News from Ted
On my way back to the Choong Thean hotel.
June 19th
I didn’t mean to get to the border [between Thailand and Malaysia] so soon, but I’m loath to start any new adventures. How tepid – and here I am at the frontier. Another set of forms in quintuplet, and a pink one, and yet another, all laboriously filled out by the same young man with the pot belly, wide swarthy face and wearing the same shirt. Halfway through he reaches into his shirt, over his stomach and pulls out a pistol and dumps it in a drawer. Another thirty baht for stamps, and 50 baht for overtime. Saturday is a holiday. I must pay £3 to take the bike in and out.
At the Malaysian checkpoint I ask the customs officer whether he charges overtime as well. With all the smug understatement of a British official at a channel port he says, “This is Malaysia, not Thailand.”
On the new film, just changed fortunately, was a woman planting rice. Well there must be plenty of them about. Also my only picture of those strange outcrops of rock with tufts of veg on top. Would have also liked the long wooden two-storey houses – a full block in length – with shops below: fore-runners of the brick ones in Penang. But these are not colonnaded.
A telegram awaits me at the Choong Thean, telling me not to worry about the crankshaft. Strange. [I wasn’t worried, and had no idea where this came from.]
I’m obsessed by absence of word from Jo.
[I was in thrall to two women, Carol and Jo. All of this will have to be explained, another time.]
Bloat myself on a two-course meal at the Tai Tong restaurant in Cintra street, on corner of Campbell. Only decent restaurant I’ve found in Penang – thanks to Carol. And where is she now? And what does it mean to me? Once again, the sense of sliding away.
At the Kedai Kopi [coffee shop] on Rope Walk. Calendar on the wall. Idiot blond racing driver (Formula 2) wearing laurels and smoking Rothmans. “When you know what you’re doing ….“
Another shows idiot boat designer and client, both European of course, burning up State Express, the successful man’s cigarette.
And another from Lee Yean Lum, shows a woman on a collapsable divan.
Opposite me there’s a skinny brown fellow impatiently filling an empty Benson & Hedges Gold pack with cheap cigarettes. Tosses the empty packets on the floor. The manager screams, and he picks up the refuse. His trishaw waits outside. No, not his. He has only an enormous sack and a huge wicker basket which he carries and drags off down the road. The trishaw belongs to the other man with the fixed crook in his neck who’s always here going through the Chinese papers at night.
The other news at the hotel is that Th’an has got the sack. He looks at me imploringly as he returns my five dollars – which I return to him. But he might be slyer than I think.
Sunday 20th June
Last night slept in the Boss’s room. Surprisingly cool, and quiet once the mahjong players give up after midnight. Today moved back to room 6 – which should have a bronze plaque attached to honour me. Decide to send home everything I can spare. Don’t want my loose bits and pieces around to fall off and disappear. Think a lot depends on keeping a ‘tight ship’ for a while.
That’s a strange metaphor. Seems quite gross and inapt. But it’s a matter of control and outline. Just as any living cell may be composed of exactly the same ingredients as the surrounding environment but still must retain its individuality within a membrane to exist at all. Its form may fluctuate constantly and it is in permanent exchange with its environment. But the order on which it depends must be protected.
The thief ruptures my membrane, but only because it is strained and weak in certain places.
Things to do:
Pack extra things in box and post. $15
Buy ladles and fan
Buy Padlock
Make lense case
Buy gallon of oil
Postage rates: 1 Kg 11.60; 3 15.20; 5 19.30: 10 26.10
Send 9 kg parcel to mother. Contents: Carol’s boots, sweater, Jacket, Helmet. Club, 3 fans, 3 ladles, 2 baskets, maps and papers, sponge bag.
Last days in Penang
Met New Zealander, Jack, in room No. 7. He has inherited the trishaw driver, Jimmy who seems to go with the room. He has already tried opium and shames me. Together we visit Aik Seng bazaar (Smack Alley) and go to a den, one of several board shacks that line the alley. A plump man in pyjama trousers (with pocket) and small glasses squeezed onto a fat face, waits. Two double bunks at right angles fill one half of the room. A table in opposite corner. Bottom bunk is covered with line. Is very wide so that a man can lie on it crosswise. He takes the opium out of a shoe – little packets made from a leaf folded across once then folded again at the sides. Inside a dark brown tarry substance. The pipe is almost like a flute, dark polished wood hollowed and open at one end with a hole pierced in the side near the other end. Into the whole, and glued there by gum, fits the bowl. With a long needle he scrapes some of the resin off the leaf and holds it over a flame from a candle which burns inside a glass. The glass seems very thick, and has been cracked at some time, and patched up. We lie facing each other on the lino, on our sides.
My head is on a wooden block. He twirls the needled over the flame and the resin melts and bubbles out, making fantastic shapes as he rolls the needle to prevent the resin from falling off. The in its warm, pliable state he tamps it down and thrusts the needle into the bowl, first shaping it into a plug then twisting so that it remains in the small aperture with a fine channel for air left by the needle. The bowl is then inverted over the flame, and the art is to draw the pipe, long and slow, until all the opium has been exhausted, in one lungful. I got three lungfuls from a packet but was probably short changed since four or more are usual. When I’d mastered it (not difficult) he made approving noises – “Good, good.” – but instead of staying there to appreciate the effect we were ushered out into the street. All I felt was a prolonged haziness, no tension, which lasted till bedtime but much diminished. Following morning felt a slight undertone of apathy but not enough to stop me from doing my business. The main pleasure and interest was in the ritual and the conspiratorial intimacy of the atmosphere in that small, candle-lit box of cream and brown highlights and shadows.
Th’an, usually dressed in yellow, short sleeved vest and baggy cotton trousers. Usually seated, he flopped a little to the left with the shirt askew at the neckline. His feet protruded as dark and rather scaly objects in sandals. Iron grey hair in a real short-back-and-sides. Mouth usually open in an O shape, with the tongue tied back behind it.
“To go around the world you must have, I think so, five thousand dollars. Only then can you have enough, because I am too old. If I can go into the jungle or the desert I will die. “
As he expressed a sad thought, even though it is a purely hypothetical abstraction his face shows deep melancholy for that moment. It is in fact one of the great faces of my life. My Quasimodo.
I don’t know about you, but it feels very strange to be writing, gardening, cooking, drinking and laughing while the world around us seems to be rushing to a confluence of disastrous outcomes. It reminds me of when I was locked up in Brazil, with a not unreasonable expectation that they might “disappear” me. I found that I could only be really afraid for a few minutes, that you can only sustain it for so long before you start thinking of more enjoyable things. So I can easily imagine us all going laughing into the apocalypse. Right now I’m scared, but soon it’ll be time for dinner.
[I forgot to mention that a few weeks ago I dinged my scooter (and myself) doing a silly thing on a hill in the village. We met a concrete wall, at very slow speed. It was enough to loosen the left mirror, scratch the screen, and hit a nerve somewhere in my left hip. I was persuaded, against my will, to get an X-ray. The nurse asked how it happened. Then she asked how old I was. I told her and she flew into a temper. What was I doing, at my age, riding a bike? I said, against the evidence, that it went very well – “Ca marche tres bien, merci.”
The X-ray produced nothing. The nerve pain has gone. I’m fine, but the mirror is still all over the place, because I couldn’t figure out how to fix it. On Thursday I was invited to lunch by three bikers – Paul, Paul and Pete.
Paula and Paul are two Brits who live on the other side of France. Peter Clark is my friendly neighbourhood Kiwi mechanic who said it will be easy to fix the mirror, next Thursday. So everything, as usual, has worked out fine. Just thought you’d like to know.]
Adrienne’s House, Kata Beach, 17th June 1976
During my first two days I continued shaky and depressed, constipated, tired. On the third day I suddenly felt solid and ‘whole’ again. I know what it’s like to feel whole. Before this my separate parts were not working together, and I felt very vulnerable.
