Time is manifold

Do you ever have memories that surface up from the depths? 

I woke up quietly, naturally to sunlight peeking in through the blinds. I went downstairs and could tell that the world hadn’t woken up yet, no noise of traffic filtering in through my front window. In a daze I went and lay down on some cushions, then my scruffy brown dog came padding over to lie beside me. The sky was a perfect pale blue. The temperature was mild like an un-buttoned shirt shrug, though I could sense outside was blustery, as if we were on the shores of a beach.

A memory of Orkney welled up from somewhere within; of when I was a child before anyone had mobile telephones. Isn’t it strange that I would remember the detail of something absent? Nowadays, on a workday, in fact every day, the moment I wake up I check my phone. It’s a source of truth for me now. Who’s been in touch while I’ve been sleeping? What’s the weather going to be like this afternoon? What’s the time right now?

Back in Orkney aged seven I would wake up on my summer holidays with no knowledge of what time it was or what was going to happen that day. I’d go into the kitchen first in case Granny was up listening to Radio Orkney, or Grancha was slicing bananas for his muesli. He always did it above his bowl working a knife in one hand like he was carving wood, no need for a chopping board. I’ve remembered on this particular day I was alone in the kitchen; the first one up. 

The light through the kitchen window was twofold, it was like a luminescent blanket thrown down from the sky which brightly shimmered off the surface of the sea. Light was mixed with water and air and that was how it filtered in through my corneas. 

I looked out and everything was so present.

Every atom of the island was alive with light and although we were in 1996 it felt timeless.

Not saying that I thought these things as a child, I wasn’t aware that the Orcadian light would infiltrate my deepest memories and spill out from my pores one day in my thirties to take me back to Burray, but it did. 

This is why time is creased – not always smooth and straight going headlong in one direction, like a fine line drawn with a metallic ruler. Time like Life is as messy as The Real World. Things can remind you of things, wires can get crossed and make like a diversion on the tracks. Our consciousness can take a wrong turning and we’ll find ourself wide awake in a long-forgotten memory today. Time is manifold. 

For the love of England

First run of the year. Running up the hill being chased by my dog, we run parallel until I am an inch ahead of her then she races ahead leaving me in her tail’s trail.

I have been away a lot recently, traversing the country. I have seen sea, tilled fields, rocky cliffs. Once I found myself staying in a fairy tale place with a stone castle stood in the middle of the village. It dates back to the time of early Christendom and is contemporaneous with the Tower of London, I was told. Now a ruin on an escarpment; sturdy, thick-walled, held together by clods of flint. You couldn’t bulldoze it, but it has been worn down over millennia by forgetfulness. 

Some entrepreneurial agriculturalists used its fortified plains of grass to graze their sheep. People looted the castle remains for building materials. Feudal systems waned, industrialisation peaked, people got replaced by other people and they forgot why the castle was built.

ROLO accompanied us on all these journeys to bygone picturesque places around England. We walked as a pack along the white cliffs of Dover. I kept her on a leash as one unflappable guide at the lighthouse at the end of our walk told us a dog ran off the side of a cliff only the other day. No fences. Not at a National Trust site – where talk of carving a giant bust of Vera Lynn was met with grand disdain – for the love of conservation!

Last weekend I found myself staying in the middle of a field in a tastefully converted ginormous farmhouse. Nothing for miles apart one tractor working its engine off. Tilling the land with heavy machinery. Couldn’t think of anything I had less knowledge of. I met a boy that day wearing a T-shirt with a tractor design on its front, and I couldn’t be sure, but these were my only two touchpoints to tractors. Tractors as a symbol for something like toys? Big cars? Horses? And then an actual tractor (with me watching it move slowly across the landscape) hurling piles and piles of dusty earth in its wake. 

What was it doing? I asked the Uncle of the family horde. He said it was probably churning fertiliser into the ground. Oh right, I said. From that point I couldn’t even extrapolate what happened next. Does it have to rain for the fertiliser to work? What then grows? How long does it take? Basically, what steps need to take place before the fruit/veg appear on the shelves of Tesco? I couldn’t tell you. So, experiencing the real tractor in life made me question food supply chains and reminded me of the rising cost of living. How milk now is £1.10 and I swear it was 90p quite recently. Maybe this is just London prices and milk goes up arbitrarily like the cost of pints. I wondered then whether the alt-milk movement was pushing up the price of milk as there was less demand.

