Malaysia

Visa Run To Kuala Lumpur

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Me and LiYu

LiYu, my former couchsurfer in Oaxaca last year had been a student at Colby College in Maine on a scholarship and had accompanied Gustavo Esteva, from Oaxaca, and a group of other American students on a one year tour to India, Thailand, New Zealand and finally to Oaxaca to study indigenous sustainability…not to teach…but to learn. At the end of her year with Gustavo she returned to Malaysia to find a way to implement what she had learned.

I fell in love with her in Oaxaca and so I jumped at the chance to join her and her family in their home in Kuala Lumpur for a couple days while renewing my tourist visa.

I had the luck of meeting her grandparents…Chinese immigrants to Malaysia and learned a bit of history.

Father, LiYu, grandfather, mother, grandmother

By the start of the second world war, Malaysia’s economy was flourishing with the output of tin and rubber, giving it great strategic importance. Malaysia fell under threat of a Japanese invasion when the American, British and Dutch governments froze essential raw materials and oil supplies to Japan. Japan was then forced to look to Southeast Asia for shipments. While Britain was preoccupied with defending itself against he threat of German invasion, the Japanese wasted no time to effect their occupation of Malaysia, commencing with the bombing of the beaches of Kota Bharu in Kelantan, and Singapore, on 8 December 1941.

The takeover continued almost without opposition as Commonwealth troops defending Malaysia were expecting invasion by sea and not by land. They were hopelessly and inadequately trained in jungle warfare and lacked ammunition, so fell to the invaders one by one. Malaysia was occupied for the next three and a half years by the Japanese.

On Feb 15th, 1942 Britain surrendered the Allied forces.

Within ten weeks the Japanese won control of Malaysia and Singapore. The dreaded Japanese secret police, the Kempetai subjected sympathisers to humiliation and torture especially the Malaysian Chinese sympathisers who were treated ruthlessly and executed.

Oppression of the Chinese community led to a resistance movement which moved to the jungle fringes. There was widespread unemployment and marked social and economic problems, destruction of mining equipment and decline in rubber and tin industries. An armed resistance movement against the Japanese was organised in the Malaysian jungle consisting mainly of Chinese men from The Malaysian Communist Party.

When the Japanese took control of Malaysia they put the Chinese in a sort of concentration camp…individual homes that were fenced off to contain the population. Very ironic. LiYu’s grandparents were among those and they still live in that original home in a seedy part of KL. Listening to them talk (through LiYu’s mom who translated) I came to realize why the Chinese are often the fiercest conservative bootstrappers. And finally understood why LiYu feels so constrained living at home with her parents who are quite controlling. You have to get out, I said to her. Yes I know, she said.

Are You Malaysian?

Posted on by Laughingnomad

From a revealing blog (The Twisted Stethoscope) by a Malaysian, Jason Leong, who attended medical school in Ireland.

Part I

Here is a list of criteria one must comply with to be truly Malaysian. You may be a Caucasian expat who has lived in Malaysia for decades, or you can be a hip 15 year old girl with belly piercings. Anyone and everyone can fulfill these criteria. Simply said, almost anyone can be Malaysian.
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4th Day in Kuala Lumpur

Posted on by Laughingnomad

KL is a big cosmopolitan city vibrant and alive especially late at night. Luk noticed it right away…watching the 20 something girls dressed in the latest Asian fashion. Today she came out of her hotel room sporting a white mini skirt with over the knee black stockings with lace at the top and new black patent shoes.

Populated mainly by Malays, Chinese and Indians and various other groups, it’s difficult for me to identity the ethnic origin of many of the people. Certainly few Thais. Islam is on the rise in Malaysia and you see many muslim women with hibabs (called tudongs here) and long dresses but haven’t seen many full-face covers from the middle east that you often see at Bumrungrad Hospital in Bangkok. If it’s multi-culturalism you want this is the place to come!

Chinatown pretty ratty. Wide four-lane streets in parts and narrow meandering streets in the rest. The Golden Triangle could be NYC…mall after mall after high-rise mall with expensive stores and restaurants of all kinds. And then there are the Petronas Towers and the Kuala Lumpur Tower…stunningly lit at night. The transportation system is excellent…trains and monorails go to all parts of the city.

