From My Notebooks In 1976: Singapore and Kukup

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.