I was glad that family weekend offered much free booze and many distracting conversations otherwise my city brain might not have coped. ROLO was also put in kennels for this episode, so I yearned for her whilst the others tempered my flurry of emotions and told me she was having a good time playing with other dogs. Making new dog friends. I texted the kennel owner – Ronnie and he texted back saying she was ‘very nervous’. My extended family are very kind to me.  I’ve learned from watching them and being amongst them that love knows no limits. 

Breathtaken

 

I decided to walk to the end of the island. 

 

It’s funny I had never thought of doing this before. Happy with the idea of being able to see the beautiful views of Orkney through my window, or equally happy to get in the car and drive to a scenic spot, I hadn’t ever considered walking out of the front door and continuing. 

 

There is one road that goes through Burray. It curves all the way round the island and if you’re in a car shoots off to one of the two neighbouring islands in the archipelago. But if you’re on foot the road doesn’t have to curve, and it doesn’t remain a main road either. It turns into a single track and goes on straight over a very low undulating hill. 

 

I had a dog with me so I felt there was more purpose to my walk, although I’m sure if you were a seasoned rambler you wouldn’t think twice about it. Walking a dog gets me out of awkward situations, like standing aimlessly outside a person’s garden as they hang their washing on the line. I can’t help worrying that if I didn’t have a dog the residents would think, ‘What is she doing up here?’

 

The rustle of my waterproof jacket and the clink of ROLO’s nametag on her collar added rhythm to my momentum.

 

As you walk further away from the main road and the pier, the sights and sounds fall away too. You start straining to look at things in the distance. The cluster of houses on the opposite island, South Ronaldsay, look like a quaint fishing village from a time of sepia photographs. The number of telegraph poles lessen until you look up and spot a single one with four thick wires, each extending to a lone house. 

 

The old houses are bungalows. Low and squat to the ground to withstand the battering wind. There are barely any trees in Orkney, so there’s nothing to break the horizon when you take in the scenery with a sweeping gaze. Flat as a pebble. I can clearly see the hills of Orphir on the mainland as if I were looking through a telescope. Picking out details like walking trails and telephone masts – or am I making it up and my eyes are filling in the blanks of the maroon dark hills. 

 

Unused to seeing anything that far away I begin to doubt what’s real. 

 

There is nothing between sea and sky apart from us.

 

You’d think the breath-taking views are the thing that takes your breath away. It’s not. It’s the quiet. I stop walking and it’s totally quiet – so I stop breathing. A seagull glides in the air and falls back, like a film that’s dropped its decibels down to zero to add weight to its frames. 

 

When a bird chirrups it’s like a phone ringing. 

When a cow moos it’s like a dinner gong. 

Suddenly you’re aware you are breathing and it’s the loudest thing on earth. 

 

The wind stopped for a second and I was engulfed by my own sound, the rushing of blood and body heat to a degree which makes me think I am never sensationally aware of my existence. It’s shocking. I braced myself; I missed the banal buzz of beings; clung onto the sound of the city for safety, but it felt goddam sacred too.

 

I plodded on escaping from the sound of myself into the wind and up hill, hell bent on reaching the end of the island. Maybe I would see a selkie? I got up the gravel path but was impeded by a tractor parked at the end where a big man was getting out of its cab. 

 

The farmer had stopped beside a field where another man was strolling towards him. They both looked similar. Big rubber boots, heavyset bodies, sweat-browned faces, dried mud mingled with hay on their trousers. They looked weather-worn and comfortable.

 

The man who’d left his tractor sidled up to the fence where his friend now stood leaning over it with both arms. I turned and headed back catching their opening conversation, which chimed through the silence at the far edges of this island.

 

-       I’d thought you’d died. You’ve growan a beerd an’ evry’in.

 

-       Aye.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Travelling to Orkney

 

The Caledonian Sleeper was cancelled. We had slogged ourselves to Euston with a full rucksack, folded up pink dog crate, and a dog. Once we arrived the big black departure boards looming over the station hall were blank, so I thought, ‘typical everything’s broken’. Then I learnt there had been flash floods and a small fire had broken out on a track and that all trains were cancelled. Dejected we trailed back home on the Northern Line and the DLR and I booked the earliest train to Aberdeen the next morning. (The ferry to Orkney leaves once every two days so, if I didn’t make this connection then my holiday would be cut short and Granny would be sad.) 