On Monday went to A’s shop at the resort. Saw a silver thimble with set stones that seemed good for Jo. Then became intoxicated by a set of bronze cutlery in a case with bronze handles.
Spent part of Tuesday wondering about it but felt that I would buy it. On Wednesday A & A left on a bus for Bangkok, with some trepidation when one of the regular buses was stopped by bandits and robbed. Paid for the cutlery. Saw them off. Alice gave directions for Nepal. Brought car back. The other two went out. I drank a bottle of beer and had a period of euphoria, considering my novel.
It also came to me that my proper position is to do and say only what I think is right and true, and if there is any part for me to play in the lives of others, then the call must come from them. Futile or destructive to plan participation.
Interesting, says Alice, how the way people travel reveals so much about them.
Here in Phuket an insect whistles in the heat continuously, like a kettle boiling in Ladbroke Gardens.
The English Hippy coming down the trail [in Nepal.] So pale, then he sees a bit of colour on his skin. “You’ve got hepatitis,” says his friend. “Really! I thought I was getting a tan at last.”
The world is kind to those who know how to be kind to themselves.
On my last afternoon walked up the hill behind the house and over the brow to look down on another smaller bay and green water breaking on the long gently inclining beach like lace ruffles on a silk shirt. Passed a small hut at the top where some young boys and a dog were busy. On the way back the eldest boy called “You.” (A very short oo sound) and the smaller ones now clustered in the doorway chorused after him. He held a green mango and proffered it with both hands before him in a supplicating attitude, pushing it towards me in a series of short thrusts. I walked up to accept it (wondering what I could do with it) when one of the other boys call out “One Baht.” That stopped me and my smile must have changed to surprise. “No, no,” he called, with real consternation, apparently overwhelmed by what he had done. I took the mango. It was the first, and probably my last chance to accept an unsolicited gift. Tomorrow, I’m afraid, there will be no free mangoes in Thailand. The Thais have been renowned for centuries by their spontaneous small acts of giving.
Friday 18th June
From Kata. Rose at 7. Packed. Ate eggs and coffee. House has been a bit desolate since the A’s left. Sorry it’s over, but glad to leave. Lost way slightly into town. A soggy-looking sky promises – and delivers rain. Lose my rain jacket at the Esso station. Ride back 12 miles to get it – but gone. A car driver picked it up before the Esso man could get it. Then I saw the green car pass me later in opposite direction. Missed both the sights I’d planned to visit but may have seen the cave outside Phang Nga.
Many small groups of rubber trees along roadside with latex mats hanging on wooden rails outside houses. Huts, rather. Nothing much in Krabi. Go on to Trang.
Enthusiastic schoolboys send me to hotel. Go walking in town. Buy umbrella, 53 baht. Find eating house. Fried chicken noodles with fat shrimps– 15 baht. Beer, 20. Coffee,4. When bill comes, noodles reduced to 10, beer to 17, coffee to 2, cigs and matches,7. Amazing spontaneous deductions. What to make of it? Very cheered. Go to bed at 7pm. Much too early, but tired. Woke up in night to write this. Two people are honking – not snoring.
Saturday 19th June
Up at 7. Coffee. Dim sum with meat filling., some tasty little rolls of prawn & dough, and sweet fried dough. The day seems to start well. Then I notice an unusual slackness about the tank bag. [The bike was parked inside the hotel for security.]
Scarcely able to believe my suspicion, but it’s horribly true. The camera has gone. That awful hostile emptiness where something should be is echoed by the hollow in my stomach. From the first moment I know it’s gone for good. Why even mention it? Why not just wheel the bike out into the sun with a satisfied smile, and leave.
But I have to go through the performance. Gradually the smiling faces around me change to more suitable expressions as they come to believe that I’m serious in my pantomime. The manager comes. He calls his staff one by one and upbraids them for failing to notice the thief. He knows better than I that it’s just a ritual. Then finally he comes to me and expresses his distress in the most ritualistic and, to me, amazing gesture of all. Body bowed forward, face raised up to mine, hands together in prayer, a strange smile with the corners of the mouth drawn down, lips tight across the teeth, nodding, “Sorry, sorry.”
Twice he does it. I’m so impressed that later, trying to keep the picture clearer in my mind, I can almost justify the loss of the camera by the experience. If only I could. In my distress my arithmetic goes to pieces and I’m confused by the currency which is a low denomination anyway. I insist that the camera is worth 100,000 baht. Afterwards I wonder whether I left anyone pondering what kind of camera it was that was worth $5000.
But there’s no denying it. I have been finally stripped of all my heroic, swashbuckler’s aura and reduced to the common tourist that I am. All tourists have their cameras stolen in Thailand. Well, I haven’t met one yet who hasn’t. And I’ve thoroughly joined that sorry legion of trippers. First the jacket. Then the camera.
Riding on, my mind turns the matter over and over, looking for its significance. An unusual number of near misses – two dogs and a kid goat come within inches of my front wheel. A lorry drives me into a patch of wet, newly laid tar and stones – the bike feels unstable again on slow corners. I feel the need to muster up more strength and resolution than my low reserves can provide. Care, patience, good humour.
I’m passing blind through the countryside. No excitement, no interest. A pity. I thought I’d recovered it with my health. It must come back again. I still have the other camera. Only one to look after now. And the important lenses I still have. Will the ST stand as insurance? Who did I have that conversation with? Was it Mike Randall? And if the camera – what about the tape recorder? [I lost it in Ethiopia.]
Must remember the use of motorcycles in Thailand. Three or four people sandwiched on a small Honda is quite common. It’s rare to see one person alone. Here’s a complete family. Three adults, a baby on the back and another one stuck between them somewhere. And not going slowly. No helmets. And girls driving. Saw one girl fall off the back. She spun and tumbled in the air. Seemed to be all right though.
[Next week: Down ‘Smack Alley.’]
[Everything in these notebooks is, of course, personal, but some of what I wrote is so intimate and revealing that I was tempted to edit it out. I have resisted the temptation because the introspection that plays out inside the helmet on a solitary journey is a valuable part of the experience. My thoughts and judgements were necessarily fleeting and not what I might think today.]
From Haad Yai, Saturday June 12th
8.30 am Breakfast seems too expensive. Can’t get map. Ride out. Find myself trying to make comparisons between SE Asia and South America.
Somewhere there’s a conference to improve the world’s water supplies. Impossible. Would ruin the soft drinks industry.
And in Vancouver, Peter Shore at a housing conference criticises new building projects. Says emphasis should be on rehabilitation. Here they can’t tear the old buildings down fast enough. In Singapore one high-rise apartment every 15 minutes. Impossible to stop. What would the bright urban Chinese do without these projects to pay for their Mercedes, stereo and whisky?
Thai landscape looks cleaner than Malaya’s. My tinted goggles colour the rice paddies to look like a Singapore Airlines ad. Remember the hopelessly incongruous Western cigarette ads in Chinese coffee house – snatches of Henry Mancini orchestrations between Chinese messages on radio.
Pass through winding mountain passes. Soldiers around. Then to Trang. Stop for coffee and cakes. Previously ate a poor pineapple. The woman who sold it to me was so ashamed to take the money that she thrust another pineapple upon me. The last part of the journey was through gathering masses of those stumps of rock thrusting through the earth’s crust, with vertical walls eroded by falling water, trees and brush growing on every available ledge and from every cranny, and above all on the top so that they somehow seem crowned with green wigs. While others come to resemble each one a huge tree in a forest of giants. The road curls among these rocks in a series of ever tightening cavortings leading many drivers (in my mind’s eye at least) to a vortical doom.
