News from Ted
Journeys, I have come to believe, are made in the imagination. When the mind is distracted by physical discomfort and unsatisfied cravings it is difficult to appreciate the beauty and significance of scenery and events as they unfold. After ten weeks in France and England I was still cluttered by the desire for the meat and wine of Europe; my skin was uncomfortable in the heat of Madras; I was impatient to find my balance again.
September 19th 1976
Went to dance performance at Vani Mahal, a theatre. Many gorgeous Hindu ladies present. One professional dancer very good – but very little explanation. In audience was Vera Goldman, Israeli from Australia. She talked to me first and went to Chola Hotel for coffee. No espresso coffee – so I asked for a slow one instead. She told me about Aboriginals. Had spent time with them – “dream time” – a time space without chronology in which thought roams free to produce song and art. A woman of great force and temper who worked at Kulashatra Dance Academy directed by a Mrs Arundel (widow of an English theologian). She describes Mrs A. as an evil dragon. Murari and Rada think she’s wonderful. Am fascinated by Vera’s passionate Jewishness, the amazing curves of her face. Nose and mouth. At times beautiful, at times hideous. Ending a dreadfully tempestuous love affair with an Indian dancer. Murari’s gate locked when I return. I lock bike up outside, go to bed and think paranoid thoughts, then get up again to stay with bike. But this time my movement wakes M up, who says he meant to stay awake. Ignominy!
20th
Today the eggs I bought yesterday, which could not be cooked then because it was a holiday, are made into scramble with onions. Good. Go through my tools and parts. All in good order. Write letters to PH, RAC, Th’an, Carol. Mum, Adrienne and Sai Baba. Tea with Rada Krishnan. As he emerges he appears very loose and flabby and his speech is difficult to follow. Quickly it becomes easier and he himself seems to assume a more definite form. Talks most humorously about his dealings with the artists’ community outside Madras founded 11 years ago. Painting on the wall by the president is a nice one. Tale of the ‘untouchable’ who felt that his caste was being oppressed because nobody bought his paintings. Sad story of ugly man who drew painstakingly beautiful line drawings in which he appeared as a lonely, shunned figure. While they were all wondering how to help him he committed suicide.
Also, the visit of Sai Baba to open the hospital of R’s father-in-law.
[Colonel Muirari was a disciple of Sai Baba, a famous holy man with an ashram in Bangalore. He spoke to me often of Sai Baba’s “miracles.” Mysterious appearance of honey and ash, called “vibuti.”]
The light in half the hospital went off, but R swears there is only one fuse. (How could that be? How many bulbs were there?) On to dinner with Vera. V in flames about the hammering rock music. But cools down and tells more about her life. Beautiful parents from Vienna (Hammerbrod?) Recently died. She gets a monthly sum to keep her going. Mother died of cancer. Story of love affair. I engage in amateur psychotherapy, talk a bit about myself. Her lover’s personality sounds like a Peter Sellers. We go on to the Marina and walk around the tomb of the DMIS leader [DMIS stood for the Directorate of Military Intelligence and Security.] then sit on steps facing the beach. Group of Khaki police stroll by, flipping truncheons. Warn us to stay off the beach. Eventually take her home to Ardyor, ten miles along Mount Road.
20th
[I was gradually getting ready to leave. My plan was first to follow a well-trodden path to the temples which are a famous feature of this part of India. Thee first if them was at Kanchipuram.]
More packing. Breakfast. (Rice pancakes). To post office, Cook’s, Lucas. Feels good on bike. Seem to be thoroughly acclimatised again. Most impressive man so far at Lucas. Also hopes to make some introduction to Sai Baba through friends. [Didn’t happen].
21st, Tuesday. To Kanchi
From Madras, 15,121 miles. [I was keeping record of mileage since odometer change, probably in San Francisco.] New oil. Once out of town the flashback to Middle East was most noticeable. The environment felt very similar to Nile Valley. The arrangement of the houses – in occasional clusters ¬– differs from S.E. Asia where each house is larger, better evolved, set in a larger space, a little aloof from road and neighbours. Here also it’s mainly paddy farming with water buffalo, but there are also teams of oxen, maybe six pair, charging through a field in circles, moving much faster than I remember. The people make a different shape too. The men longer sinewed, black, naked but for a triangle of cloth, gleaming thighs, long like Arab thighs. Women in separate groups, very colourful among the greenery. Many brick kilns and quarries. A bright blue bird with darker “wing flaps.”