 

I took at taxi at 5:30am the following day with a sleepy puppy. I was worrying about travel, timings and toilet breaks. The first leg of the journey was King’s Cross to Edinburgh. Outside King’s Cross station I walked around the severe green squares hemmed in by tall business blocks and austere coffee shops, waiting for ROLO to relieve herself. It’s mainly construction workers in orange glow and hard hats at this time of day. The humidity of London had brought out many snails, leaving irksome trails of slime along the immaculate buffed concrete. 

 

I managed to stop off for two hours in one my favourite cities in the world: Edinburgh. It was a hot day with clear skies and bright sunshine. Even with a bag strapped to my back and both hands full, I enjoyed walking along Princes Street gardens and gazing up at the hill with a giant castle on top. Edinburgh Fringe memories came flooding back; the excitement of live shows, the familiarity of long walks flyering poor passers-by, being fun drunk, feeling insatiable, stupid youth. 

 

Hopped back on the train at Edinburgh Waverley to Aberdeen, which is a two and a half hour ride. On board, a Dundee granny surrounded by her six or seven granddaughters fed ROLO some boiled sweets. ‘Nan! You can’t do that! Ask first.’ She looked over at me with wide eyes and a gummy grin and I couldn’t tell her off – I’m not that brave. She said, ‘These lot are all my grandchildren.’ I said, ‘wow’. ‘We bin t’Edinburgh to do sm’shoppin.’ With that the rest of the ride was filled with squabbles, shouting, mock tears, laughter, the nan trying to find her mask while being berated by a gaggle of girls who were sweet and screechy and all too much.

 

I made it to the ferry in Aberdeen one hour before departure time! I met a Shetlander along the way who was going home for one day to ‘sort out some business’, very vague and I couldn’t understand every third word he said to me. On board – this was the stage I was most worried about – ROLO had to be put in kennels. I didn’t want to part with her immediately, but dogs aren’t allowed in the interior parts of the ferry, so I sat outside with her on deck. 

 

The sun was out and the crossing was smooth. I found a sheltered spot where it wasn’t too windy and made friends with a man who was born in Stromness and left the islands when he was seventeen. He was returning for a holiday after having sailed the Atlantic in his catamaran with his partner. He had deep characteristic wrinkles and bright eyes, reminding me of a Richard Branson type. Sometimes, I wished I could be an old man with tall tales, rather than drifting into middle-aged womanhood worrying about her wrinkles. 

 

An hour into the journey I had to put ROLO into kennels. I was guided below deck by a uniformed crew member. He unlocked many doors and finally swung open a heavy door into a room of metal cages. One husky was sat upright looking harrowed. The sound of the ship’s engines whirred aggressively in the background. ‘Christ, I didn’t want to leave her in here.’ I put a water bowl in the cage for her, but she scrabbled to get out. I bolted the door and then I was led out. The crew switched off the lights, so it was pitch black in there and the heavy door was locked shut. I wasn’t allowed to see her again until 9pm.

 

Upstairs in the dining room I felt awful while I ate a good macaroni and cheese. Usually, the ferry is bustling with big oil tanker lads drinking beers, parents with prams and kids running around reckless. This time everything was sombre, the bar was only going to be open between the hours of 7-9pm. You could only sit on every other table because of social distancing. No wandering about the boat with drinks. Announcements being made about having to wear masks at all times because we are in Scotland – alluding to Sturgeon’s independent and safer concerns on how to curb Covid-19.

 

We arrived at Kirkwall at 11pm. Dad picked me up wearing yellow trousers, looking happy. ROLO had made it! She was scruffy and wet from her spilled water bowl, but still with a wagging tail and bright eyes. I collected my bag off the trolley and Dad drove us home. ROLO passed out on my trouser leg. I looked through the windows at the islands swathed in mist, or low clouds, parting for us like ghosts.  

Travels: Malaysia (Part 1)

Day 4. 16/4/19

Melaka

Catching the bus out of Singapore was needlessly a faff and Chewy’s mum helped every step of the way. She drove us to the bus station then worried thoroughly as the bus company altered the pick-up point last minute and booked us a complimentary cab. As we left, she handed us a pink envelope with Ringgit in to get us started in Malaysia, which was far too kind. The plush silky envelope was prettily embroidered with red flowers.

