Nick Hardcastle

I have decided to stay two more nights and then head for Penang. I booked myself into a hotel in Georgetown this evening. The wonders of the internet.

A few snapshots of Tanah Rata http://www.hobnail.com/Blogphotos/Cameron_Highlands/index.html

Along the road to Tanah Rata there are scattered thatched huts on short stilts, home to the orang asli – the native people of these hills. They look very impoverished. They live on the margins of the local economy and, I suspect the margins of their own traditional lifestyle too. They sell honey, flowers and bamboo products to the passing tourists.

In Tanah Rata there is a shop, Chinese owned, that sells the most magnificent hardwood masks. Carved, they claim, by the local orang asli, but looking suspiciously like they might have been made to order in Ubud, Bali. At MR5000 upwards, these were certainly not carved by any of the orang asli I have seen around here.

A hundred and fifty feet away from me, at the end of the garden, a girl from Michigan is talking politics. Well, trying to, she isn’t very intelligent, can’t sustain an argument and is having difficulty in getting a full sentence out at one time. Not, I hasten to add, due to any lack of fluency in her speech, but because she is up against a group of well educated Europeans who keep contradicting her and challenging the statements she is making. I mention her here because she is a perfect example of a phenomena that I have observed many times – the single voice that carries. Of the seven people sitting around the fire, hers is the only voice I can hear clearly. I can just about tell that there are other people speaking, but they are easily ignored, drowned out by the clicking frogs and the bar’s radio. Miss Michigan’s voice rings out clear and sharp, without distortion or fading; she could be sitting next to me. Why? Should I wish to make my voice carry like that I would almost certainly have to shout and I would end up coughing, my throat hoarse. A related phenomena in such people is that the voice that carries, carries nothing of interest.

I ran this morning, choosing one of the trails closest to town, my expecting that it would be popular and well worn, climbing, as it does, the nearest peak to town. Four minutes into my run I was stopped by a large Malay family who wanted help with a photograph. They posed in front of the huge concrete signpost that marks the beginning of Tanah Rata. I asked what they wanted in the photo, thinking that it would be difficult from where we were standing to get in much of the beautiful mountains behind them. “Just the sign,” they said.

Spending MR4 on a map and being assured that the trails were easy to find by the plump girl in tourist information, I set out from the road looking forward confidently to the climb ahead. It would be good to try out my new trail running shoes I thought. Already I was impressed with the amount of cushioning under the balls of my feet.

Within minutes of leaving the road I was lost. A startled Indian lady pointed me in the right direction, although with hindsight it is clear that she had never made the climb.

A faint trail led first through an abandoned vegetable plot before plunging into the jungle. I ran along enthusiastically, deciding whether to try and remove leaches as they attached themselves or let them drop off when they were ready. Scrambling up a steep clay bank I disappeared into the dense undergrowth and the town of Tanah Rata might well have been a hundred miles away.

The trail was surprisingly overgrown. I jumped and ducked and wove around various impediments, some large some small, smooth and whippy, sharp and clinging. This is great I thought, a huge grin on my face.

It was so innocent, just a dark green palm frond stretching across the path. It grabbed me by the shorts, pulled me round and, to borrow a phrase from Robin William’s new move RV, used my momentum to ‘floss my but’. I screeched to a halt and began disentangling myself from the hundreds of thorns on the underside of the leaves.

The trail then vanished completely, thanks to a new building development, dug deep into the hillside. Clinging on to branches and vines, I managed to skirt the edge of the excavation and rejoin the trail a couple of hundred meters further along, only to find that the trail disappeared again, this time completely, in half a mile.

This was machete territory and I had only the small pocket knife I use as a keyring. Walking now, I tried to push my way forward, but I was soon entangled in thorns which ripped six inch snags in my running shirt. Giving up and headed back to Tanah Rata, wondering how a trail so close to a thriving tourist town could be so overgrown.

A driver was at the bus terminal to meet me and I was whisked off to Daniel’s Lodge. It had looked so good on the internet, but the best room was depressing in the extreme. Without air conditioning walls soon take on a stained and worn look in the humidity, even at the is altitude. The single, highly colourful sheet was clean, as was the blanket neatly folded at the bottom of the bed. Eddy assured me that even the bathroom light worked and there was hot and cold water in the shower. Green netting was stretched across the louvre window and an pair of athletic spiders were chasing about the walls hunting the mosquitoes that followed us inside. Eddy was pleasant and helpful and I tried to keep the disappointment from showing in my face. I am getting soft. I used to stay in this sort of place, and worse, all the time.

