Sungei Pinang to Georgetown
April 4th 1995
Ong came back on the Monday night, three days after we'd arrived at the farm and the day before i was planning to start my trip to Thailand. Martin had left the day before. The next morning, the three of us started to put up some frames for beans to grow up on one of the terraces. I spent a couple of hours working on that and then i had to go and catch my bus.
I'd decided to go back to Georgetown the other way, via Teluk Bahang and the north coast of the island, just to have a look at it. The number 76 bus to Teluk Bahang passed the bottom of the track up to the farm every two hours, so it saved walking into Sungei Pinang too. This road was much more interesting than the way we'd come. It wound its way through the hills, which around here were mainly covered in rainforest.
I had to change buses at Teluk Bahang, which seemed to be some kind of minor seaside resort. From there all the way to Georgetown, it was completely suburban and mostly not exactly picturesque. But the road went along the coast for a bit of the way though and it was nice to be able to look out over the ocean.
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I didn't want to go back to the Plaza, partly because i wanted a change and partly because i'd found it a bit too big and unriendly. So this time i checked into the D'budget Hostel, which was also run by Indians, and was much smaller. It had a rooftop terrace with tables and a thatched roof over it, where you could sit and look out over the city or over the water towards the mainland. The roof was a welcome refuge from the city streets and a place where i ended up spending a lot of time.
From there you could watch the ferries weaving their way backwards and forwards from Georgetown to Butterworth, the large ocean-going freighters and tankers going in and out of the port on the mainland and all the other small shipping that went on in that stretch of water. Or, in the evenings, you could look in the opposite direction and watch the sun setting behind the hills above the city.
I ended up spending three nights in Georgetown, not particularly because i wanted to be in Georgetown, but because i had a few things i had to do before i left. Anyway, i was actually enjoying being there, although there didn't really seem to be much in the way of things to do in that town.
The runup to a general election was happening in Malaysia at that time. There were masses of ugly plastic flags and posters being stuck up all over the place, making Georgetown look like a giant Australian-style car yard.
Malaysia was a one party state. Ever since independence, the only party to be in power was the national front or Barisan Nasional party and there was no reason to think it would be any different this time. A lot of Malaysia's repressive laws were handed directly down from the Brutish empire when they got their independence, including the national security act, which allowed the government to put political dissidents in jail indefinitely, without the need to charge them or have a trial. There were a lot of people locked up under this law for disagreeing with the government. Malaysia was really the ultimate in democracy. You can vote, sure, but it won't make any difference to who's running the country. It's the same everywhere, but at least there it's obvious what the score is. And it was illegal to discuss politics in public in Malaysia, so you ran the risk of getting put in prison if you grumbled about the system in a cafe or a park. I don't know if they would have locked me up for it, but i didn't feel like testing out my luck!