The bus ride to Melaka was pleasant, a long journey with comfy seats and large ones at that. We had to cross the border and I saw how the traffic leaving Singapore was flowing quickly, while there was a traffic jam on the other side entering the country. They have really strict laws in Singapore and rely on a lot of imports, so most of the vehicles in the tailback were vans, lorries and cargo crates. I felt sorry for the odd Honda Civic with a lone passenger in it stuck in the sun-blasted queue.

Aidan encountered a stranded singer of a band, who had a sorry tale about being left behind by a bus and her musician partner in Johor. She’d had quite a day of it. Hungover from a party the night before, now strapped for cash and running low on battery, she had no idea where her belongings or bandmate were and needed to get to Melaka to save her ill, incarcerated brother from his evil wife. I think she needed to get a load off her chest and Aidan was a good listener.

We got to Melaka. It was hot. I was already really sweaty the moment we stepped off the bus on to the busy main road. We walked carrying our rucksacks through the centre of town, like a couple of snails. Melaka has a central tourist spot with a replica of a Portuguese Galleon and an ornate fountain for Queen Victoria; echoes of colonisation the city has been through. It used to be the most important port town in the Straits of Malacca (that bit of sea between Malaysia and Singapore, which actually links the Indian Ocean and the Pacific, making it one of the most lucrative trade routes), so everyone wanted a bit of Melaka. The sea, however, is no longer near the city because of re-claimed land although the river still runs through it.

We were passed by a line of pimped out trishaws, which are hideous for the ears and abrasive for the eyes decorated in flashy colours, toys, glitter; banging out bass-heavy, catchy pop tunes like Gangnam Style or Baby Shark. Real tacky. We got to Omni Hostel where we were staying and Yalu met us, the earnest, considerate hostel owner. He gave us a photocopied map of local places then showed us to our neat little square white room. It was perfect, with an en suite shower, which we never needed to run hot water from because Melaka was so damn hot.

(Later that night we would be an audience to a spectacle of a storm. Lightning criss-crossing the sky, thunder that shuddered the walls and dragon-like streaks that clapped when they hit the ground. So dramatic. The rain lashed down for ages – at least two hours – the river looked swollen and buildings close by disappeared behind rainwater. But we were both perfectly cool and dry inside our room, lying on our backs watching it all happen through the window. It was fantastic, although Yalu’s hostel suffered some leaks because of it.)

The first day was spent walking around and stumbling on stuff. We stumbled on the Dutch cemetery. [Colonisation history of Melaka goes Portuguese to Dutch to English] Then walked up a great big hill to St. Paul’s: the ruins of a Portuguese church that the Dutch took over and used as a military store. Historically there was also a Portuguese fortress built around the old town of Melaka called La Famosa, but when the English East India Company ruled, they demolished it to gain greater control over the city and to persuade its inhabitants to move to Penang instead (a more favourable and strategic port for them.) I imagine La Famosa would have looked rustic and grand walled around the dusty, hot city of old Melaka.

Swallows dipped in and out of St. Paul’s Church, a few stray cats ambled about and I caught a cooling breeze on top of the hill from the relentless heat. We crossed the river and wandered over to “China Town” otherwise known as Jonker Street, which is actually the old name for it, but the new name is difficult to remember, it’s something like Jalan Hang Jebat. In China Town there were temples mixed in with old colonial style shopfronts, worn, flaking paintwork amidst brightly licked jobs. Cats were sleeping in the shadows away from the heat and those annoying tuk-tuks came past again, but the city is patently beautiful.

We found “Harmony Street” where three religious buildings co-exist together on the same street: Buddhist, Islam and Hindu. Aidan was most inspired by the mosque. The ablution pool was serene with plastic scoops on the side to wash your hands and feet with. There were ceramic tiles by made Dutch artists from the 18^th century decorating the steps and pillars of the mosque. The colour of the tiles and its copper domed roof was light green, which gave it a watery quality. At night the few bare lightbulbs that were working on the outer-side of the mosque shone bright green like dusty gemstones.

We stumbled across a miniature Chinese temple on the side of a road. It didn’t look like much but while we were admiring its brash colours and basic swirling dragons, an old man rode up in his ice-cream cone trike. He was a vendor and it was probably the end of his working day. He bowed and made a prayer with his hands together at the shrine, as we two tourists faced him, watching. It was resounding to see him in that moment because I appreciated that these relics weren’t relics, they were being used. I guess that’s also the “old Melaka” that travel blogs say is fast disappearing.