The Cameron Highlands and Tanah Rata have long figured on my list of those places that I long to return to. If I am fed up I often think of the times that I have spent here. I arrived with a sense of excitement, keen to explore old haunts and see what had changed.

Leaving my baggage locked in the room, deciding that I could risk leaving my computer and cameras in this backwater, I walked back into town. Within minutes I was trying to remember quite what it was that I had seen in the place.

Short break to fetch insect repellant.

Back in the garden bar now. Classical Indian music in the background. A small shrine with a candle floating in a Guinness glass to my right and a Comanche painting on a wooden plaque hanging on the wall above. A rat has just run across the floor.

There have been changes in Tanah Rata, but not on the scale that I expected. On my last visit there was a lot of building work going on. This is now completed, with the exception of one substantial structure which has been abandoned. Its concrete skeleton gradually being reclaimed by the forrest. A few additional rows of shop houses, blocks of apartments and a new bus station have also been added, but substantially, the town is still recognizable.

It wasn’t any more beautiful 16 years ago although at least then the jungle, if I can call it that, encroached on the very edge of town and the old colonial buildings still stood in a glorious isolation that suggested that the British were not that long gone. The town was functional, a place to buy supplies, have a beer and an Indian meal.

I used to stay at Father’s Guest House, so called because the main house was owned by a priest, who, if I am not mistaken worked at the convent just down the hill. During the Emergency and up to Independence in 1957 the gardens had been used as a British military base. By the 1990s the nissan huts had been converted in to dormitories for travelers. It was a good place to stay; cheap, friendly and with great views across the mountains. In the evening everybody would gather in the cafe at the bottom of the hill, exchange stories and enjoy a beer and perhaps a film.

By the time of my second visit, which must have been in 1991, a substantial section of the surrounding jungle had been ripped up, to prepare the ground for the large blocks of apartments that dominate the entrance to Tanah Rata today. I remember being angered and indignant at this.

I was particularly frustrated because I could see no point in the development. None of the Malaysians that I met had showed the slightest interest in the natural environment. To most of the Malays that I knew, the countryside meant farming, something that they were trying to get away from as they sought the financial prestige of the growing middle class. To them, enjoying nature meant a game of golf, or at most sitting in a waterfall, modest in their white T-shirts. The Chinese I knew were only interested in gambling, hence the great success of the Genting Highlands, home to the only casino in Malaysia.

Why then, I thought, destroy this place of natural beauty, just so that Malaysians could sit in their hotel rooms or in a coffee shop drinking tea and chatting?

This was an interesting time in my intellectual development. In my studies I was acutely aware of the pitfalls of ethnocentrism and yet my attitude towards Malaysians in general, and Malays specifically, could only be described as dismissive. I loved the Malay language and their traditional culture, but they seemed so misguided, so lost in the current swell of economic development. In many ways I suppose I was sure of my own ethnic superiority. I can laugh at it now, but at the time I was very serious. It is an attitude that I see today in many of the men that work in Saudi Arabia. A belief that the locals just aren’t up to the job and couldn’t possibly manage without us. It is nonsense of course and completely ethnocentric.

So, sixteen years on, it appears that the level of environmental destruction around Tanah Rata is relatively minimal, limited in extent to about half a kilometer in each direction from the centre. The population must have increased many times over and this has been good for local businesses.

Returning from my walk I was still thinking “Why am I here? What was it that was special about this place?”. I changed and went for a run, intending to follow the route of the last walk I took here, out of Tanah Rata and through the jungle to the golf course, then back down the main road. A combination of poor memory and recent building sent me off course and I found instead the Cameron Highlands Hospital, a strange location for such a large institution, but perhaps the cool mountain air aids recovery and cuts down on air-conditioning bills.

The old Smokehouse, a very English hotel at the edge of the golf course is unchanged, right down to the plastic sheeting over part of the roof, although to be fair, it might have been repaired and leaked anew. I have always wanted to stay here, and it annoyed me that it is still beyond my budget. As I write though, a little devil is perched on my shoulder saying ‘splurge, go on, you might never be back here’. Good argument.

It was a good run, 47 minutes including the diversion to the hospital. It would have been a full morning’s outing on my last visit here. I am older but much fitter now, and that pleases me.

The Chinese restaurant, the only decent place for breakfast, not good but a place where memory often takes me, has gone. In its place a seedy bar with pool tables and a loose looking woman leaning on the door frame.

The Indian restaurants are still there, their waiters still pouncing on passers by fluttering menus in their face and reeling off a list of dishes. Their sarongs, or kain pelicat, now replaced with trousers.

KFC hasn’t made it here yet, although there is a KLC with remarkably similar colours, logos and menu. Across the road and at the other end of town there is a would be McDonalds, again with all the right packaging, colours and menu items.

