From Burma to Myanmar Read online

  Legend says that the Shwedagon is thousands of years old but archeologists date the original stupa as sixth century. That still makes it 1600 years old, which is a fair age in anybody’s book. It is said to have been built around a relic of the Buddha—though if all those teeth and hairs were really his he must have had more than the usual allotment of follicular and dental equipment. A toothy hairy person, albeit most holy.

  I glided barefoot, in the company of people quietly praying and making offerings around the base of the stupa, on cool paved courtyards worn smooth by the constant tread of worshipping feet. Surrounding the base, nestled into its sides, are many small pagodas, stupas and shrines, all gilded. Untold glittering gold, more than all the gold contained in the vaults of the Bank of England, cover the sides of the Shwedagon, as well as diamonds, rubies and emeralds.

  Inscriptions on the eastern stairway record that Queen Shinsawbu began the gilding craze in the 15th century when she plastered the stupa with her weight (eighty eight pounds), in gold. Then her son-in-law, in a feat of unsurpassed one-upmanship, applied four times his and his wife’s weight.

  9 Malaysian detour

  It was not hard to leave Burma but it was sad. I wanted to stay longer but my allocated twenty-eight days were up and I had to go. I arrived prematurely early at the airport, determined to have plenty of time to deal with any contingencies. I did not trust this airport; it held stressful memories.

  In Singapore I asked the woman at the Tourist Accommo­dation desk to find me a room for the night. I planned to go on to Kuala Lumpur in the morning. I did not want to go back to the Australian winter just yet and Malaysia was a country I had travelled through several times but had never stopped in long enough to discover. She found me a hotel, but told me that it was in Geylang, the red light district, and I should not go out at night! As if anyone was going to accost me with all the talent likely to be about. When I told her that I was going on to Kuala Lumpur, she said that she had been ‘snatched’ there. She meant her bag, not her, I think.

  The airport shuttle took me to the hotel. Walking around the corner from it (in the daylight, just in case), I found a small restaurant where I had a meal. The next morning I boarded a bus to KL.

  The bus was almost empty, with just four of us in a double-deckered deluxe vehicle that came with a personal video screen, an audio player and lunch delivered on a tray. Plantations of oil palms lined almost the entire route to KL, a depressing sight and testimony that the native rainforest and food farmland had been obliterated. Oil palms are extremely detrimental to the environment. Few towns or villages were visible from the elevated highway we rode along and we passed through none. We made one loo stop. I am like the Queen, of whom it is said never passes up the chance for a toilet break.

  In KL I took a taxi to the Grocer’s Inn, the guesthouse in Chinatown where I had made a booking. It had been highly recommended by the guide book writers, who said that it was ‘old and interesting’. It was old for sure. It was also a dump. That’s the last time I trust them. Have I said this before?

  I took the most expensive room in the Grocer’s Inn—they said it had a bathroom. They forgot to mention that the bathroom had no hot water or anything much else for that matter. The room was horrible, the solitary light was dismal—and there was no window! It was like being entombed. There was just a bed and a broken old dressing table, the drawers of which contained the detritus of the last hundred or so inmates. With no space to put anything on the floor, I had to sleep with my bag on the other half of the bed.

  I got out of this squalid flophouse as fast as I could, largely unwashed, the next morning. The previous evening I had scouted the street for better digs. Chinatown has many small hotels, some of which are brothels. I enquired at one that didn’t appear to be one of those, and it was such a relief to find something decent so I grabbed it. It cost only four dollars more than the dingy hovel I was currently in, where they had even made me pay an extra dollar for a towel. And forget the soap. They certainly had.

  I moved my bag across the street and into the Hotel Yeang Ying. This street was Jalan Sultan, which intersects Jalan Petaling, the night market street. It was an interesting place to stay even though the taxi driver, an Indian, had warned me, ‘It’s full of Chinese. Do not to go out at night’. Funny that Chinatown is full of Chinese and it’s not a good idea to go to a night market—at night!