The road was almost empty, very narrow, with bumpy tar. I rode the whole way at 30 mph and it didn’t seem too slow.
Walking round my first Indian temple, Ekambareswarar. A great slab is held up by carved columns about ten feet apart, some long, some short.
A variety of people are there – all of them give the impression of having been cast there by enchantment. An elegant group with shaven heads and bright saris sits there around a small fire with large aluminium pots, shaped like this. U.
Others like young tramps. A bearded gent approaches me with a holy look and moves his arms in a kind of semaphore.
The man in Siva’s lodge at the entrance also had an imperious look, rather [illegible] I thought, beckoning me to make an offering to some dark, mysterious object behind him (a lingam I suppose). All the way I was accompanied by a dark, graceful man with a sweet smile who simply murmured quietly “Ah, those boys,” when the kids came to me. For a while I sat under some other columns and photographed an elephant, foot in chains, and some people.
Then approached the temple entrance. A tariff of rates, in Hindi, offered 39, 75, 1,25 and 2,50. What for? I asked to see a pamphlet, but it was historical, not descriptive. But the rates didn’t apply to me, and I was shepherded instead around the outer corridors by a younger man – “I am not a guide, I am a priest.” He gave the unintelligible commentary, and led me inexorably to the mango tree, 3000 years old (?) with four branches, bearing different qualities of fruit, sweet, sour, bitter, and something. An elderly man gave a routine patter and led me round the tree – it might have been a mulberry bush. I was told that 10 rupees was the least I should give to be shared “among these friends” – his arm embracing the various acolytes I had acquired along the way. Ungraciously I gave 2 rupees and paid even less attention to my priest on the way out while wishing I had the calmness in refusal that I would have liked. Of course, I was a-dangle with cameras and lenses. The priest got nothing from me – nor the boy with the inevitable “coin collection.” The quiet man at last drifted away. I passed him later in the street, still with the same smile. Was it sincere, or stock in trade?
Round the bike a crowd of children from school. I clowned with them a while and felt better. Then one of them spotted by pen. “Pen, pen,” they cried. It was almost seized from my shirt. I moved it to my trousers and as I got on the bike I felt it slip from my pocket. My good nature failed to survive this, but at least I didn’t become too obnoxious. Now have this lousy pen, bought at a stall.
22nd, Wednesday. From Kanchi
Caught in rain storm just before bed. Moved into hotel corridor. Breakfast, then East to Chingleput for petrol. Took road to Sardas. Beach. Boy to guard bike. Heavy waves. Burning sand and sun. Fishermen scouring water on rafts of four logs and paddles. Later roundabout route to Mahabalipuram. Stopped at village to photograph silk combing.
Offered hank of silk for five rupees, but colours were wrong. Men friendly but no word of English. At M. tried PWD [Public Works Department maintains rest houses.] No success.
ITDC [India Tourism Development Corporation hotels.] far too expensive. To Manali Lodge. 5 rupees. Then rode out to see carvings from solid granite.
Temples, elephant, etc. then had fish at Rose Garden. Intelligent young Indian proprietor – deserves to succeed. Next morning to photograph Arjuna’s Penance. Then hot ride to Pondicherry. Again roundabout route. Got to Continental Hotel at 4pm. Had beer and mutton curry, met Murray Masters, thence to Government Hostel. Not feeling good. Terrible dry cough and inflamed throat from bad night at Rada Krishnan’s house. It is now Thursday night.
Had beans and onions for breakfast at Kanchi.
24th, Friday
Long uncomfortable day with touch of fever. Made leather box for razor. Talked to night man at hostel. Was in Malaysia before war, looked after by sister. Back to India in 1940. British army in North Africa. Demobbed in 1947. Tiny gratuity. Says the French paid vastly better. Told story when he was yardmaster at Suez, and brigadier tried to boss him about. Lots of bluff and bravado. One crazy tooth and a mischievous face.
25th Saturday
Had early adventure with bad egg. Then rode out to Auroville with Murray on back. Low expectations – but found excellent people. Jocelyn the girl; Chris, American; Michael, English. The “revolution”. The meditation chamber. The French Auromodel homes. Bernard. Long rides over sticky red mud. Reforestation. Casuarinas. Neem tree. Banyan. Beginnings of symbiosis between Auroville and the Indian villages. Good feelings. Ride back to Pondy along crowded road and through clouds of insects. Conversation outside Continental with human scrap on pavement. Remarkable person – 40 years old. Address book is full of tourists’ names ¬– mostly German. Head normal. Chest baby-sized. Rest shriveled and contorted beyond recognition. Scarcely 18” above ground. His accomplishment in making contact with people seems very superior to me. Would like to pursue the matter.