We’ve eaten at Mexican and Chinese restaurants, at Malay food stalls where you never know what you are eating, had Turkish coffee and roll-ups and I still want to eat at a Lebanese restaurant next to our hotel…the Sungei Wang Hotel (probably Chinese) on Jalan Bukit Bintang. This morning the breakfast at KFC was pretty bad. Today lunched at Shakey’s Pizza for $4…pretty good. Outback Steakhouse across the street but at 45 ringit (about $15) it’s too expensive for us. Very few clubs. You have to know where they are. Last night we ate at a Malay restaurant….not what we were going to get. Turned out it was Murtabak (kind of an omelet) Mee Goreng (Hokkien noodles with a kind of cut up doughnut underneath and distinctive sweet sauce on top). There is a Hokkien indigenous group in China and there are many Chinese in Malaysia so I guess this is where the noodles come from. Doug had pepper steak ($4) and the waiter tacked on Nasi Goreng which we didn’t have…so we just figured that was his tip.
Yesterday we went to a fish acquarium with the longest underwater tank in Asia. Doug and Luk went to see “Iron Man” in an iMax theater (they loved it) and today Doug is taking Luk to see her first iMax movie entitled something like T Rex. I declined…

Last night the police herded about 30 young guys into an official police “bus.” For what I don’t know. I do know that the government is cracking down on young muslims many of whom like to imbibe in the clubs. And they round up illegal immigrant girls who are here to accommodate them if you know what I mean.

The big news in the media here now is a debate about whether women should get permission from their families to travel alone. Can you imagine the snarl this would cause in train stations and airports? And I guess a single woman with no family here would be SOL.

I have a sense there are a fair number of westerners living and working here…walking down the street like they know where they are going…like in many other Asian cities. Some Australian and European travelers are hauling backpacks. Why they travel with such big loads is more than I know.

Sitting behind me in the patio, under the mister fans, outside a Starbucks…on Wifi…is a Malay twenty-something. She’s been on MySpace all afternoon.

We’ll take the train all the way to the airport Sunday morning…about 70 km outside the city. Doug will have his Thai visa tucked safely away.

Asian Travel Update

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Last week Amy, Josh’s wife, flew down to Samui from Beijing with a colleague from her international school where they teach history. Four short days but it was a treat to see them!

    Koh Samui to Trang to Krabi

The day before they left Doug, Luk and I drove to Trang to leave Ting Tong, their dog, in the care of Luk’s mother during our week-long trip to Kuala Lumpur Malaysia to renew Doug’s Thai visa. We had planned on spending the night in Trang before driving over to Krabi International Airport to catch a plane to KL but that was not to be. We checked into the hotel at 11am and was told the rooms would be vacated at noon. Noon came and went and so did 1pm and 2pm. Rooms were supposedly being made up for us. Finally at 2:30, with absolutely no concern being shown by the dour desk clerk, we decided just to drive the 1.5 hrs to Krabi for the night. So much for the land of smiles! Typical foreign “customer service.” But we were not really surprised and quickly let our frustration go. We have had a lot of practice at it!

Driving to Krabi in a monsoon rain, a dog ran out in front of doug’s pick-up. I thought we had hit a rock. Needless to say the rest of the trip was a pretty sober one.

    Kuala Lumpur

Now we are in Kuala Lumpur. We checked into the Backpackers Travellers Inn in Chinatown recommended by Lonely Planet and an expat in KL. Wrong! Filthy concrete floors, no top sheet, had to purchase a towel, no soap but for $25 a night, in their generosity, we did have air/con. However with no sheet it got cold during the night and turning off the air/con just meant we got hot again. But the owner/manager was quite the charmer…think he charmed Lonely Planet a bit too much!

The next day, we found a nice hotel for $40 a night…worth every penny. Think the kids on the road are a bit too tolerant of some of these backpacker guesthouses. $25 a night was robbery! Usually a room like this is $5-10.