  I found a cafe two doors from the hotel for breakfast and in front of it I saw a stop for the Ho Ho—a hop on, hop off tourist bus. I bought a ticket and hopped on. A twenty-four hour ticket only cost twelve dollars Australian. The bus took a long time to go around its twenty-three stops so it was a good way to observe the town and its life.

  After Burma, Malaysia was strikingly clean. And another blessing was that there were no dogs, although I did see the odd cat. I read a letter to the paper from an Asian tourist in which he complained that he had seen two dogs shot in the street by police and then dragged away, leaving blood and mess in their wake. Muslims generally don’t like dogs and consider them, like pigs, an unclean animal.

  KL is full of beautiful old buildings, mosques and markets, but it only dates from 1857 when a town grew up from what was originally a tin miners’ camp. The British established themselves here in the 19th century but the Japanese invasion during WWII ended British occupation. By 1963 independence had been achieved and Kuala Lumpur became the capital of what was to become Malaysia.

  The bus slowly drove past the famous PETRONAS Twin Towers that Malaysians are inordinately proud of—the reason for which eluded me. I thought they were hideous. Malevolent-looking, grey, shiny metal fingers, they point straight up in the air for a great distance without anything to relieve their sombreness. These utilitarian steel-clad monsters were completed in 1998 and are eighty-eight storeys and 452 metres high, making them the seventh highest structure in the world. A bridge connects the two towers about halfway up at an enormous height and I was told that for a fee I could walk across it. No fear. You’d have to pay me—heaps—and you’d still need a cattle prod to force me out onto there. But I loved Merdeka (Freedom) Square. Ringed by magnificent heritage buildings, it is one of the most spectacular squares I have seen anywhere.

  Almost the full bus circuit later I got off at the Bintang (Star) Walk where all the upmarket shops like Lacroix and Louis Vuitton are, not that they were my aim. I was looking for Lowyat Plaza where computers are sold. Recently my little portable had begun a slow progression toward what I feared might be eventual extinction. It was refusing to register d’s, which made for some very interesting words, and I also need two d’s to get into my email. After going from counter to counter and floor to floor—all ten of them—I decided not to buy another computer. Gone are the days of electronic bargains in this part of the world.

  My second afternoon in KL was also spent on the Ho Ho bus. I had tried to get a taxi at midday but no one would take me across town at this time because the traffic builds up horrendously then. Instead I got on the bus and got off at the bird park. What a terrific place. A few of the birds, the predators who cannot be trusted not to eat the other inmates, are in large enclosures. The rest fly or stalk, in the case of the flamingos, free, clearly visible and unafraid of humans under the high overhead netting that covers the entire eight hectares of the park. I entered the enclosure through a set of double mesh doors that allowed me in but not the birds out. The first long walkway contains large parrots of various colours, many perching on branches right in front of me. There are two hundred species of birds here, including hornbills and eagles, among trees and ponds and natural forest. I enjoyed this park immensely and spent hours there.

  Not far from Chinatown was my favourite building. Not surprisingly for a train lover, it was the KL Train Station. Built in 1911 in a Moorish design, it is a glorious confection of white-painted turrets and towers. Not a bit like what you would expect a functional place like a train station would be, it is a cross between an Arabian night’s fantasy
palace and a mosque. Originally Butterworth and Singapore trains came here, now they go to the newer Sentral Station; but on my first two journeys through Malaysia my train had stopped here.

  I remained in KL for a week and enjoyed all of it except for the horrible pollution that coloured everything greyish and the traffic that made it difficult to get about. The hotel staff was kind and helpful. Taxis were cheap, although they rarely had meters and the cost increased due to the roundabout way you had to go in the one-way traffic system. But almost all the drivers were friendly and most gave me a discount if the fare went over the round dollar fee.

  Another difficulty I found was that it was Ramadan, the Muslim month of fasting, when many services are cut back or not available, so information about onward travel was hard to come by. I visited the lovely restored mansion that is now the Tourist Bureau and even there had no luck. But eventually I happened upon a local train station close to Jalan Sultan that sold long distance bus tickets. I bought one to Malacca, an old and interesting port on the Malay Peninsula beside the Straits of Malacca.

