2 february 2001

Welcome to Malaysia

A ficherman's village

Cameron Highlands

Peherentian Island

Khota Bharu

Kuala Lumpur

Every now and then in our travels we’ve had an otherworldly feeling. It happens during moments when we look around ourselves and are startled by how different everything is. The first time this happened was in Pakistan, sitting in one of those roadside restaurants with mats on the floor and flies fighting you for your meat and tribesmen come in from the hills proposing you hashish and Koran readings.

Georgetown gives you the same feeling because it was an outpost of Chinese civilisation three generations ago, when poor farmers came to this far-flung corner of the British Empire to escape poverty and hunger. The island of Penang may have paved streets and orderly traffic, bars and ATM’s, but when you head off into the depths of Chinatown then you can look around and say, "we’re out there".

The Chinese have organised themselves deliciously here. The streets are lined with places to eat, and the people always seem to be taking advantage of it. Shrimps and crabs and lobsters and things you never knew the sea was capable of producing. But if you take the side streets, you come upon Chinese village associations, large traditional buildings containing elaborate alters in honour of the founder of the Association. There’s the Chinese Liquor Merchants Association, or the Yan Village Association. In many ways it reminds me of Bathurst Street in Toronto with its Landsmannschafts and synagogues built by people who went to Canada from Shlamertzk, a tiny village in Western Moldavia.

Most of the news here is Chinese. They really generate the magic of the place, and it’s hard not to be charmed by the old black and white photos on the walls of their meeting halls: groups of stiffly posing men before a Union Jack, the coolies in the background sporting pony-tails and white long-sleeved starched shirts.

We went for a walk in Little India, home to the community of Tamils and Gujaratis who also moved here seeking a better life. It was funny to sort of feel we were in India again: the sound of Hindi film music, the smell of beedis and tandoori, the sight of someone pissing in the street.

And yet India has taken on another dimension in our thoughts and memories. Our beloved Bhuj has been destroyed, 90% of the graceful old town reduced to rubble. Knowing the catastrophic way things function there even when there are no earthquakes, I shudder to think of what must be going on now.

We have received news of the Annapurna Hotel, though. It seems that Shiva does sometimes award the Good for their kindness and the hotel structure and owners have been spared.