I still find my handling a trifle unsteady when not under power. But nothing like what it had been earlier. Then I’d had a feeling of wobble so great that one, stopping at a junction, I was convinced my rear tyre had gone flat. The bike didn’t seem to want to go above 45 – increasing vibration and a sense of terrible strain. Later it occurred to me to check the alignment, not done when wheel was changed. The off-sides of both wheels were in line. I centered them and the effect was dramatic. There was much greater stability and the biked surged forward without protest.
I reflected on the damage that would be done to various parts by continual bad alignment, chain, both sprockets, tyres perhaps, even engine balance from the slightly outward component of tension.
As a result, arrived happily in Phuket before dark. I had carefully schooled myself against expectation knowing that particularly now my resilience was low. But I had not anticipated that I wouldn’t even be able to find Kata Beach. I had imagined an island with a ferry and so was surprised to find myself suddenly in Phuket, without even noticing the bridge. I rode the length of a drab-looking main street, hoping to spot a lucky sign with English subtitles. Nothing. Then I was at the end. A terminal roundabout. A couple of restaurants. Already I’d realised how little English is spoken.
Last night I’d battled to understand a young man in the restaurant. (He looked so much like the early Mike Molloy [an acquaintance from my newspaper days] – youth with dignity – eagerness with gravity) who wanted to tell me about something at 9 o’clock that I could go to. When it was 9, he came up and said “Now you can go. When he realised I wasn’t going it must have suddenly penetrated that I hadn’t understood a word. All my nods and grunts of encouragement hadn’t meant anything except Jimmy Carter’s self-centered desire “not to irritate.” He became all formality and distance.
In Phuket I found no-one who spoke even as well as he did. The word Kata itself, pronounced every way I could (correctly it sounds like “cutter”) left faces bright with incomprehension. Then at last somebody asked somebody and came to point me back into town with talk of “five ways” which seemed to be a roundabout. Then I found an expensive hotel with a Chinese receptionist. She did her best to dissuade me from going to Kata. “It’s a long way she said.” (It isn’t). Then she produced a map. “My hotel is here …“ For five baht.
At last I was on my way. Even so, the directions were wrong. But fortunately I asked again at the crucial crossing and got the right advice, to follow a dirt road over two brows and down to the beach hut, coffee shop.
Kata beach, in 1976
A native came to greet me. I took him to be the proprietor when he offered me a drink. I took tea. Then he turned out to be the schoolmaster Hans had sent me to. And as we talked Adrienne came past in a Datsun. So, abandoning the bike went with her and companions (son Daniel, American Carol, Australian Alice) to another beach to eat fish and stuff. Now I had to admit the beaches were very welcoming – feeling I hadn’t known since San Andres. I was less certain about the girls – particularly the American who had a pseudo-fey act and strained after impossible similes – the sky she said, rather conclusively ¬– was like Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.
Alice, argumentative and self-assertive, drew the same attitude from me (or was it vice-versa?) But at last it became clear that we could all co-exist, mainly because Adrienne seemed to glow with equal fondness at all of us.
Am much aware that I have to recover a great deal of moral strength to continue this journey. Physically I’m poor too. Constipation and putative piles make a poor combination, and my sequences all seem dislocated. There’s still a midget swinging his tiny torch around the edge of my right eye, and that ultimate fuzziness of vision is certainly depressing and disorientating.
Monday 14th
Reading “A Thinker’s Notebook. Posthumous papers of a Buddhist Monk.” And I suddenly realise:
I DON’T BELIEVE ANYONE
How long has this been true? For a very long time – it certainly goes back to my schooldays. When and where was I betrayed, and by whom?
And it comes to me now, as the immediate next thought, that the only person I know that I would be prepared to believe is Jo. [The girl friend I left behind in France.]
This not the same as believing in someone.
I believe in Carol, for example, but only in what she is – not in what she says or does.
This leads to a clearer perception of my love of ideals and systems, then my feeling for objects and wildlife and my eagerness for experiences. Always looking for the foundation for some credibility. And myself. How much I want to believe myself.
It is notable that no successful politician ever exhibits the qualities that thinking and feeling people associate with greatness. When the word genius is used in connection with elected politicians it is always understood to refer to a special and elementary scale of values suitable for mundane achievements.
I am accustomed to hear from people who stay in one place that there is no more to be learned from travelling around the world than by scratching in one’s own backyard. They seem to ignore that the proposition would be true either way around. A chacun son gout. (i.e. travelling seems to them a waste of effort.)
In fact the first requisite is to keep up the scratching. For a limited (though long) period of time I have found that travel stimulates me to scratch, while those who stay at home and talk about it generally have very smooth backyards.
There are of course other benefits of travel which cannot be had so easily at home, offering so much more of life’s furniture and ephemera, with which to clothe and refresh one’s ideas. And to travel alone is not unlike inhabiting a moveable monastery – attachments can be few. Often as I travel and feel my isolation I wonder whether I am moving towards a life free altogether from attachments or, on the contrary, am learning to value better those things and people to whom I wish to be attached once more. To me it is like the difference between meat and vegetables.
Wisdom is of the moment. It cannot last, but quickly decays and has to be renewed. So ‘wise people’ are always being caught out in acts of folly. While wisdom comes out of the mouths of babes. The wise “wise man” knows when to retreat into doubt and ignorance. Thus ‘no man is a hero to his valet’ and no man can be a guru to his wife. And heaven help him and his children if he tries to be a guru to them.
“The futility of life and the world” The man who insists that the violin in his hand is actually a hammer will soon find the violin futile.
PHUKET 13th – 18th June
Kata
Adrienne and the beach
Half a mile of curling beach facing NW with small island at mouth of bay. Heavy vegetation on slopes, coconut palms on shore. Sea is green (shallow) and blue (deeper). Road enters at West end – two huts selling food and drink. Other huts at East end, and a generator. Fluorescent tube light and oil lamps. Water buffalo. Chickens. People moving slowly in sarongs. Fishermen along the beach at night, with torches among the rocks at the East end. Soon a prince is to build a hotel, and all will change. Now the schoolmaster rents out a bungalow, (e.g. to Hans.)
Alice: a blonde Gunilla in search of a title? Everything she says is extruded with great force, otherwise no-one will hear or believe – herself too, perhaps. Incredible, amazing, totally and completely. She and everyone else is always freaked out, spaces filled with “you know” often repeated. Good head, intelligent, greedy, ‘Jewish nose,’ square forceful jaw, neck round and pillar-like, set slightly forward on soft round shoulders. Too fat, but not obese. Australian originally, from Melbourne. ‘Ran away’ at 17, to Israel. Kibbutz, university at Jerusalem, BA in variety of subjects – major English. Now thirtyish. Worked in Hong Kong. Essalon where she met “amazing, incredible, high energy, powerful people.” [Llama Govinda, Feldenkreis, whose speciality is helping people recover disused faculties. Ruthie Allen, his disciple, etc.] Also Nepal, monasteries, courses, If any of this has planted a seed will the shoots ever emerge? Smokes heavily (so do I). Arrived at Phuket resort very debilitated. Met Adrienne and on the basis of mutual acquaintances, came to stay. Is much attached to the idea of “people chain.” One feels that without a mutual friend one has no credentials. Ours was Jane Raphael in Cape Town.
Dan: heavy, superficially benign, (21), but obsessed with his own problems – with some reason. Son by a previous marriage to an American in Louisiana but does not know his father. (Ceasarian birth perhaps – Adrienne has the scar but might be by other operation). Has few accomplishments but parlays them wildly in conversation. “Do you speak Thai?” – “YES, FLUENTLY!” Plays guitar – has never been able to keep a place in a band. – “I’ve played in a LOT of bands.” Likes buying machinery and taking it to pieces but, says Adrienne, someone else always has to put it together again. Came on very knowledgeable about Triumphs. He had one – knows the man with all the spare parts in Bangkok. Likes to talk about his problems – you can see him settling in to wallow in them – but cannot ask for help and finds it irrelevant when offered. He knows, you see. He wants to be a racing driver. Might kill himself at that, or some other way. Hope not. There’s a good man inside. His recent hernia operation is useful to him also. He used to lift cars with one hand. Paralysed.