  The bus took two hours to travel the 148 kilometres south-east to reach its terminus in the Malacca bus station—an enormous, busy place, some distance from the town centre. Bus was evidently the way to travel here—there were great numbers of them, well organised into local, intercity and international areas. There were also many shops and stalls as well as a money changer.

  I had booked a room in Malacca at the Best Western Riverside Hotel. It was well positioned close to the centre and my room looked into the Malacca River as promised. I repaired the toilet system in my capacity of Travelling Plumber, then took a taxi to the centre of the tourist drag, the Stadthuys (red house), a large red building that is a relic of Malacca’s days as a Dutch trading port.

  Originally a fishing village and later a Malay sultanate, as well as the domain of sea people who specialised in piracy, Malacca sits at a strategic position on the narrowest part of the Strait that forms a passage from China to India. For aeons it had been a stopping place for ships, including the fleet of Zheng Ho, the famous Ming dynasty admiral of the 13th century. Taken over by the Portuguese in 1511, the port was wrested from them by the Dutch in 1641 who in turn ceded it to Britain in 1826. The British left in 1946 and eventually Malacca became part of Malaysia.

  In the square surrounding the Stadthuys I got on what I thought was another hop on, hop off bus. This was a fair assumption, as I had been standing under a sign for it. However, this was not the Ho Ho. This bus travelled a long, long route, and finally expelled me back again in the already familiar central bus station that I had left not two hours before.

  The bus had been very crowded and I’d had to stand all the way packed closely in a bunch of eight delightful young Italians from Naples. In the hour we spent together we became friends and when we got off the girls all kissed me and promised to email. A long wait later another bus took me back from whence I came. I asked the driver to let me off at the street I thought led to my hotel on the river and, amazingly, it did.

  Next day I bought a ticket for a jaunt on the river. The riverboat stopped at a landing right outside the hotel to collect me. Many tourist boats cruise up and down the Malacca River, which flows through the town and is its main feature. The riverside is wonderful. The heart of the old city, it is intersected by curved bridges and lined with tiny, brightly painted, two-storey 300-year-old houses standing shoulder to shoulder.

  At first I had the boat almost to myself, then I was swamped by a mob of riotous Chinese who frolicked on board like ­children, singing, laughing and photographing everything in sight, especially me the peculiar-looking foreigner. I must be in every photo that went home to China.

  Finally I got off at the hotel landing where I had started and walked back along the river to the centre of town. How nice this walk was, along an immaculately kept paved path beside the water, shaded by the densely packed little houses and edged by lovingly tended pot plants. This very old part of Malacca is now UNESCO World Heritage listed. Along the way were many boat landings where I saw signs advertising a hop on, hop off boat, but, Ramadan again, no one could tell me about it. I found the Tourist Bureau but they were useless, and the supposed boat ticket office was closed except for a man sleeping (the guard!) outside it on a bench. There were few individual travellers here and only tour groups seemed to be catered for.

  I sat down on one of the many seats overlooking the river for a rest and was immediately engulfed by more jolly Chinese and photographed some more—once with a woman tenderly entwined about me. This must be the new Chinese middle class. God help us when they can all afford to travel. All 1.2 billion of them! They either weren’t allowed out before or couldn’t afford it.

  Although Malacca wasn’t as hot as KL, said to be the hottest place in the country where the temperature can reach 40°C, I got tired walking about after a while so I retreated until the evening. It was pleasant then to amble along Yongers Street, Malacca’s famous Chinese night market.

  The following day I took a Duck Tour. The duck wasn’t Donald but an amphibious vehicle. This was fun. A group of Chinese (more photographs) tourists and I sat high on the open top of the duck under an awning as we chugged around town passing the sights. We saw the Malacca Tower, another great pointy article that I was urged to climb but again resisted, refusing to be a Good Little Tourist. This tower was not only sickeningly high, but, to make matters worse, it revolved!