I ate roti canai with a group of Malay teachers who were in town for an English and Art ‘expedition’ with their students before repairing to a Japanese (!) restaurant for coffee, cheesecake and their free internet connection. Internet! Last time I was here, I hadn’t even heard of it. Now I can email from my laptop from the middle of the jungle. Well, almost.

Daniel’s lodge has one redeeming feature. A bar in the garden. It is difficult to get beer as the bar girl, Dutch unless I am mistaken, keeps wondering off to sit by the fire and chat with her friends.

I titled this entry “Why do we go back to places?” and it occurs to me that I have yet to answer my own question. I have been thinking about it all evening. I think that it is an attempt to recapture a feeling or a mood that we enjoyed. I was happy when I visited the Cameron Highlands in the early 1990s. I was free, either traveling or at university or both. I was busy studying Malay and anthropology and loving every minute of it. I had a clear vision of where I wanted to do with my life and the belief that I could make it. The Cameron Highlands were a cool place to be, literally and socially. I had work to do and the time available. Father’s guest house was a great place to study and to relax. Times change and I never realized those ambitions. . To recapture the mood by returning here was folly, but I needed to come here, to see it once again, to realize that. I can go now.

Thanks to fast new highways the journey from Kuala Lumpur to the Cameron Highlands takes less than four hours. The road from Tapah to Tanah Rata has been widened too, so luxury coaches now go the full distance. There was a time when you had to get off at Tapah and take an old Mercedes taxi, if you were feeling a little flush, or cram onto a tiny bus if you weren’t. The road is still very beautiful, winding its way through mountain forest for 55kmm, and still leaves me feeling a little sick on arrival.

Correction. Next year is Visit Malaysia Year and the 50th anniversary of independence.

I was bored today for the first time since I got to KL. Partly it has to do with being in a retail paradise and the realisation that my money will run out far too soon if I don’t put the breaks on. I could do to earn at least five times my annual salary, just to support the ten week holiday we get in the summer. Such hardship, being a teacher.

Breakfast buffets in expensive hotels are so difficult. With so much that is delicious to tempt you, it is always a challenge to get out without eating so much that you need to go back to bed for a few hours to sleep off the morning feast. I am in a fit, as opposed to fat, phase at the moment, and so each visit to the breakfast buffet is like a special torture. In expensive hotels that is. Not such a problem in the Allson Genesis. Sure, its quite nice, to damn it with faint praise, but it is at breakfast that I am reminded that this hotel costs less than twenty five pounds a night. Thin orange juice, orange in colour at least; slightly soggy cornflakes, more flake than corn; and grey coffee are the most tempting things at the AG buffet. Across the road there is Muslim Indian restaurant, where for about 30 pence they will serve delicious ‘roti canai’ and ‘teh tarik’. But, as the hotel breakfast is included in the deal, I endure it briefly each morning. Why I make this daily sacrifice is a not yet clear to me.

There is a shopping center off Jalan Bukit Bintang, five floors of technology and a thousand geeks. I was there to flick through hundreds of CDs and DVDs, all pirated and on sale openly and for a small fraction of the cost of original versions. A Malaysian I had met on the flight here complained that England was technologically out of date. Its not surprising, we spend most of our money on software, not the hardware on which to run it. In the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf, on the ground floor, I met an Ausralian, her Apple Store bag providing sufficient introduction. A English lecturer from the university in Brunei, she was on her annual holiday and had just returned from three weeks in Laos which she had found remarkably poor and underdeveloped. She was enjoying the civilization of Kuala Lumpur and didn’t sound enthusiastic about returning to Brunei, which she described as parochial and conservative.

The hotel lift requires that you insert your room key into a slot before it will allow you to select your floor. Like an abused credit card, mine wouldn’t work, no matter how persistently I swiped it. Somewhat irriated I took it to the reception desk. “What time do you wish to check out sir?”, asked the clerk when I finally managed to drag him away from his computer screen. We had our dates confused. I thought I had another night here, they thought otherwise. We negotiated. I could stay another night, but the room would be at their promotional rate – some ten pounds more than the rate I had been paying. I demanded to know the logic behind this – how could booking through a third party and paying their commission be so much cheaper than paying the hotel directly. To save face, the clerk revalidated my key and said that he would get the manager to telephone me in my room, which he did whilst I was in the bathroom. There is something slightly absurd about standing in the middle of your room, underpants round your ankles, negotiating for a discounted room rate. You are hardly in a position of strength. Eventually, I did managed to negotiate a good rate and, feeling pleased with myself, decided that it might be better to move away from the picture window.