Karen: Whatever is inside there she’s determined to hide it for forever. Make-up, blank eyes, frizzed hair, head band, clothes, gestures. She hangs tight and loses her balance constantly. Has learned to play and sing with a guitar – like a machine. She is a permanent disturbance, like generator – but produces no light.
Adrienne: Is French, from (somewhere) near Nancy. First to Louisiana where she met Paul, a Swiss who joined the US Air Force, flew planes, crashed one, and was grounded. Studied in the South on a GI Bill, later went into advertising in Thailand (Nestlé). Over ambitious, ulcers, eventually changed to hand-crafted jewellery exporting. Both embraced Buddhism. She pursues her knowledge and development on a daily basis, and has achieved much calm, enough to maintain tranquility for all these dissonant elements in her house. She likes to draw meaning and morals from life but can also stop talking. Often hums a few bars of something to displace the energy.
[In last week’s transcription from my notes, I left you while trying to raise my spirits by riding around the island of Penang. On one of the beaches I met a young German, recently graduated, who was trying to make his mind up whether to study medicine. For some reason he seemed to think my opinion was valuable but there was immediate sympathy between us. In return he recommended that I visit Kata beach, at Phuket, and seek out a woman called Adrienne.
Hans-Georg Hoffman did become a doctor, and he is my friend to this day.
In the meantime, while waiting for the new stator to arrive from England I thought I would take up fishing. I couldn’t find the beach that T’han had recommended, but I saw men fishing along the promenade in town and went to join them with my rod and tackle. What happened next is fully described in “Riding High,” but there is nothing in my notebook about it for the simple reason that I was blind and in hospital for a week, where my documents were stolen, demoralising me completely. When I came out to convalesce, I was in no state to make notes. Meanwhile the stator had arrived, and Lucas installed it for me. Eventually I felt able to ride again, but my plan to cross over to Indonesia for a short while had to be abandoned. I had already booked a passage to India, and there was only time to make a short trip into Thailand in search of Adrienne. Then I started again to make notes.]
Friday, June 11th, Left for Haad Yai
Next to Kings Hotel, a smart hotel with a “drug store“ façade, is a dingy restaurant with box rooms upstairs. Sitting at a table, two Europeans. One tall thin, blonde, and very nervous with boiled blue eyes. A Norwegian. Next to him a squat bearded man with a square hard face. Swiss. The Norwegian speaks an efficient, mechanical English which he drives out of his mouth in lurches of fluency – like a tank turning a corner.
“You are quite right” – grind – “Thailand was full of Americans” – shudder – “the people were dependent on them” – His theory is that the Thais have become obstreperous and greedy because the Americans have abandoned them. An odd thesis. The Swiss listens impassively, obviously not impressed. Tired and shaken by this first journey since my last illness I accept what the place offers – an upstairs box with two hard beds, a fan, and two gauze covered escape hatches on to a narrow space between the two buildings through which float dank odours. 35 baht.
The two others want to make a round of the brothels in an open mini-bus – small Japanese type vehicle with a small bus body superimposed, two benches and a crew of two smiling, softly hustling me.
“You don’t worry for anything. I live here 25 years. You take number of car. You can tell police.”
We visit a series of lock-up shop fronts with the sliding mesh grills almost closed. Inside each one a room with hard seats and benches, a TV, shelves with little dolls on them . And girls with puffy made-up faces sitting around. Some quite pretty. Scenes of fearful boredom. We sit and stare at them a while. The Norwegian makes mechanical jokes. I read his copy of Newsweek. The US primaries are grinding on with their synthesized sensation. After three town brothels (at the third one a nice girl is fondling a toy chick) our guides offer us “the bungalow.” Best girls. Very expensive.
“If you find me a nice girl” says N, “and I don’t think it is very likely,” pause “I will stay with her for maybe one week. My girl has left me. I sent her money. I have given her 10,000 baht from Norway, but she is sick,” he coughs in illustration, “she has gone away. I offered to take her to a doctor. She has bronchitis and gonorrhea. For an injection. She won’t go. ‘Is too painful. Too pain-fool’ she says. I am heart broken. I must have a girl to forget.”
When he hears how I pay for my journey he becomes enthusiastic about journalism. He worked on a local paper. 7000 circulation. But not enough money. He became a radio operator. Worked on a ship for two years, between Malaysia and China. Never got off the ship. It was a hell of a life. I nearly got a breakdown.” Looks as though he might have one any minute.
The ”bungalow” is just outside town. Has two stories – a small suburban house. The prize girl, demure with clean features, a dazzling smile and a faint moustache, sits on show. She has just come back from school, we’re told. She has to earn money for books. N doesn’t fancy her but sees another and bargains for her. Finally for US$20 she comes back with us to spend the night with him.
Out walking in the evening and into King’s for a Thai dinner. There’s a police party filling the restaurant. The big shots make speeches – everybody keeps on talking among themselves – but applaud enthusiastically all the same. Three girls, specially dressed with strings of beads round their top knots, do Thai dances, swaying and figuring with their hands. Then singing. Then dancing. To my surprise the couples also face each other, swaying and moving their hands and arms in classical fashion. A living tradition, by God.
Terrible night in my box. Mosquitoes, damp air, At last get the net out and do my best with it. Some sleep. Narrative dreams.
Next week: In pursuit of Adrienne.
Hi everybody, I’m back.
Since the last instalment of my notes from the seventies I have been to a German biker meeting, in Gieboldehausen in the north of Germany. It’s quite a long way from where I live, so I made it a voyage of discovery, staying overnight in Brioude and Besançon on the way there, and in Strasbourg on the way back. I had never been to any of them before, and all three cities are wonderfully interesting, but the one that struck home was Besançon.
I hadn’t known it, but this city is famous for everything to do with time, and it was once the home of France’s biggest watch manufacturer, LIP. There were three floors of a museum dedicated to it. I don’t know if you remember, but when I got my bike out of the Triumph factory, the place was in turmoil. Now I learned that in 1973, at exactly the same time, the same month even, that the workers at the Triumph factory in Meriden where seizing the factory and locking out the management, the workers at LIP were doing the same thing. That I should stumble on this by accident just seemed remarkable to me. Here’s just one of the graphic posters they produced at the time.
On permanent strike: support the fight of the workers
The fight went on for years but in the end, of course, both struggles were doomed.
I had a reason to go to Gieboldehausen.
My autobiography, “Don’t Boil the Canary,” has been translated into German and it has just been published. Translating a book as long as that one is a tremendous undertaking, and to have had it done by an established professional would have been much too costly. However, I have an angel. Her name is Eva Strehler, she wants to become professional, and she approached me more than a year ago to say she wanted to translate my book as an exercise, without payment. She did a couple of chapters and to my surprise they were good. So she ploughed on and gradually more people became involved in the project, reading the chapters, making suggestions. My cousin Christine, a quite literary doctor in the north of Germany, read them and discussed the problems of translating English vernacular into German with her friends. Ralph Wüstefeld of Gieboldehausen, who is one of the originators of the MotorRadTreffen, or MRT as it’s known also became involved and, being a businessman, he also arranged for it to be printed by Books On Demand. The title “Don’t Boil The Canary” does not translate well into German. It was my cousin who eventually came up with the title, ironically, in English: “Go For It.”
So finally the book was published, and I went to Gieboldehausen for the launch. More than 500 bikers who all have a taste for adventure received it very well and, more to the point, bought a lot of copies, so Eva will get something for all her hard work. She is quite a unique individual, well known for travelling with a sidecar and her dog, Polly. While all the excitement with my book was going on, she was away on her bike travelling through Iran. And then, disaster!. In a heavy traffic situation her dog got spooked and ran away, and is now lost forever. As if that wasn’t enough, when she finally gave up looking and left for Turkey, some miserable thief stole half her belongings. I know how one bad thing leads to another, which is pretty much the theme of these next episodes from the notebooks of my journey.