  Then our duck drove down a causeway and straight into the sea, which was a great novelty. On the nearby headland, sailing now, we passed a spectacular mosque, the Straits of Malacca Mosque, that guards the land and the sea it looks out over. We chugged along the waters of the coast a way and then returned.

  I had lunch at a small cafe on the river’s edge where very good food and a banana split all cost a mere four dollars. Waving down a riverboat, I got on wanting to go one stop but instead spent an hour trying to get off it again. When I finally managed this I walked back to the Best Western Riverside through a profusion of small, interesting backstreets. Stopping at a local market, I bought fruit and other essential supplies. Then I called an end to the day’s explorations.

  I tried to book another couple of nights in the hotel but could only get one as everything was full. The coming weekend was the beginning of the four-day celebration of the end of Ramadan, Ide el Fittr, which I was familiar with from my Saudi days. I used the hotel’s wifi to try to find somewhere to stay. It was hopeless. Everywhere was full.

  Dinner time came and I walked to where I had seen a few restaurants and nearby noticed the Accordion Hotel. It looked okay so I convinced the woman presiding over the desk to accommodate me when I had to leave the Riverside. She had said no at first, then relented, having perhaps concluded that, although decidedly strange, I was not actually dangerous. I paid a deposit and ate dinner on the opposite corner at a Chinese restaurant. I had rice balls and chicken, a local specialty, and it was the best, most perfectly cooked chicken I have ever had. It was accompanied by some chicken soup that tasted as though the chicken had merely walked through the bowl of water (without washing its feet), and a battered tin mug of what the waiter alleged was tea, but I doubt it. It was a strange, thick, dark-orange brew with scum on the top. I gave that a miss.

  I returned to my room at the Riverside happy, securely accommodated and well fed. In two days I moved to the Accordion. Checking out, to my surprise I was given a thirty-seven ringgit (currently about three to a dollar) refund. I have no idea why. I must have been unknowingly a Good Little Tourist.

  The Accordion was on a corner of one of the main streets that lead down to the town centre and the Red House. From my front room I had a good view of the street action but at first I felt I was on the Marie Celeste. I saw no other guests even when I sat in the lobby. Then the holidays came and the guests flooded in, and the usually empty downstairs area was full of prams and baby seats and families with children.

  Coffee was provided in
the downstairs area and I sat there sometimes to talk to the staff. I couldn’t find anyone else who spoke English. Under interrogation the manager told me that he had spent four years in Perth—in Maylands, the suburb next to the one I had lived in there, Victoria Park. And one of the women receptionists had a daughter at school in Adelaide, the Islamic school two streets from where I live.

  I taxied to Maketta Parade, a massive shopping complex. Getting about by taxi was often circuitous and convoluted due to the pesky one-way road system that operated here, as it did in KL, and the heavy traffic. In Makatta Parade I found a bookshop. I desperately needed something to read. From a line of cheap re-printed classics on the English shelf I selected The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins, a book I had always meant to read.

  Outside there was a long queue for taxis. I sat on a bench for twenty minutes talking to an old man while I waited. After a while something started to click and I was about to ask him if I had met him before. Then a taxi came and it was my turn to leave. It was only in the taxi that I remembered who he was. He was the kind, elderly gentleman I had met travelling on the train through Malaysia when I was on my way to Laos who had shared his tea with me. Yet another of those strange chance meetings that happen when travelling. But what a lost opportunity. He would have been delighted that he had been mentioned in my previous book, Lost in Laos.

  On the day that the holidays officially started, a massive red banner was hung across the street under my window—Selamat Hari Raya. In the evening I watched the police cordoning off the street to control the traffic to the night market. Apparently everyone goes to Yonkers on this night.

  Two days later I took a bus to Singapore where I had a date with Qantas. Getting off at Johor Bahru on the end of the Malaysian peninsular, I taxied to the airport and went home.