There was another appealing moment when one of those awful pimped out trishaws was driving towards us down Harmony Street. As the driver passed the Hindu temple, he switched off his shit banging music, to switch it back on again further up the street. I can only assume he was doing it out of respect.

After enough wandering and me whining for food we ended up at the Geographer’s Café. I had beef ho fun that was so fresh and tasty, a clear broth soup with glass noodles and slices of beef and leaves including my favourite summer time thing: bittergourd. Aidan had yummy satay chicken on skewers with rice. There was a Mister Universe memorial garden that we passed on the way home, which featured an enormous carved stone statue of a muscle-man, next to a smaller statue of a deer and a cockerel. It was sort of surprising to see, but there had been a Mister Universe from Melaka in 1956 and it turns out Malaysians seem to do pretty well in the body-building field.

On the opposite side of the riverbank from our hostel, there was a local family taking their pet tortoises out for exercise and feeding. The largest tortoise, probably weighing in at about 250 kg and generations old, plodded towards its owner who fed him spinach leaves folded over to make a kind of dense spinach sandwich. The giant tortoise snapped at her wads of spinach cleanly biting through it and munching. The middle-sized tortoise ate loose stems of spinach scattered all around lovingly watched over by children, and the littlest tortoise didn’t move at all and stood still on the grassy patch. When the tortoise family left, the owner led the largest one by clicking her fingers and the tortoise responded to her movements following her slowly down the road. A child picked up the middle-sized tortoise by holding it carefully under its soft belly, while the littlest tortoise was placed on a red trolley with the leftover spinach and wheeled back home.

Day 5. 17/4/19

Melaka

The morning was great! We went to Dim Sum Garden on the outskirts of town for breakfast, a twenty minute walk over streets that were heating up steadily. I walked over cracked tarmac with shoots of grass poking through, passed many a stray cat with spindly legs and scrawny stomachs. Hungry cat eyes. All the jungle cats have stumpy bushy tails and the most colourful eyes, yellow like shining gold or bright lively turquoise.

Dim Sum Garden was super. The staff showed us to a large round teak table and immediately offered up many types of dumplings! Baskets with steaming little buns that looked like jewels in clouds of mist were opened before for us and we pointed and picked out which ones to devour. I also had conghee, a Chinese breakfast porridge with crunchy onions sprinkled on top and a tasty rice gruel with coriander, mushrooms and egg. Delicious. The prawn dumplings were my favourite, I gobbled them up washing it down with my jasmine tea and was satisfied.

The proprietor looked like a cool and friendly mama, stylishly dressed, watching over her restaurant and her kid eating breakfast and playing on her iPhone at the table. So many women look stylish and graceful in Melaka. They wear well-tailored clothes and fitted drapery in different materials and colours that compliment each other. Headscarves and shirts and flowing skirts, also brooches and hair pins. Beautifully applied make-up, while I grossly sweat from all pores on my body and face, how do they do it?

Going back through the centre of town, we stepped in to a proper market where they were preparing food for sale. A dude was cleanly de-scaling a fish with the back of his knife, the slivers of fish-scale fell to the ground like sprinklings of snow. I saw a basket on the ground filled with sooty black eggs. There was the animated smell of raw meat. It was all happening. Outside people were selling cabbages and stems and leaves and bowls of nuts, maybe? One dog was sleeping in the shade to escape from the dire heat. So, we did the same and drank ice kopi (extremely sweetened milky coffee) in a shop. The back of my legs trickled down with sweat and my forearms and face were constantly moist.

The Sultanate’s Palace is where we were heading but for a while, we couldn’t find its entrance. When we finally did it was the hottest, most clammy part of the day, so I was ecstatic to go inside this replica Sultanate’s Palace museum, made of dark wood with barefoot entry. Yes, cooling planks, fans and a/c. There were panoramas and mannequins of the legendary princes of Melaka. An epic tale of honour, brotherhood and loyalty. A tale of a queen who gave herself up to protect her country. Heroism, tragedy, dynasty. These were the themes of the ancient culture here, when the sultan ruled in the 15^th century.

