From My Notebooks In 1976: Along the Coast of Malaysia

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?