There’s much more about all this in Riding High.
I’m going back to California next week to preside over the election of Kamala Harris (I hope). Brexit was terrible, Trump could be even worse. What causes this suicidal impulse? I guess a lot of people just didn’t feel anyone was paying attention.
So I might not be back here for a week or two. Goodbye and Good luck.
[My arrival in India could not have been more fortunate. I had an introduction. Three years earlier an Indian friend living in London had invited me to stay with his uncle, Colonel Murari, retired, whose home was in the outskirts of Madras. I had anticipated that disembarkation from the Chidambaram would be an endlessly frustrating affair, so I was happy to find it was only ordinarily time-consuming, and I was able to get to the Colonel’s house at a reasonable time. Not only that, but my friend also happened to be there for a short visit.
There were three central figures in the household – the Colonel, his middle-aged housekeeper, Gaja, and an elderly man, Rajaram, who was the resident guru.
Rajaram in the colonel’s courtyard
It surprises me now that I wrote almost nothing in my notebook about this period in the colonel’s home, although it is described in detail in Jupiter’s Travels, and I can still recall it vividly. I remember how peaceful it was, how perfectly I seem to have acclimated myself to the heat. Rajaram had a daughter who was preparing her wedding and, as was traditional, a vast number of relatives were expected to attend. Rajaram was in high good humour.]
Rajaram – “there are 4000 people – each is getting a tamarind leaf with one grain of rice.”
Rajaram’s daughter and friend discussing the wedding
[Later he examined me closely with his large, luminous eyes.]
Told me I learned to fly and that once I threw stones at a cat – or hit some animal when I was eight or ten – and got hit by some relation.
Rajaram instructing the colonel
[There was a Lucas office in Madras and I connected with them.
Just as I was getting ready to move on, they received a telegram for me from Peter Harland at the Sunday Times. The news was shocking. My stepfather had suddenly died. Even though I had been determined that my journey would be a single, complete and unbroken journey around the world, I would have to break it to be with my mother.
The newspaper generously offered to pay for the flights. I left my bike with the Lucas people, and they took me to the airport.]
Flight from Madras to Bombay – up into monsoon cloud. Plane rocking all over, with Indian music tinkling and the Calcutta tea merchant sitting next to me shooting his cuffs.
London beginning of July. Off plane at London airport. Met by Peter. Very kind. Amazingly familiar. Almost impossible to relate anything new. So, for a message to carry conviction there must be [illegible] at both ends.
We go to pub. The Blue Lion. Drink a bitter, then up to the office after much hesitation about the effect of appearing there like that. Left film for developing – 3 rolls. Projector missing. Driving license I found immediately in parcel. Pretty bad first impression. Lunch. Greek. Retsina. The little place down the road.
Harry [Harold Evans, the Editor] received me and gave me two minutes of enthusiastic time, before being distracted. I had to gulp my bitter lemon to get out in time. Said I’d met Denis Hamilton in Cairo and remarked on my holiday plan for Harry – perhaps that was a bit gauche since I can’t remember how I put it. H seemed to have almost disappeared – shriveled I put it afterwards, naively. But he had read the bludger piece [This was a column I had sent from Australia.] I saw his memo describing it as “refreshing” – and there was a row after it had been cut.
Knightly came through and asked where I’d want to live. “Not Australia,” he said. “I didn’t think it was.” And off he went. Encounters are a bit fragmentary. Only Don Berry [a big shot at the paper] gave me a really warm smile and shook my hand, though I couldn’t remember his name at the time. PH gave me £20, which he said would be on exes, and drove me to Liverpool Street Station.
The train broke down just before Wickford, and we all stood on the platform. A Welsh woman with a man complained steadily about being stuck after their long journey from Wales – all of five hours, I believe, and I enjoyed my secret scorn.
Tried to phone from Wickford station but no reply. Then called taxi, which was unnecessary. Emotional home coming. Mother very happy to see me. Hanne there too, and Marta. [My aunts from Germany] Nell was there too. They said my mother had been crying a lot, and she also admitted it. I had not honestly been able to feel Bill’s death as a personal tragedy – my memories of him were not intimate enough, and I thought of him more as a craftsman and a ‘character.’ My emotional ties were with my mother and so I resolved to remain cheerful until the funeral was over.