    Thai Immigration in Kuala Lumpur

The next morning we took the local train to the Thai embassy…and after a two hour wait Doug was nearly ecstatic to get his Immigration O visa renewed for another year. We have learned to make it easy for the officials. Shove all the documentation you can think of in front of them (some of which could have been rightly questioned) and ask absolutely no questions! You never know what the requirements are in whatever immigration office you are visiting. “Depends,” Doug says, “on what how the local office interprets the myriad of rules, on what they think of you, what their mood is and whether they got laid the night before” Told Doug shame on him. But don’t think it’s too far from the truth.

One very angry farang, married to a Thai but living and working in Malaysia just wanted to get a Thai tourist visa to visit his wife’s relatives. It is required that he have a letter from his boss verifying his employment. But I am the boss, he said. I own my own company! Didn’t fit the rules. They refused to give him his visa. An older Malaysian gentleman spent quite some time at the window arguing with a young female officer. I told Doug to try to get the the guy at the next window who was whipping them through. Suspect that if you try to argue you are doomed.

    Meeting a Burmese in Kuala Lumpur

While waiting for Doug, I had a great conversation with a young guy from Burma (Myanmar he calls it…I said we foreigners refuse to use the names changed by the junta). We lamented the damage to southern Burma by the cyclone that has killed more than 20,000 people and knocked out electricity and basic services like the food supply. A Thai friend and I have plane tickets to fly to Rangoon on May 19 for a week but think that trip is not to be. Probably can’t get a visa now. Internet is down and I can’t get ahold of my guesthouse. Travel web sites are awash with friends trying to get information about friends traveling in Burma. Pictures of Rangoon that looked like they had been taken from a plane on a Malaysian TV news program this morning showed widespread devastation.

A report by a young woman living in Rangoon found on the net:

“Hello everyone: I am finally in Bangkok after a Iloooooooong try to get out of Yangon. The cyclone was horrible, I felt guilty leaving all of my friends who have so much to deal w/ roofs off or w/ huge holes, windows gone or broken, cave-ins, tropical trees laying around on tops of houses, our school, roads and everywhere. yangon will never look the same…

The local people have no expectation of governmental help – they are used to a lifestyle that deals w/ daily challenges unsupported by the use of machinery nor having an expectation that their govt. will come to supply aide. they do not have one ‘iota’ of the services ‘we expect’ in the states. I only saw govt. people working close to the airport areas on Sunday and Monday when I was trying to find out about the airport traffic. its been a huge community effort to clear things up. people from all social economic levels were out sawing trees, clearing dibree and offering a helping hand. There were a few chain saws about, but very few.

The worse is yet to come. Our school will be closing due to lack of fuel and fresh water available for people. There are many unknowns – the last stat I heard about death toll was over 15,000 – there is no way of knowing the numbers. I pray for these peaceful people. Going there without support of an NGO or other agency to help would be foolish. Be careful!

Am beginning to wonder what is going on here…student demonstrations in Istanbul, tsunami in Thailand, military coup in Thailand, bloody 7 month teacher strike in Oaxaca, freezing cold among stranded travellers in freak storm in China…now Burma. Better get the hell home before the monsoons start in Thailand…assuming nothing will happen again for the next few months in the NW. Last year 8 tourists were washed away in Koh Samui. So glad Doug has his pick-up now.

    U.S. Customs in LA

Meanwhile in the US of A Bob returned to Salem via LA and Las Vegas. Said he was “detained by customs in LA who were certain that they had apprehended the kingpin of child porn. Went thru everything including a half hour search of the nooks and crannies of my computer. Subsequently I missed my Las Vegas connection and had to spend the night in the LA airport sweet place between 2 and 4 a.m. Complained at the custom’s office but was patronized. Will write a few letters as they were abusive and caustic and played ‘big cop.’ A little scary re the potential of what the government can do in the name of national security…..”

The AP wire service today released an article:

“Interpol launched a worldwide appeal to the public Tuesday to help identify a man suspected of sexually abusing young boys from Southeast Asia – hoping the rare move will lead to a quick arrest. The suspect in the latest case is a white man, shown with gray, thinning hair in photos released by Interpol. He appeared to be in his late 40s or early 50s in the images.”

No wonder Bob was detained! Told him not to go through LA but what do I know…

Actually this has happened to Doug three times. Fitting the drug “profile” with only a small backpack and a frequent traveller back and forth from SE Asia to the U.S., he was very rudely harrassed in the PDX airport by customs for over an hour. He refuses to travel with his computer anymore.

