feel ashamed because you didn't possess the ability to dodge traffic on a busy road in Bangkok.
‘Right, we’ll do what she did’
I wasn’t convinced by his conviction. I sensibly countered ‘I’ll tell you what, you try it first and I’ll be your spotter’
‘Spotter for what?’
‘If a car is about to hit you, I’ll scream or something’
Matthew coughed out a short laugh, which he often did when slightly amused. ‘lets wait a little longer’.

Patience was the key. That and some bravery. A gap appeared when it counted, and we took our chances. Once across however, we were hassled by hookers.

Matthew was tall and white, which often complicated matters. A trio of hookers began in bad English trying to lure my friend into one of the bars. Matthew wasn’t in the mood for random sex with three Thai prostitutes however, and ignored them on his walk past. I looked back at them rather foolishly. They were everything you expected from someone offering sex for money. The taller one was rather sexy however - her slender figure bestowed nicely curved hips and long legs. It was probably for the best that I had no money on me at the time.

The 7-eleven shone it’s big neon sign down on us as we approached it. Inside the store were four walls of refrigerators brimming with far too many drinks to possibly remember. You could tell what some of the thin cans and small stubby bottles were from the pictures on their labels. Others were less tangible. I remember holding a can with a big potato face on it. The potato donned a silly Mexican hat and was smiling. The idea of a drink made from Mexican potatoes scared me. I told Matthew this and he didn’t see the funny side.
‘It’s got a ring-pull on the top’ he said. ‘shake it’.
I shook it. ‘hey, it rattles. I’m sure they’re not potatoes though’
Matthew stood in silence for a short while. ‘it’s a Mexican peanut, not a potato’
I placed the Mexican nuts back down and continued looking.

The owner of the store seemed pissed off. Maybe it was all the traffic outside, or the fact that he had to sell nuts that wore Mexican hats, but I dared not to ask him. Matthew found some Heinekens - our adopted tipple in Thailand - and asked me if I was getting any.
‘I don’t have any money’
‘It’s ok, I’ll pay for them’
‘Just get me two’. Risking my life to reach 7-eleven would’ve been a waste if I didn’t actually get anything. I accepted Matthew’s kind nature

Back at the hotel we noticed the view outside our room’s window lay claim to the street we just crossed, and the trio of hookers could be seen by the stretch of the ‘tourist’ bars. I got the camcorder out and took pictures, but the distance proved too far to draw out any real detail, and the zoom was too pathetic to counter this problem. We sat into our chairs staring at the hookers drinking our beers. In a few hours time we’d be up again and on a coach headed for a new hotel and a new set of places to see.

Travel Tales 1 - On the balcony (Malaysia)

credit to Jabela - the owner of this photo showing Redang resort

The balcony was a small lot of darkly stained wood planks - they filled the floor and made a fence between two concrete pillars. I’d been sitting on a wicker chair enjoying the full moon and the faint light cast down by it.

Matthew soon joined me, and we watched the panorama together in silence. A swimming pool sat in the centre and two rows of other rooms curved around it. Matthew cracked open a small can of Heineken and began into his chair.

Despite not facing the beachfront, our room and it’s balcony did maintain a very peaceful scene at night. The swimming pool glowed from the bottom - lights still operated under the water - and when I peered out into the distance towards the other rooms, their occupiers could also be seen out on their balconies, all of them at ease.

The days were slow, but the evenings even slower. And for the three nights spent on Redang Island, I grew to love it's ambience, and how everyone seemed tethered by it.

The resort stretched out long and far, with it’s lodgings scattered into blocks around the concrete paths, the well-tended lawns and the palm trees. But nothing looked to scale. The vastness of the sea and the enormity of the forested hills surrounding the island humbled everything manmade. Yet it was easily forgotten out on the balconies at night. You could feel a cool breeze the sea would bring in, and you could hear the water come up to the edge of the sand and retreat again, but you couldn’t make out the far distance in the pitch black beyond the luminosity of the resort. And so it felt small and intimate; to have lost some of the open space.

Moths flickered between lamps that nestled on each balcony, creating soft fluttering noises against the ocean. I sat content and without words listening to the beach. Cicadas sang on the trees and in between the grass, and the faint footsteps of loose sandals from couples could be heard against the tiny whistling of the wind. Redang was a romantic place certainly, and it suited the lone traveller too. It was bleak with simplicity, but beautiful for it, and behind it’s bareness was the feeling of being closer to mother nature. I never allowed myself to dwell on anything too deep or potentially meaningful however, as it seemed like a distraction from the actuality. I was content with living in the ''now''.

Matthew was staring at the swimming pool with a large curiosity. He placed his beer on the arm of his chair and moved forward slightly.
‘What’s that big plastic thing over there?’
‘The thing attached to the side of the pool?’ I said loosely.
‘Yeah, it looks like a hideout or something’
There was enough light to make out the basic shape of the structure, and some of the detail that rose from it could be seen also.
‘I think it’s a slide’ I said ‘and the rest looks like a miniature mountain’
‘Well that’s stupid. Where are the lasers? If it had a big laser coming out of it, or even a rocket, you could use it in a James Bond film or something.’
I thought about this for awhile, and I had to agree with him. It certainly was missing a laser or two.
‘Maybe they have a suggestion box’ I joked.

And with that, we continued to talk about nonsense until the view grew tired with us. The chairs were pulled back into our room and the glass door slid shut with the curtains drawn. As I went to use the bathroom, I caught a reflection of myself in a mirror by the sink. I looked long and hard at it wondering: will the rest of my vacation be as pleasant as this?