TEN WEEKS LATER
15th September. London to Madras
[On the last leg, from Bombay to Madras I sat next to an Indian lecturer in Chemical Engineering, returning home from Frankfurt.]
He boiled all water in Germany before drinking it, because water is all polluted. “Don’t bother in Madras. We don’t have the same problem here. All our river water is pure.”
See snake farm by side of his institute – up to 5pm.
In Bombay he had met a friend at the airport who he said was “a great industrialist” in Madras. He rose from a cycle shop to manufacture scientific instruments. His daughter graduated and is running a new branch in Bombay. My friend persuaded him to offer me a lift to Kilpauk and we drove in my friend’s car, first to the latter’s home, where I was left to heat up outside the house for a while, then taken to Murari’s house. The “great industrialist” was not easy to talk to. I tackled him about quality control which I thought would be a great problem, but he brushed it aside. It was simply a matter of deciding whether you wanted to maintain quality or not. Those who didn’t went out of business – but meanwhile made things more difficult for the others.
Murari and Gaja seemed pleased to see me. My telegram from Bombay arrived the following morning. The place seemed different. The boy [my friend] had gone. The regime is more spartan. Obviously things are more special when “Nippi” is home. But Rajaram was his own sweet self.
September 16th
Trouble with Jet lag and climate. Slept very late. To Lucas in afternoon by auto rickshaw. The bike was beautifully cleaned and polished, but chain rusted solid in places. They put the battery back clumsily, with negative earth. Also, they seem to have lost the ignition key, and I rode off with a provisional connection on the leads.
17th
Time is better, but discomfort continues. Back to Lucas. They found the key. Meanwhile I found the spare. Only thing missing among my things was swimming trunks.
Telephone was cut off and Kutti [the housekeeper] has big scene with telephone people, rescuing torn up evidence from wastepaper basket.
I had bought a chicken in the morning – a bad move. When it appeared next morning it was all neck, head and bones. I asked innocently where the rest was but [she said] it was all in this tiny pot. Rajaram showed great restraint by eating with us at all and Murari felt very guilty.
[Those first days I felt completely out of sync – not just physically but morally and socially. Before leaving I had been perfectly adjusted, but now I was uncomfortable, led by my western appetites into making clumsy mistakes. I longed to get back to the easy rhythm I’d known.]
There was one passenger ship, the MV Chidambaram, that regularly crossed from Penang to Madras (now Chennai) and I was booked on it. Originally the ship had been named Pasteur and was a small luxury liner that crossed the Atlantic. It was known, I believe, to be a popular ship for wealthy gamblers. Some of that luxury was still visible in the upper decks, in the shape of a grand staircase sweeping down to a big saloon. At first the company insisted that “white people” had to travel First Class, which I found much too expensive. After some argument they changed the rules and sold me a Second Class ticket, which meant travelling with middle class Indians, mainly students. There was also a third class which I discovered on the second day. It consisted of wire cages stacked in the hold where poorer Indian families spent the four or five days of the voyage. They cooked their own food and, as far as I could tell, had no access to an open deck. The Chidambaram was eventually destroyed by fire. Here are my random notes on the voyage.
The MV Chidambaram (Née Pasteur) once highly luxurious.
Empty first class. Full dormitory. Packed bunks in cages.
Cockroaches, student ragging, measuring the gangways with half a matchstick. The filthy bar and the maniac barman with the huge, bruised face staring out of his hatch in neurotic hate and fear. The Indians are not graceful in their behaviour. They walk up and abruptly state their requirement in a harsh voice. Like Malaysians, they make a crowd where none need exist, crushing round counters with hands stretched out with money or documents or whatever. (In the post office the man sending a telegram with his nose through the bars watching every move of the clerk’s hand. In the hotel crowding round me simply to watch me write.)
The MV Chidambaram
Saturday morning – 6.30 – woken by unusual messages on speakers. Something about port and starboard. The engines have slowed right down. Are we at the first port? [The ship docked briefly at the Andaman Isles.]
