Singapore to Kuala Lumpur
March 23rd 1995
"Welcome to Malaysia" said the sign above the entrance to Singapore's "Singapura" railway station. We booked second class sleepers for the seven hour journey to Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia, on the Semandung Malam Express departing at half past ten that night.
We'd arrived at the jetty at the world trade centre in Singapore at about eight o'clock, expecting to have to spend a night in this big, expensive city. We'd changed our minds about staying here long enough to get our visas for India, partly due to the expense that would be involved and partly due to neither of us really fancying spending that long somewhere like Singapore. Instead, we thought we might as well get them in Kuala Lumpur. That way, if we wanted to, we could go off somewhere else in Malaysia while we waited.
It was wonderful to arrive in Singapore and, for the first time in what seemed like a hundred places, not to get hassled as we tried to get off the ferry. I'm not a great fan of the relatively dull culture of the so-called "developed" countries, but at that time it was a pleasant change to be back in one again! Singapore reminded me in a lot of ways of Sydney. I guess it had that same british colonial touch to it, that same british influence on the architecture and the general structure of the place, i don't really know. Anyway, whatever it was, neither of us had any great desire to hang around there any longer than we had to. I wouldn't have minded if we'd had to stay one night, just to get a bit of a feel of it, but i certainly wasn't disappointed when, half an hour after arriving, we got to the railway station and found there was a train that night.
Inside Singapura station there was a smallish ticket hall with a very high arched roof. High up on the walls, there were panels painted on tiles - three pictures, made up of three panels each, were on each of two opposite walls. These depicted a variety of mainly rural scenes from an obviously colonial past. Rubber tappers at work; people working in rice fields, a railway being built; people climbing trees to gather coconuts; an interesting assortment of ships and boats - including an old three-masted square rigger; a rural scene with an ox-cart, coconut palms and a thatched hut. A portrayal of a tranquil and industrious colonial Malaya, where the natives were obviously happy to be slaving away to support the Brutish Empire. Anyway, despite its obvious imperial origin, it was an interesting and, in a way a beautiful decoration for a railway station.
What wonderful luxury it was, speeding through the warm peninsular night in second class sleepers. The sleeping carriages had two rows of double bunks, one on each side, running the whole length of an open corridor. Each bunk had a curtain, sheets and a pillow. This was unbelievably comfortable compared to the way we'd been travelling up till now. In fact it was more comfortable than most of the travelling i'd done in my life. And we appreciated it doubly after the last week of hell!
- - -
There was something i liked about Kuala Lumpur, or K.L. as all the locals seemed to call it. Something indefinable. It was probably a combination of things really, because although it was a big, modern city, it had a very definite character of its own. A character that was distinctly asian.
One thing that struck me in KL was the apparent harmony that it's three main ethnic groups live side by side in. As well as ethnic Malays, Malaysia has large populations of Chinese and Indians. The Indians are mainly Tamils, from the south of India. These three communities have been living together for over a century and, from the point of view of an outsider and a stranger to that country, they seemed to have arrived at some kind of peaceful co-existence. Of course, i could have been quite mistaken there, as appearances can often be deceptive when it comes to such matters.
In Malaysia, the Malays held the political power, being mainly muslims, in a predominantly muslim country, while the Chinese held the economic power, being naturally good at business. The Indians seemed to just live in their own little world, not too concerned about what the Chinese and the Malays were up to, so long as they weren't bothering them.
This was, of course, a gross simplification and probably a considerably distorted view, but i offer it purely as the shallow impression of someone who wasn't there for very long. No doubt the reality was much more complicated than that.
Anyway, what i felt in those first days in KL was that here was a genuine example of multiculturalism. It's a phrase that was often heavily overused and often, particuarly in Australia, used in the weirdest of ways, but it's something that you rarely get to see. Somehow it seemed to exist in KL. Multiculturalism in this case appeared to mean the different cultures not really having much to do with each other. But then maybe that's the only way we can live that closely with other cultures without a lot of friction. It certainly appeared to mean the individual groups being able to maintain their cultures reasonably intact.
I don't know why i felt this more in KL than anywhere else i've been. Certainly Hackney and Stoke Newington, where i used to live in London were very multicultural, with no one racial or ethnic group being really dominant. But there, there's a lot of tension. Not necessarily racial tension, just a tension that i didn't feel in KL. Maybe it was me, maybe it was the way Asians were, i didn't know. But i suspected there's much more tension generally in european cities than in asian ones.
- - -
Anyway, we stayed in a hostel called the Travellers Moon Lodge, in Jalan Silang, in Chinatown. It was run by a tamil family and was a very friendly and comfortable place to stay - as well as being cheap. It was a lively area, with lots of food and drink stalls in the streets. The ones i frequented the most were the ones which sold fresh soya milk by the glass. It was such a luxury to be able to drink it again after not seeing it anywhere at all in Indonesia. There was also a large selection of good quality cheap fruit - in fact Malaysia seemed to have better fruit than most other places i've been.
Not far away, just around the corner really, was the Indian area, near Jalan Tunku Abdul Rahman and Jalan Masjid India. This was a good place to eat, as there were a lot of cheap southern indian restaurants, where it was easy to find good vegan food. There were also street sellers with a good selection of nuts and indian fried snacks.
The best and cheapest meals were to be had in the various banana leaf restaurants, where you got a banana leaf laid on the table in front of you, which was then piled up with rice and a variety of tasty curries. You ate this with your right hand and the custom was to fold the banana leaf in half when you've finished - otherwise you'd get another helping. In these places, you could eat a large, filling meal for only a couple of ringgits. This was heaven after the last couple of weeks of near-starvation, however, neither of us had big enough stomachs to hold a full meal without difficulty any more!
- - -
We found the indian high commission, which was quite a trek from Chinatown, away from any bus routes, and went to apply for visas. We had to pay for them to check us out with the high commissions in our various countries (like a fool i told them i lived in Britain, which meant we had to pay for two telexes, rather than just one!) and they told us to come back in a week.
However, we changed our minds in the meantime. We'd spent a lot more money than we'd expected, getting this far. And it wasn't going to be quite as cheap as we'd hoped to get from there to Madras. Nicki only had a limited amount of money and it was beginning to look as if she'd only have enough to get there and then back to Australia, but not enough to live on while she was there. We didn't make any final decision about what we were going to do, but we decided we didn't really want to hang around in KL while we decided, and we'd go to Penang and work it out somehow along the way. There was still a glimmer of a possibility that there would be a boat from Penang to Madras, although this was looking distinctly unlikely now. And it was also possible that air fares would be cheaper there too. Anyway, we were going to go and find out.