There are many pleasant Western-style bars in KL now but the place in which I find myself most comfortable is a small open air Chinese restaurant, plastic tables, bright green chopsticks in orange plastic pots and with the kitchen stove on wheels. It is on the street corner and its a hive of activity every evening. There is no menu but the Carlesberg signs above the mobile stalls describe what is on offer: mee with pork or fish balls, prawn mee, goreng kuey teow, popiah and fried rice. Thats it. As I sit here writing and drinking my Tiger I am reminded of those adverts where one man stands still and everything around him is speeded up, a blur of activity. Chinese eat fast. They arrive, double parking their Mercedes, BMWs and Range Rovers, order in harsh voices, feed in a frenzy and leave. I order another Tiger. Actually that isn’t true. Already a local, the kind lady just smiled at me and brought me another.

Many years ago the government of Singapore held a campaign to get the nations shop keepers, then a miserable bunch, to smile more. The thinking was that this might actually improve sales. Campaign posters around town carried the message “Have you given your ten smiles today?” It must have been an up hill struggle. I remember leaving a shop in misnamed Happy Plaza with the clerk following me out waving good bye with two fingers and a not so friendly “F**k you, mister.” I had asked to see a piece of camera gear, that I doubtless bought later in a more amenable place, only to be told “You buy, you look. No buy, no look.” I may have commented upon his expertise as a salesman, his intelligence generally, or perhaps the similarity of his head to his genitalia. I don’t recall. Malaysia, is now holding a similar campaign, perhaps to encourage more tourism, this being the fiftieth anniversary of independence and yet another “Visit Malaysia Year”. Banners like the one in the photograph (out of focus, it was late, too much Tiger etc.) are scattered around town. Translated, loosely: “Smile! Friendly without speaking. Good manners is our culture. The KL way!” On the whole, it is true, although I think that some Englishmen at least, tend to be a little suspicious of over friendly foreigners.

Speaking of which, there are a lot more prostitutes around town than there were fifteen years ago.

Now there are several things that I tend to take for granted about pavements and pedestrian crossings. They are for pedestrians, you don’t park on them, and, should you have to cross one in a motor vehicle, you give way to those on two legs. In Kuala Lumpur none of the above applies. Sure, as a pedestrian you might try to stay on the sidewalk as it is marginally safer than walking in the road, but generally, your path will be blocked by a collection of cars and motorbikes, some stationary, others not. Drivers take advantage of the narrowest pavements to pull a couple of wheels off the road as they visit their favourite ‘kedai kopi’ – it lessens their chance of being shunted and it is easier that finding a parking space. Broad pavements, even those with frighteningly high curbs are simply viewed as a long, narrow parking lot.

Pedestrian crossings, zebra crossings as we call them in England, serve two purposes. At busier times hundreds of motorbikes pull on to them as they wait for the traffic lights to change. If they are not already full of bikes, inevitably a bus or truck will pull slowly onto the crossing as you, the man foolish enough to walk, step hastily sideways to avoid being crushed.

Finally, at rush hour, when the traffic of KL grinds to halt, despite the frantic waving of dozens of policemen, the pavements become a freeway for motorcycles. Pedestrians beware.

Not so many years ago, driving on the sidewalk would never have been possible. Huge storm drains – ‘parit’ – would be randomly exposed, concrete paving slabs broken or missing, drain covers non-existent. Where intact, a street trader would have set up a stall or a cafe owner would be washing their dishes in a bowl. Being a pedestrian, of course, was just as hazardous. Taking your eyes from the ground in front for even a moment was foolhardy indeed. One of the first phrases I learned in Malay was “Encik Smith jatuh ke dalam parit”. Mr Smith has fallen into the drainage ditch. I used to think it quite funny until, that is, I saw an Australian girl step confidently from the pavement and land in a metre deep ditch, breaking both legs. It was raining at the time and the parit was half full of filthy brown water and the odd swimming rat.

I passed the fountain in the center of KL, near the Royal Selangor Club, the huge flagpole and the padang that I had photographed in the early 1990s. It doesn’t look quite as well maintained as it once did but it is still there. The walk along the river between the post office and the mosque used to be the place where newly married and courting couples promenaded at night, enjoying a quiet moment in the shady seclusions of the old trees, the hibiscus flowers adding a touch of romance to the setting. Nobody was there this evening, the pavement green with algae, cracked in parts and the marble seats no longer with their lovers’ patina. The malls have taken over as the place to walk. They are airconditioned and huge, large enough to provide anonimity perhaps.