From My Notebooks in 1976: After Kuala Lumpur
[I remember, now, that Carol wanted me to take her to the Cameron Highlands, an area well known for its beauty and pleasant climate. It was shortly after our parting there, as I was riding down to go to the island of Penang, that I discovered that the stator, the very same spare part that I had just mailed back to England, was kaput. I was able to go on riding as long as the battery was charged, so I had to make frequent stops. At one such stop, where I stayed overnight, there was a three-day funeral in progress, involving tremendous noise all night. I described it in “Riding High.” Eventually I made it to the capital of Penang where Lucas had a branch, and they arranged to have a new stator flown out. I resigned myself to a three-week wait.]
Georgetown, May 8th
Shriven is the best word I can find to describe how I feel; stripped, shorn, reduced, after a series of incidents that have exhausted me.
There was a rough, socially paralysing and exorbitantly expensive passage from Perth to Singapore; followed in rapid succession by the harrowing conclusion of a crisis in my personal affairs, a 48-hour fever and a tropical cold that dragged on for a fortnight.
Singapore itself is an eardrum-shattering ordeal of torrential traffic and K.L. is no better. Between the two was rain. Just north of K.L. the motorcycle suddenly ceased to function, due to the failure of a part which could only be obtained from England.
I struggled on to Penang, determined at least to wait somewhere pleasant. For a few days, life picked up again. I got the front forks straightened out again – they’ve been crossed since Argentina – and . . . .
[Here my notes petered out. Then this on the next page.]
Choong Thean Hotel, 42 Rope Walk, Georgetown
Colours, pale blue and cream. Wooden shutters, painted floors and walls. Ten rooms on two floors, $5 for one, $6 for two. Ground floor open-fronted with folding shutters. Cement floor, motorcycles and bicycles. One round marble-topped table, a desk in corner outside the door of the boss’s room. Several Indian ladies of various ages and sizes sit around waiting for custom, sometimes outside on the pavement, sometimes inside. Most of them get five or six dollars a time, though there’s a thin younger one who gets more and is said to have a good technique. The hotel gets $1.20 for the use of the small room at the back between the mah jong tables and the kitchen. A belligerent bouncy fellow with eyes like marbles runs the tables and gets 40 cents a game. The tables have slots on each edge for counters and pads f white paper pinned on the top to make a fresh surface for each game. Many of the customers are fishermen passing time between bringing their catch to market and going out again at night.
In the room beneath mine the abacus clicks away a lot of the time and there are usually several men there during the day, but what they are computing I don’t yet know.
Th’an sits in the front from about lunchtime to 2 am – sometimes with his head sunk on hos breasts dozing, sometimes dreaming of his forthcoming journey around the world – when he gets his 50,000 dollars. He doesn’t think he can do it for less., and he will of course buy travelling cheques. He will spend several months in each country and is particularly set on visiting France.
At other times his mood is more morose and he dwells on his misfortunes – the sale of his stamp and coin collections during the years of 73 and 74 when he could not get any work and had no food to feed his stomach. Then he remembers the Australian man who was so good to him – “I do not know the reason why” – and Th’an cried when he flew away. Afterwards he wrote many times and got no reply and at last he found out that the man was dead.
Th’an says that he could have been a police inspector if he had been prepared to have an operation on his tongue “to cut the string” but he had been tongue-tied since birth and was afraid to go in. He can manage to speak quite well, even in English, and his vocabulary is better than most. Uses words like “seldom.”
Among my fragmentary thoughts about life in Penang – the first excitement fades very rapidly unless something more substantial comes to support one’s interest. At the temple crowds of people dashing in and out with bundles of flaming paper (money?) and chucking them perfunctorily into the incinerators, eyes bleary from the smoke. Everyone also carries bundles of smouldering incense sticks and shuffles them up and down rapidly. The quantities of combustibles bought and consumed in front of one’s eyes is impressive – but there’s a total absence of any sense of purpose or reverence and a good deal of it is obviously automatic rigmarole made worse by the obvious desire to show off by burning bigger bundles than anyone else’s. Everything goes up in smoke and the industry that provides these ephemera must be huge.
Alongside the hotel in Rope Walk are several concerns engaged in making artefacts for religious ceremonies. From elaborate houses of paper on split bamboo frames to shoes ($2 a pair) motorcycles, human figures, etc. All to be burned in offerings. Opposite is a family which, for five generations, has been performing the ceremonies – dressing up every night – chanting, hitting sticks, gongs, bells – leaping over fire, and erecting and taking down their stages all over town.
The boss is a tough-looking man with stubbly grey hair, too busy to stop. The young man who talked to me says they all feel very serious about it. The idea of spending one’s life constructing such elaborate artefacts only to see them going up in flames is a bit exhausting to my mind.
I had spent a week in Georgetown, mostly working on the bike and while it wasn’t unpleasant, I wasn’t at my best either. The first nights I was disturbed by the fan on the floor below drilling up through my pillow, and a rich orchestra of noises made by the others in the hotel who seemed to take it in turns to contribute their coughs and snores rather than getting it over with in a single crescendo. There was something extreme about their noises – where in Europe you might have a few dry coughs, here it sounds like the last explosive rending of the tissues. In the tropics everything is bigger, louder, wetter, dirtier, quicker.
The days were hot and humid, I was drinking too much bottled fizz and not functioning well. Emotionally I was numbed. Then on a Saturday, after a false start the day before, I got the bike on the road at lunchtime and went round the island. There had been heavy rain, the sky was clear and the air much drier. I got my rod and tackle from the hotel and set off to find Bahu Manang where Th’an had told me to fish. But I’d got a false notion of where it was and far from being a bit along from Batu Ferringhi it was almost back to Georgetown on the other side of the island. It became a fine ride over small mountains, and into the valley between to see a play being performed (mostly for children it seemed) on a stage in a village. Two men were on the stage most of the time. One seemed to be a mandarin figure and the other his very obsequious lackey. At one point they left the stage, and a woman appeared dressed in an amazing costume, a huntress, modelled after an early Victorian engraving. She shot a limp arrow in the air and a red cloth bird fell, thump, from the ceiling.
Those last days together were sweet and cruel. We agreed to part when we got to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. We are moving very slowly, but it is now only two days away. The weather is mild and humid and we continue along the coast.
Sunday May 2nd – To Malacca
Wake up feeling sick, but no headache. Can’t get going till 12. Then with monkey on the back we leave for Malacca.
Lots of lovely houses set back from the road among coconut palms and grass. Most of the houses have one room advanced with a small staircase leading up to it, steps typically wide at the bottom so that they seem to be welcoming the guest. Lots of detail woodwork on shutters, rails eaves, etc. Charming, idiosyncratic, the most evolved form of simple tropical life seen so far. Enticing paths lead from the road into the jungle, soft red earth carpets laid between vivid green, leading into a Rousseau paradise. Heaps of pineapples and coconuts at roadside.
In Malacca through central roundabout below the old Portuguese fort (now gone) and ruin of old church. With burgurish Dutch gravestones, one for three children apparently died within a few months of each other at sea. Image of ship on stone.
Heard of youth hostel 9 miles out on coast. A sordid, rainswept relic of a place, ruined by neglect only a decade after its dedication ceremony, still recorded in photographs on the wall of various dignitaries making speeches from the front steps.
A desolate man presides over the sodden foam mattresses and deep-stained pillows. $2.50 each and 50 cents for sheets and pillow slip. Across the way, on beach, a bravely merry mother from Java welcomes us to her restaurant – a small shack of tin & sagu thatch (anchored on coconut stumps) with tables made from the sides of a cable reel.