I get out to find the port hatchway open and a man in long shorts and life jacket hanging out over a rope ladder. Someone is overboard. Did he jump? Or fall? Nobody’s sure. But when they threw lifebuoys, he swam like a champion. An old man, maybe 60. A lifeboat had been lowered and it seemed just a matter of bringing the ship round full circle to pick them all up. When the ship did come round it became clear that life wasn’t so simple. The boat was drifting, almost useless. It’s engine or propeller had been damaged in lowering it. There were oars, but with so few men aboard the oars hardly touched the water. The ship came past, beautifully navigated, to within 50 yards of the old man, now securely buoyed on two rings. But nothing happened and he drifted away again. Then the ship shuddered into reverse and slowed down.
“Number three lifeboat!”
This time I watched the boat go down. It was a sight of danger and violence I shan’t forget. The boat is lowered by two hefty steel hooks with pulleys through which the hawsers run. As the boat lowered it began to swing with the pitch and roll of the ship.
Halfway down the ropes were long enough to let it crash into the side of the ship. This happened several times, throwing the men about and bending the side of the boat, before they touched the water. There was a heavyish swell. One minute the boat was afloat, the next it was wrenched up by the tackle as the sea fell away beneath it. It seemed to be difficult to release the tackle. When one was free, the scene became far worse. As the sea dropped the boat bounced and swung, so that to grapple with the other tackle became extremely dangerous. And to make matters far worse, the other pulley, now dangling free, was swinging wildly back and forth across the boat hitting several men glancing blows. Heavy piece of metal. Surprised no-one was killed. Imagine it with a boatful of passengers. How was it possible?
At last the boat was free and away. Meanwhile a white-fin shark, of 7 or 8 feet, came close to the ship and, clearly visible, circled suspiciously. What, we all wondered, was circulating round the old man out there, rising and dipping in the ocean swell on his two rings of cork the colour of a Hindu cast mark? The shark made an exciting object – a brownish colour with all its fins and tail shading to white at the tips.
By now the man had been in the water for about an hour, although as he floated by he seemed all right. Was it sharks that prevented anyone from swimming out to him?
The new boat made its way slowly to him. When he was reached it seemed a long time before he was handed in. Then they went out collecting buoys and finally came back to the port side, but the swell prevented them from attaching to the side. Off again, to bring the other boat in on tow. Then, on starboard side where it was calm they strapped the old man into a mummy-shaped bundle and eventually man-handled him through a hatchway as he twisted and pitched face down and scraping over the metal of the hatch. Then the excruciating business of raising the boats again, just as lethal and bruising as before, with men hanging on to ropes for dear life as an officer shouts, again and again “Sit down! Sit down.”
An officer later said, smiling, that they practised putting boats into the water every two weeks. He said recently their radio operator had jumped in and they’d had him out in 11 minutes. There was a heavy swell today, he said. I suggested that perhaps the shackles couldn’t go down any further. “Yes,” he said. “they go down under their own weight.” But obviously they don’t. “Was anyone hurt?” I asked. “No,” he said, happily. Two minutes later, someone commented that several men were in hospital having injuries treated. “Yes,” he agreed, just as happily. He also added in explanation that if the boat had been full of passengers there would have been no trouble because of the boat’s extra weight and because, he said, “the passengers are asked to cooperate by moving to this side or that.” Since the men in the boat. when ordered to sit down, preferred to ignore the order, I can’t see how passengers could be expected to show more calm and discipline in a shipwreck. One swing of that massive iron shackle across the surface of a crowded lifeboat could be certain, I think, of meeting at least one skull. I’d like to be reassured that we do this kind of thing better. I’m glad this is my last ocean crossing. I think I shall cross the Channel by hovercraft.
Shipmates
The student girls. Easy chat. No shyness. Will sing, play piano, seem very close, but it means No.
The mini-bus party – theatrical Yorkshireman – craggy handsome face, grey windblown hair – self-consciously acting the part – but the world won’t fit his concept of himself, so he is harassed, nervous, and quarrelsome. Wife is a weathered trouper, son is dull and sullen, only (the) girl is open and equable.
Russ Powick – NZ via Aus, good sort if a bit noisy. Can’t help doing the “I say, jolly good show” bit with me. Nicest when he isn’t trying. Says the van party was like hell on earth. One endless squabble, with daughter as referee. Two young Englishmen returning from three years NZ. Two a bit older – one quiet bearded Aus, self-taught in life, from poor Sydney family; other a knowing, half-caste German from Hamburg (half Arabic I guess) Talks about the price of drugs and irritates me with “Rupes” for rupees.
Next week, India.
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.