I passed by the Hard Rock Cafe, never one of my favouite haunts but a good place to get a beer in the past, when pubs and bars were in short supply in the city. It looked the same; TG Friday’s too, unchanged. Only I have changed since I last ate their with Angela a dozen years ago. As I walked down Jalan P Ramlee I wondered what my ambitions had been then … in twelve years … a PhD of course, a lecturship … and surely by now a Chair at some prestigeous university. What happened? Have I wasted the last twelve years, I began to think before deciding, resolutely, that I shouldn’t. What in another 12 years? I’ll be 55 by then. Not a clue.

Age has come up twice in the last twenty four hours. During a late night forray to 7-11 for a Tiger, the Chinese shop where it is RM2.50 a bottle cheaper having just closed, I was approached by a pair of aging prostitutes. One Indian and not pretty, the other of indeterminate race, with too much makeup and too ugly to be a transvestite. The Indian lady said “Hello baby boy, lets make it three! We’ll show you a good time.” I declined laughing, and politely asked for directions to the liquor store. Baby boy. They must have been older than I thought. And then today, in Starbucks – yes, all the way to Malaysia to sit in Starbucks, my only defence being that they have a free, fast internet connection. The baristas know me by name now, and John introduced me to his new colleague, explaining that I was a professor at USM. I savoured the promotion for a moment before explaining to the girl, who was perhaps 32, that I was a teacher, but not at USM. “Oh, so you have retired-lah?”, she said. “Still working-lah, you too old, should retire-lah.” When I said that I was only 43, she laughed and told me to die my hair. She was fat and so I forgave her. She was ugly too, so I just smiled and paid for my coffee.

My hotel room and pocket knife of choice niether having a bottle opener, I have been making use of the door latch in the bathroom. By carefully aligning the bottle cap against the metal latch and giving the bottle a sharp slap, I have been able to remove the top easily. Over the course of the week I have become gradually more proficient. So efficent in fact, that today the top shot straight off with the first slap and hit me square between the eyes, causing the bridge of my nose to bleeed.

It was a fluke. The second bottle was so stubborn, so tightly capped that I woke the man in the next room.

There is a certain art to buying a durian and the Chinese have got it sussed. The process is initiated by a lengthy negotiation over origin, professed quality, variety and price. The spiky, green fruit are prodded, tapped and weighed reverently, cupped carefully like huge breasts, tapped and sniffed. Careful sniffing gives clues as to ripeness and an anticipation of flavour. The stem is then caressed, its moistness and turgidity tested, an indication of freshness. Once the price has been negotiated, with a certain amount of histrionics on both sides, the buyer borrows the vendor’s large knife and carefully slaps her chosen fruit, listing carefully for the rattling of dried out seeds within, a bad sign. Having examined a dozen or so fruit, the chosen one is swiftly split open and served at the aluminium roadside table, a steel bowl provided for the discarded stones. Three, perhaps four, Malaysian dollars change hands and the fruit is devoured with a certain reverence.

I’ve tried the slapping and sniffing, the weighing and fondling, but the selection of the best durian remains a mystery to me. Perhaps when I can eat the sticky fruit without needing a wash and change of clothes I will discover the secret.

The durian is so pungent, so repulsive to some, that it is banned from many hotels here in Kuala Lumpur. Anthony Burgess likened it to eating vanilla custard in a latrine and food writer Richard Sterling had this to say “its odor is best described as pig-shit, turpentine and onions, garnished with a gym sock”. I have a vague memory of disliking the smell when I first came across it many years ago, but now when I catch it on the breeze I find myself tracking down the source, mouth watering. To the cognoscenti, the varying scent of the durian tells an important tale, identifying the species, cultivar and stage of ripeness, giving a foretaste of the quality hidden inside the thorny husk.

Durian grow on the branches and trunks of magnificent trees that can reach 50m in height. When they are ripe, they drop, and as they can weigh 5kg could easily be lethal. In Penang they put nets beneath the trees to catch the falling fruit, although whether to save the fruit or casual passers by, I’ve never been sure. Malaysians tend to like their fruit ripe – when the fruit is at its most pungent and custard-like. In Thailand, where most of the world’s durian come from, they tend to prefer the fruit picked fresh from the tree. Then its flavour is more mild, its aroma gentle on the nose.

I’ve been told that eating a lot of durian causes the body to overheat, although as most Europeans sweat so heavily here, it must be hard to prove conclusively. The solution is to eat mangosteen or drink salted water from the durian husk, both of which are ‘cooling’. I’ve tried both of those methods in the past, without obvious effect, although I am happy to accept any excuse to eat the wonderful local mangosteen.

Sadly, it is hard to find this fruit in England. Of the 1.4 million tonnes that are grown each year, only 500 tonnes make it to Europe.