Prawn fishers with great triangular nets on a bamboo fork plough the shallow waters, a candle fixed to their foreheads like miners. Each working a short strip of beach – moving caverns of light all along the coast. But they are not catching anything tonight. Then the rain starts. Shocking downpour. We wait for it to finish.
“This is my restaurant. I have just opened it. You must come and eat my black rice pudding for breakfast. I can teach you Malay. Teach you to make fried rice.” Husband was army commando. Broke his knee. Says there is trouble between him and his brother. Had to leave before he did something bad. So now they have started up here on the beach. Anyone can. “If you want you can start a restaurant next to me, here.”
May 3rd – To Port Dickson
Now we move through similar country but also big estates. The name “Guthrie” keeps cropping up. It’s not very far but weather continues wet. Leave coast for a while then return. Stay at resthouse ($10) where Scots seaman, now pilot, talks on veranda of his voyages to China, how they harassed foreign crews in ’46 – roll calls on deck every three hours through the night in freezing cold – and then later how they received impeccable treatment but could do nothing but go to Seaman’s Club. Always a group outside to applaud them as they left.
He is entertaining – monologues rich in incident – but like so many raconteurs, his obvious indifference to anyone else’s stories makes him ultimately tedious. I fall asleep. Carol comments afterwards that somehow I manage to do this without causing offence.
Desultory attempt to fish off beach, then we wander into town. Assaulted by a series of stall holders which upsets our fragile mood, and hard to get it back. Though sweet and sour fish was nice it cost too much. Next day to K.L and the parting is too close for any comfort.
May 4th – To Kuala Lumpur
Through huge plantations of oil palms and rubber.
See dirtiest chimney in the world. On the road by the river, a palm oil extraction plant owned by Telak Marbau Plantations Ltd (incorporated in England). Agents: The East Asiatic Co. Ltd.
K.L manager, I.L Anderson: Engineer L.H Cheong.
I have no idea what I had in mind to do with this information. Perhaps adding it to a list of man-made environmental disasters.
These are the last notes I made before Carol and I went our separate ways and I can’t now remember anything at all of how or where we left each other. Sometimes, I know, one has to deaden oneself against the pain. Perhaps that’s why I have no record.
Carol
These were also the last words I wrote in my Australian journal. From now on I’ll be transcribing from this, the last of my four notebooks.
The writing gets smaller and smaller, and packs every page. It covers Malaysia, Thailand, India, Ceylon, Nepal, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey and the usual European countries.
One or two people have suggested that these notes I’ve been sending you for while now would make a good book– yet another version of the journey which many people seem to have taken to their hearts. I have had a few ideas for “The OTHER motorcycle diaries”, but a book needs buyers and you, dear readers are the only people I could hope to sell it to, so let me know what you think. Would you buy the book?
Having left Perth on the Kota Bali after six months in Australia, I am now in Singapore. Still with Carol, but we have agreed to separate in Malaysia. I have decided to lighten my load. Let me remind you that I have transcribed these notes exactly as I wrote them at the time. Sometimes I surprise myself.
April 27th
Make up a parcel for England. Contains my clothes, sweater, boots: Carol’s dress, shorts, shirt, gloves, undies. Carved wombat, shock absorber, stator [which I later profoundly regretted] auto advance coil, pump, books, Carol’s journal. Cost S$ 6.5 i.e. £6.
Every day we develop the theme of our relationship as revealed by the decision to separate. Only touches of bitterness and grief now. Meanwhile, curiously enough, the French couple next door at the hotel are going through intense bickering and were supposed to have left this morning for Colombo.
We ride around island and drink root beer – A&W
April 28th
Only exit papers to get today. Traffic and fumes becoming intolerable. At night visit the famous Bugis street – doesn’t resemble in any way what I remember seeing in pictures or hearing about. A great array of tables with white cloths laid out in the street and an adjoining square – almost all occupied by parties of Western tourists. The “girls” – transvestites – appear very heavily made up and bewigged. Evidently some of them work for tourist agencies and are paid to sit and chat with a group. For the rest, tourists have virtually nothing but an open-air restaurant at which they can look at each other. There is not even any music. And the prices are naturally high, but they seem happy enough with it. Menus are framed and placed on tables. Nothing under S$8.
Today Carol bought an Olympus automatic.
Old Singapore as I saw it
29th, Thursday
Breakfast as usual in narrow café off Bencoolen street. An old Chinaman, with head like Ho Chi Minh’s, is sitting across from me reading a newspaper. Then I see that he isn’t sitting – he’s left his sandals on the floor and is crouching on the chair – but his legs are folded so perfectly that he’s like a vase on its pedestal – perfect feet. Made an unsuccessful attempt to find a shoulder bag – get water bottle instead – and away to Malaysia. No questions or problem at frontier. Johore is a shapeless town. No way to find our tourist contact. At rest house we are referred to the rest house in Pontian. At first, the road to Kuala Lumpur is very ugly – then turn off left to Pontian, and lost among shady green rubber plantations (albeit full of mosquitoes). The girl behind the counter in Johore rest house has full lips, and it suddenly strikes me that her upper lip is the perfect model of a pagoda roof, in all its proportions.
A night at Pontian rest house $15 – $3 more than list price. Air Con but roars like a monster. Lovely view out to sea – small island – delicate wooden jetty widening in three places to make places to sit under cover of rush roofs.
Indian Malay dressed in planter’s gear addresses me like an old-fashioned sergeant-major – upper class cockney. He’s very drunk.
[We went to a restaurant and got to know and like the proprietor, Ambak Jaya, and his wife.]
April 30th
Invited to visit Mr. Jaya’s Garden. At 8.30 we are outside his restaurant, but door and red shutters closed. He is still asleep, on a table.
At 9.0 we set off – in two trishaws – about a mile inland to a five-acre plot with wooden shack and many trees. They are durian, mangostin, coconut, mango and various other fruits which Carol has noted, including one which is probably bread fruit and has to be held in a woven rush net to prevent it dropping too soon. Has some limon trees from Ipoh, a fruit which grows to the size of a melon, but smells like lemon. It is essential for every Chinaman’s New Year ritual, and therefore very profitable to grow once a year.
Afterwards we sit down to a display of sweet meats – balls, pasties, very doughy – and then coconut and coffee. It’s very hot. I sweat profusely. Insist on pedaling the trishaw back with the two men in it. It’s less arduous than I thought, though a bit wobbly at first. The owner is in a great state of nervous laughter as we swerve from one verge of the path to the other, but I manage fine until we meet a group in the road who won’t move. There are no brakes and I misjudge the outer width of the trishaw and clout somebody’s motorbike exhaust – but nobody minds too much.
Later we ride out to Kukup – where some very small, poor shacks sit on stilts in the water.
Kukup
See a man up to his neck – old with reddish brown skin, scrubbing the hull of his boat.
Meet a rubber planter. 25 years in Malaya (Scots) and his girl friend from Singapore. He had read about me in the Sunday Times. Nice gentle man, blue eyes, but bloodshot, and corpulent.
2000lbs an acre of latex per annum is a good yield. Compared with post-war best of 600lbs.
Stopped at sago mill on way back, by a river. Lengths of palm chopped off and fed into a masher. Then water washes out the sago in a revolving pipe with combs. People bring trunks on bikes and carry away sacks full.
May 1st (my birthday)
[We have now moved into Jaya’s house above the restaurant.]
To market with Jaya’s wife to buy fish for birthday lunch. Heavy rain today. Market full of strange fish – a lot of long thin silvery fish with forked tail – reminds me of a knife blade. Also big, plump pinkish fish and reddish ones which might be snapper, though cheap. We buy small triangular fish called Ikan Bauer – supposed to be very good.
There’s a chicken plucking machine, like a spin dryer with rubber knobs – water rushes in and carries off the feathers. First, bird is dipped in boiling water.