    Free WiFi in Kuala Lumpur

Doug and Luk have gone to the Thai immigration office again today to pick up Doug’s passport. This city is totally wired with free WiFi everywhere. Now I am ensconsed in the Golden Triangle in the BB Plaza in front of a shopping mall and coffee shop where I can pick up free WiFi and even plug in the computer for a limitless power supply and watch this diverse Malaysian city meander by. I am set! Glad to know I am not the only one who can sit for hours with my computer though. An Australian woman sitting behind me just got up to leave. It is 11pm. We sat down at 5.

In And Out Of Bangkok

Posted on by Laughingnomad

Have become familiar enough with Asia that the usual things you notice on the surface aren’t so eye-catching now. Am learning to adapt to surface cultural differences with less frustration. But adapting for a traveler briefly passing through is one thing. Another thing for someone spending significant time here. Much more difficult if you are having to learn how to navigate the unspoken expectations and assumptions.

“You eat like a monk,” she says. What do you mean, I ask, as I put my strawberries on the same plate where I have just eaten my fish. Monks are not supposed to enjoy earthly pleasures, like the taste and sight of food, she says. People earn merit by dropping bits of food into their begging bowls..food that gets mixed up together. So, not wanting to bother her for a fresh dish, I had put my strawberries on the same plate where I had eaten the fish. I had grossed her out. Caught again…unawares. I was shocked by the comment. And so it goes….

Other than that, have been spending time with mundane activites…dental appointments (teeth have really gone to pot recently) and great medical care at Bumrungrad Hospital…all details no one would be really interested in except me.

News in the Bangkok Post: Backpackers are furious for being blamed for a bed bug invasion. An entymologist at a local university says that Americans don’t like to take baths which has helped create the problem. Good grief! We are foreigners. We are dirty. Don’t we do the same thing to “strangers” at home…?

I spent five days visiting a Thai friend in her newly built home. She is a Professor of Fisheries at Kasetsart University and is encouraging me to accompany her to visit a field project in a small stream near the coast of the Gulf of Thailand…which I would love to do if we can coordinate our schedules. In exchange I am editing some research papers she is writing in English. Catching up on local politics, I mentioned that the Malay man sitting next to me on the plane to Bangkok had reminded me that the Prime Minister, unseated by the military coup last year because of corruption, did help the rural farmers. “Yes,” she said. “A piece of meat between the teeth!” This comment has added impact if you know that Thais take meticulous care of themselves…many using toothpicks after they eat…carefully covering their mouths with a hand so not to offend anyone. She and her university colleagues make no bones about their opinions of Thaksin and they feel that he will still be pulling the strings from the sidelines now that he is back in the country.

Son Doug and his Thai wife, Luk, flew up to Bangkok from Koh Samui to get off the island for a few days. We took a bus last Saturday to leafy Kanchanaburi…a couple hours northwest of Bangkok. Very hot and humid! The peaceful town on the Mae Nam Khwae River (River Kwai) belies it’s role in WWII as a Japanese-run POW camp where soldiers were worked to death building the “Death Railway.” You may remember the movie “Bridge On The River Kwai” telling the story of the brutal plan to carve a rail bed out of the 415km stretch of rugged terrain through the Three Pagodas Pass to the Thai/Burma border that was intended to be a supply route from Bangkok to Rangoon. Close to 100,000 forced laborers, captured Allied soldiers and Burmese and Malay prisoners, completed the railway in 16 months…only to have the Allied forces bomb the bridge across the river after just 20 months. The relatively small nondescript bridge has been reconstructed but you can imagine the planes careening down along the river…taking out the middle iron arcs. Tourists clog the bridge that is now just used by a short excursion train and pedestrians. Yes, it’s a bridge, says Doug when we visited it on a rented motorcycle. lol

I will take the one-hour flight to Samui on April 8 to spend a month there…after which Doug, Luk and I will fly to Kuala Lumpur for our “visa run.” This will be my first visit to Malaysia. Maybe there I can get away from the depressing news about the banking crisis at home…strange days…dangerous days…reverberating all through Asia.