Melaka’s origin story is that Parameswara, a Javanese prince (who may also have been the last king of Singapore) met a white deer fawn one day whilst out hunting. He ordered his hunting dogs to get it and during the chase they reached the Melaka River, whence the white deer fawn bucked with agility and kicked the king’s hunting dog in to the river. Parameswara saw this and thought it was a good omen of tenacity and fighting spirit; a tiny but mighty ideal, and so built Melaka here.

It was still too hot outside, so I persuaded Aidan to stay put and play a game of mancala with me at the museum, so we sat on a grass-mat while I whopped him at the counting-beans strategy game. Then we ventured outside in to the blistering heat and A walked around admiring the gardens, while I waited under the shade of a tree fighting off mosquitoes.

To kill some time before the Baba Nonya Museum opened after lunch, Aidan and I hopped on a Melaka rivercruise. It was a nice way to pass the time. Not very eventful as we rode on a boat up the river one way, then back down again. On the return leg there was some tour guide information spoken over the built-in speakers about various architectural features of Melaka, street-art (nothing special, though there was good graffiti of an orangutan) and it pointed to some Melaka trees on the riverside, though I’m still not sure what they look like.

I infinitely preferred the jangly music they played on the way up the river and watching the gaggle of grandma/obaachan tourists in the boat, who were the best dressed people I’d seen so far on the trip. They were making each other laugh and taking group selfies. One obaachan wore a hot pink sun-visor with frills on it like a sea anemone that matched her lipstick. Tinted shades, powdered skin, bleach-white clothing, leopard print scarves, these were the ultimate grannies on tour.

In China Town there is the Baba & Nonya heritage house, which is a family-run museum with personalised descriptions of artefacts, all from the same Peranakan family (half Hokkien and half Malay.) They owned a plantation and so were important people, and Baba means the father of the house and Nonya refers to the woman. I quite liked the Baba Nonya Museum because it was idiosyncratic. Interesting labels telling personal stories of the family.

The bridal bed story was vivid, where they would get a young boy with a compatible zodiac sign to the newlyweds, to roll over the bed three times to ensure the nuptials went well and the first-born child would be a son. Or, the superstition about the length of time it takes for the wedding candles to burn down to their bases at the newlyweds’ table, prophesying who will die first, although out of respect for the couple the servants would snuff the candles at the same time.

The Baba Nonya house had two enormous courtyards in the back letting all sunlight and rain pour in to their parlour, which would neatly drain underground. There were colourfully painted window shutters and cool to the touch stone masonry, wooden ornately carved staircases, which did not use any nails because of the old superstition; the only nail you’d ever want in your home is the nail in a coffin. Classic Baba Nonya homes had small fronts facing the street, but super large and deep at the back. I also heard that the sea air used to rush in through the house when it was built, showing how far the city had retreated from its shores.

We then ate a late lunch of chicken rice balls, a Melaka speciality, at Hoe Kee. It was delicious and really simple. Small round balls of rice steamed in a light chicken stock, served with tender juicy chicken parts and slices of fresh cucumber. That’s it. Simple flavours but a rich taste, sort of perfect for the hot weather conditions. We returned to Omni Hostel and had a shower, then got a Grab (Malaysia’s answer to Uber) to the Mosque by the Sea aka. Melaka Straits Mosque. A majestic mosque built on stilts out in to the sea, so it looks like it’s floating – pretty cool.

White and very simple, with stained glass windows running around the top of the building below the great bulbous domed roof. There were tour guides who were very interested in Aidan, asking him questions about Islam like, ‘Who is Mohammed?’ and ‘Did he write the Qur’an?’ Aidan answered scholarly like, ‘He was a prophet’ and ‘No, I think it was Allah’, and the tour guides were so impressed they asked to get a selfie with him. Whilst all this was going on, I had to go and get changed in to a robe so I was fully covered up. They provide you with a nice selection of hijabs at the mosque in synthetic silks and floral patterns.

We walked the mosque perimeter over the lapping water, viewing the vast ocean in front of us and feeling the cool breeze rush in through the wide open doors. I watched a bunch of school boys in matching red and black sports kit, wearing their skull caps, facing the same direction; praying, kneeling, kissing the floor together. I see why the ablutions are so important now. There’s a guy out here on the mosque perimeter taking a time-lapse of the setting sun. It’s becalming. More tourists arrive as the sun sets and we make our journey plans for the next day, when we’ll be heading to KL.