At 4pm my birthday lunch is prepared and brought up to the first floor landing outside the rooms. A big platter of noodles, another of vegetables, another of cucumber and salad, a plate of roast chicken and goat, and the three beautiful fish in sweet and sour sauce. Ambak and the three children come up to eat, bringing a great heap of presents gaily wrapped – the monkey [They gave me a stuffed monkey] a sarong, two towels and a box of pretzels. All carefully graded from father to nephew.
That evening we walked together along the main road north out of town and back, pausing to wonder at a chorus of bull frogs – so loud, almost harmonious, reminding me of the fog horns in San Francisco Bay.
Carol wanted to buy me a drink. We went to the rest house bar, where that same fellow who addressed me the first time was still drinking beer, tho’ he seemed less drunk now. He insisted on buying round after round.
“You’ve got to darn well drink up. Karim, another of the same, and make it snappy. So, you’re from England. Well, that’s a jolly fine place. I was at Sandhurst myself. Got a brother in Southall. He’s an army captain.”
He’s from a camp near Alor Star [a border town in Thailand]. He’s here to drink away his leave, with his cousin, the police inspector of Pontian. He infers that there are quite a few cases pending against Ambak at the police HQ.
Karim, a soft-spoken Muslim with a wide, helpless smile, is high on ganja and plays up to the captain’s mock severity. Meanwhile I’m getting quite merry and loquacious too. Karim remembers that the FA cup final is showing. We dash to the kitchen TV just in time to see Southampton score the only goal against Manchester United a few minutes before time. Karim considers me to be a naturally lucky person, and therefore wise, and consults me about his unrequited love. I say foolish things to him but feel good. The Capt. insists that I visit him at Alor Star. Drink more brandy and beer. He drives us to the hotel, very giddy, in the inspector’s car. He leaves tomorrow.
That’s all for now.
I know that some of you following me are German, so it may interest you to know that my autobiography has just been translated into German (but with a different title, in English. Apparently it was impossible to boil the canary in German).
It will be available at the MRT in Gieboldehausen at the end of August and I will be there to sign copies.
Perth, Mid-April
Before leaving the country I wrote this rather harsh assessment:
Australian life does seem to have a dreamlike quality. Life seems to pass in a daze, as though one were just going through the motions. People do work, but never show the effect of it, and this underlying assumption of imperturbability seems to run through even their most drunken or excited moments. There is no real intensity and so boisterousness, un-warmed by real emotion, has a hard and cruel feeling. One must assume that Australians protect themselves from self-awareness, could not bear to know what they feel and so prefer to feel nothing. Better to amble slowly in the sun, in singlet and thongs, a stubby – in its cooler – in hand, drawn by the ever-present aroma of barbecued meat, like a Bisto kid grown up in paradise.
The Passage to Singapore
The Kota Bali was a fairly small vessel. In its upper decks it was a cruise ship. Down below, it was an animal transporter, taking live animals to the halal butchers in Malaysia. To my jaundiced eye it was difficult to distinguish between the people upstairs and the sheep below.
But what really occupied my mind and tore me apart was the thought of the pain I knew I would cause Carol, because it had become clear to me that if I were to write the book I’d had in mind for two and a half years, I must finish the journey alone. It was a terrible dilemma – Carol or the book. There was no question that we loved each other, completely. How could I expect her to understand? That I would let a book endanger our relationship? That having invited her to join me, I could now abandon her? So I wrote:
When there are two people, at least half of what happens concerns the other, or is modified by the other’s presence. Travelling in concert somehow blunts the sense of new, strange experience. If I were writing about two people travelling together that’s a challenge I can accept. But I cannot introduce a second character at this stage. There’s not enough weight or interest to absorb such a change of parameters. But even more than that I have to admit the intensity of the experience is much lower á deux. More comfort, more indulgence – a microcosm of marriage.
The passage to Singapore is fraught with the burden of responsibility for bringing down the towering expectations in which it seems to me Carol has chosen to house her love for me. Every day now it seems a new storey or wing is added to this unstable structure – in French lessons, references to details in the future of the journey and most of all in omissions of remarks, of which I am most conscious. The impending doom is so oppressive but still I can’t bring myself to make the first, simple remark which will bring it all crashing down. It must fall, it seems, of its own volition.
The atmosphere on the ship is crude and harsh. Australian couples who by their mere presence, let alone their references to “your wife” emphasise the wrongness of our situation. For two people to insist on their own forms of truth they must be entirely open to each other, or the uneasy wriggling under misguided interrogations deepens the dilemma.
“When did you start the journey?” they ask Carol. “What will you do afterwards? Are you going to live in France or in America?”
None of our answers mean anything to them. If they had the faintest concept of a life less surely conceived than their own they could not have the temerity to ask so abruptly. And certainly, the first vague, evasive reply would give some hint that perhaps a moment’s thought should be given before the next, inevitable line of the catechism. But no, inexorably they continue. “Are you going to have kids?”
The aroma of beer rolls down the decks every time the saloon doors are opened. The ladies, it’s said, change their frocks four times a day.
Charles and Arthur Booth, bull shippers, sheep shippers, drear and dreadful men.
We are both deeply depressed by the huge chunk of our resources we have had to break off for this miserable experience – to be exposed finally to a parody of everything that was worst about Australia – to be taken through a gale – to be denied the few visual pleasures of the Indonesian coast we might have enjoyed – by a maudlin and waspish Welsh captain whose first words to me were so ridiculous as to be beneath contempt. [Sadly, I didn’t write them down.]
Watching the horizon one day, at evening, so definite a line stretching round the ship below a wash of orange light, it struck me that it was quite obviously circular, and if the horizon is a circle then clearly the surface must drop away on all sides and at an equal decline. Given that the same picture presents itself at all times on the open sea when the horizons are clear, the inference must be that the earth is a globe. It is so much more understandable to me now how Columbus came to this conclusion – and that he cannot have been the only one, but perhaps the one who could least restrain the urge to demonstrate it, whatever the peril.
Passed Christmas Island on Easter Monday – a tree-covered rock rising sheer from the water, with waves breaking on it. A mine of phosphate rock for Western Australia, and little else it seems, but 4000 people.
Next morning we pass by Java Head, but light is poor and hazy and can only distinguish low lying masses on either side. Am sad at having to come this way. Would have been so much better and cheaper to have followed logical route of Darwin – Bali, etc. But there seemed no other way out. [Darwin had been destroyed by a hurricane.]
“We’re on the wrong trip,” I said to Carol. “We’d better get back on the right one soon.” It was as close as I’d dared come to saying it all. Already I was suffering from a sore throat, and my body was preparing to act out my emotional predicament. But Carol took it up and soon the whole edifice lay in ruins about us, with Carol wandering about the wreckage like an earthquake survivor, stunned, howling with rage and grief, cursing me, herself, fate, everything.
So they went on, the storms and lulls, through our last day on board, through the first day in Singapore of chasing papers, hotels, contacts, money. And the second day of more papers and unloading until I could at last go to bed and let the fever break over me. Eventually, as the fever went so did Carol’s blackness, and at last we seemed to be clean with each other again.
“Did you really have to take us through all that?” she asks, unsure of herself. I thought so, had been thinking so, never feeling it right to stop the grief halfway.
[We agreed finally to go our separate ways when we got to the Cameron Highlands, in Malaysia.]
Singapore, April 22nd
Arrived 8am. Took bus from Jurong into city. There, hassled with shipping clerk about import permits, then found hotel on Bencoolen. Back to ship in evening to get documents and few things, then to hotel, struggling on foot part of the way because of difficulties with buses and one-way systems.
A long-vanished sight. Sampans in Singapore
April 23rd
After a bad night, still feverish, to the AA for import permit, then to ship for bike, and at last to hotel with all gear, to bed, to sweat and eventually in night, to break the fever.
April 24th
The infamous lunch engagement with Mr. “Polly” whose sloppy conduct I can’t forgive. [I suspect he was a shipping agent.] Call Sunday Times at night.
April 25th
Walk around thieves’ market – nothing much there really except atmosphere – and ride round the island in the afternoon.
April 26th
Nobody at ST to talk to except Anglo-Asian editorial manager, Mr. Jackson, who is polite and suggests features for the Sundays.
Mr. “Polly” compounds his infamy. Shipping from Penang to Madras comes to too much. Peter Harland is suspected of having appendicitis. Indian High Commission makes ominous noises about visas, and I become profoundly depressed about money. Have only £100 left.
At last, cut the knot and call Tony Morgan for $1000. [Tony was a friend in England who had kept some money for me.] He promises to send it to NatCit, Penang. He sounds pretty demoralised. “You certainly left at the right time.” [Britain, under Harold Wilson, was going through a dark time, literally, with power cuts and strikes.]
Feel much better and cross the road to join Carol on an evening harbour cruise. Nothing to see, but it makes an hour away from the traffic. Singapore Tourist Board has erected a stone carving of a “Merlion” on a pier by the bridge and unashamedly announces that this is a foremost tourist attraction in Singapore.
After harbour we wait out a torrent of rain then go to Telek Ayer street restaurant across the river.
Here’s a picture of Gurney’s hole in the ground that I wrote about last week – where he had his orchard.
Thursday, April 8th
To Norseman. Exchanged thoughts while riding. Carol was on a “bummer” about something she’d written home and wished she hadn’t.
I was figuring out distillation plants from sea water using solar energy or burning slash from the bush. Much attracted by idea of a coastline as desolate as this must be, yet potentially so fertile. Lovely salmon gums in salmon-pink earth.
[The road to Norseman runs along the east and, as usual, I spent the time wondering how to make it habitable, and wondering what kind of life one could live here. Then suddenly, in late afternoon, I felt tremors through the handlebars and stopped just in time. All but two of the spokes on the left side of the rear wheel had gone, and the wheel was about to collapse. Fortunately, I had recently acquired new spokes and I set about rebuilding the wheel, a job I had never done before. As soon as we stopped moving swarms of mosquitoes attacked us.]
Horrible hour and a half battling with flies and mosquitoes.
[But I got the job done, and we arrived at Norseman.]
Friday, April 9th
One last remaining building from the gold rush days of Coolgardie
Bill leaves us for Perth. Off to Kalgoorlie, Coolgardie, and as far as Merredin. Carol burned out and hysterical but comes round. Lightening skies. Amazing smoky red sky behind rain clouds and streamers. Stopped at a pub and watch a party of lads talking and drinking. Two wore the same black t-shirts – one was very muscular and male model-y, with his quizzical smiles and profiles. The other a blonde buck-toothed boy with sweet feminine smile. Lots of touching. He was the only one who didn’t have aboriginal blood. One guy, absolutely plastered, wandered around with a jug of beer.
[I can only hope that I was more sympathetic to Carol than my notes seem to suggest.]
Saturday, April 10th
Into Perth. Straight through suburbs to Mosman Park, where found Bill tinkering with his bikes. We went off to a fine pub lunch, and then my first game of Australian Rules, which seemed an exciting enough game, but too formless after soccer. The goal referee with his ridiculous movements of the fingers ¬– and the flags – wears a white trilby and coat.
Gerry Rafferty and Bruce stoning themselves in the kitchen. He’s the drummer. Astrid, the daughter, Leslie and Paul are Rhodesian expatriates working for Zimbabwe, but Perth is so far from anywhere.
Terrible winds and rain lash the house at night and during the day.
The city seems as tho’ it might be a good one to live in – but can’t see that it compares for interest with Melbourne, or for tranquility with Adelaide. But then I saw very little.
Arrived with the engine once again in chaos, the cylinder sleeves scored and an exhaust valve burned out, once again it seems from dirty air, though this time the fractured manifold may have caused overheating as well.
[It astonishes me still that nowhere did any of the mechanics who helped me throughout my journey suggest doing something about air filters, when the one I had was so obviously inadequate.]
Norman Bennett (the Lucas man) was in hospital after a car crash, as well as having his mouth sewn up for a skin graft. Mervyn Whitehead helps me through to Matlock’s and I have the good fortune to meet Dave Waldren there (from Hornsey – ex-copper) who came over with wife Jan on a Suzuki 125 two years ago and worked his way up to being service manager. He does everything to get hold of parts and helps rebuild the bike in a frantic burst to beat the loading time for the ship.
After this we sailed for Singapore on the less-than-good ship Kota Bali – so that was Australia.
I’m off to the Adventure Bike Rally in the UK next week and I’m giving myself a little holiday from my usual holiday, so you might not hear from me for a week or two.
‘Till then, Cheers
Ted
We left Ceduna, and André’s garage, on April 6th to take the road across the Nullarbor plain.
Strangely there is almost nothing in my diary about this part of the journey, although after almost fifty years some of it is vividly memorable, so I will abandon the normal format of this series and just describe it as I remember it.
The next township of any note, so far as we knew, was Eucla, on the state boundary between South Australia and Western Australia. That was about 500 miles away.
We had met nobody coming the other way, so we had no current information of the state of the road, but we had gathered plenty of alarming prophecies. So far as we knew it was all dirt. Kangaroos, bulldust and road trains would be the principal dangers. Bulldust, they said, was thin powdered rock that filled huge potholes so that you wouldn’t know they were there until you fell into them; families of kangaroos would charge across the road unannounced and knock you down, most probably into a large pothole; and road trains – well, obviously you need to get out of the way in time because they don’t stop.
We had no information about fuel stops and had to assume there were none. Since my range on a full tank was about 300 miles, I must have been carrying extra, but my diary says nothing about it.
What we discovered after we got going was that a lot more of the road had been sealed than we expected, and when it did turn to dirt it was quite manageable – certainly nothing like as bad as the mountain roads of Ethiopia.
There were only 200 miles of dirt road left, and halfway across them we met Mr. Gurney. He was a spry, elderly gent with a big white beard, and he had a tin shack by the side of the road where he sold petrol. He lived with his wife (whom we never saw) in a ramshackle bungalow, with some emus, a pet wombat, and some other more familiar animals. It was there that I learned the wombat, a substantial animal, has a sense of humour. It likes to get between your legs and suddenly spin, tossing you to the ground.
Mr Gurney at his Kunaldra Station
Gurney said he owned eleven hundred square miles of Australia, but it was of no value to him because the only drinkable water was found in a cave near his dwelling. It was the cave we wanted to see, but he was reluctant to show us – “not since those three blokes with guns. They were sitting down there firing rifles at the roof. Mad drunk or something.”
But we persuaded him that we were safe. The Nullabor is quite flat, so we clambered down a crater. As I wrote in Jupiter’s Travels:
“Miraculously, at the bottom of the crater among rocks and boulders Gurney had an orchard, the only place where fruit trees could survive the heat. The cave is a series of great caverns, and an important experience, for it suggests that the whole plain must be largely hollow. Indeed there’s a theory – or fancy – that the Southern Ocean flows by subterranean passages to the interior of Australia. At any rate, the hollowness seemed most significant there, because you can feel the earth reverberate when you stamp on it, because emus call to each other by inflating bladders under their croups and making a noise like the underground echo of a steel drum, and because hollowness is a sign of great age. So in the night, half asleep on the ground, listening to the emus drumming and the clank of distant goat bells and not knowing what they were, I thought I was hearing the sound of a great tribal celebration drifting across the plain”.
We spent the night there outside on the ground. We were among the last to travel that road. Later that year a new road, further south, was built and tarred, leaving the Gurneys alone in the wilderness and I have wondered from time time what happened to them. He called his place Kunaldra Station.
On Wednesday, April 7th, my diary says:
Met Bill McGarry at Eucla. Camped out in the bush.
The Nullarbor at dawn
