Busy busy end of the year

Even though I had the month of December off it feels like I did more in it than ever before. It was probably due to the lack of routine, which makes every experience feel novel, firing off synapses at a more rapid rate than my dull-wired brain is used to.

Therefore, I have a newfound respect for my nomad comrade friends gallivanting out there in the world, meeting new people and speaking many languages. I raise my glass to you!

I travelled to Manchester to see my friend’s play A Christmas Carol, which was a total festive treat. I was fending off a cold at the time, so I think spending a day in the cavernous cold space of the Manchester City Library with its grand oculus finished me off. I had a fever for two days and lost about two-weeks in a fug.

The best thing about this time of year is that friends who live abroad or far away come back through town. I got to host many a Christmas meal; some more successful than others. All I can say is if you intend to cook a Korean feast but omit all the chillies (due to a spice intolerance in some of the guests) then what you get is a very very salty meal. Yet we popped open about five bottles of champagne to celebrate various things I can’t remember clearly anymore.

Me and the dog went on a day trip to West London: what a charming world! My writer friend Eloise took us to a pub with a roaring open fire. When we entered there was a man reading a real newspaper with a brown speckled Dalmatian sitting calmly at his heels. I ordered a mulled wine which came to £9.50! The Fox & Pheasant could never become my local, but we can all dream.

I tagged along to a friend’s family walking tour of London. It had been organised by Una who was visiting her UK family with her American husband. The tour guide, Terry, didn’t know how to pitch his material as the majority of the walkers were familiar with London and this country’s archaic/feudal system of property/land ownership. 

I learned a lot, like how Westminster Abbey is a called a Royal Peculiar because it doesn’t belong to any parish thanks to the way the old kingdoms were sliced up in Britain. My favourite factoid was why the Australians call the English poms. It’s an abbreviation of Prisoners of Millbank (POM) as many convicts were transported to Australia in the 19th Century from this Thames riverside prison, which no longer exists.

After seeing friends and recovering from flu, I set out on an epic journey to Orkney. My family up in the beautiful remote isles hosted Christmas, and me and the dog trundled up there by train to Edinburgh > train to Aberdeen > ferry to Kirkwall. An overall journey time of 18 hours, however, the strikes and the storms did not get in the way! A Christmas miracle. 

It was a quiet time spent with books and going for walks – weather permitting. On Boxing Day as the heavy clouds rumbled across our island, I took the dog for a walk, but when we reached the crest of a hill it started to hail. The hailstones were as big as salt crystals, so I ran to a stone house and sheltered against its wall. ROLO jumped head first into a bush. I peeked at her from under my pulled down hood as we got pelleted by ice. Her small gingery tail, shivering poking out from a hedge. 

A Christmas seal sighting

  

Berlin

19/5/22

Arrived late at night. Got on the S-bahn to meet Annina in Neukölln. I joined her and her choir (or who were left of them) sitting on the street outside a Lotto drinking store-bought beers. It was hot in the city and the tarmac still retained the warmth of the sun. Hearing Annina dip in and out of German to speak to me and her friends was a joy. She had bought me a bottle of pilsner with a bottle-top you pop open. After you finish drinking you should leave the empty beer bottle next to a bin, so that someone can come and collect it and get 8 cents from the state. ‘Never throw a beer bottle away into the bin Rimi, or else they can’t get recycled.’

20/5/22

We woke up in the spare bedroom of her cousin’s. It had a high ceiling with long white curtains that let the light in softly; outside I could see green treetops and blue sky and hear the hum of the city. We went to a coffee bar called Bona. The interior was decorated with wheat sheafs hanging from the ceiling, bare lightbulbs and raw wood. As with all of Berlin, their practical carefree attitude and cobbled-together cool aesthetic makes everything look interesting while simultaneously being nothing special. We shared a pecorino salami croissant and chimichurri avocado bagel, got two black coffees and talked about our parents’ generation. 

Next, Annina took me to a large disused airfield called Tempelhof nearby. She had brought her roller-skates and began drifting along the smooth tarmac of the air strip, while I mounted her bicycle which was too high for me and pedalled up and down. I returned to find Annina had done a backward somersault after crashing into a skater girl. We went back to Wedding where she lives and dropped off my bags and had a shower. For lunch Annina cooked me white asparagus with brown butter – crunchy, fried, wholesome – and freshly boiled potatoes.

I put her arm into a makeshift sling then we left the flat to go to Alte Nationalgalerie to catch a Paul Gaugin exhibition. There was surprisingly little of the modernist painter’s works on display. A few paintings of the sensual forms and vivid tropical colours of the Pacific, but really the exhibition was dealing with the controversy of the character. Gaugin was a French colonist who promoted an idealised version of himself as a native while continuously marrying underage indigenous girls (his first wife was 13, the second was 14 years old), contracting syphilis, becoming badly in debt and then dying. There were pieces by Polynesian heritage artists which off-set the white man’s cultivated image of Tahiti as a “primitive, pleasure-laden land”; contemporary video footage of women on the island remaining voiceless and a political poem that I liked called Guys Like Gaugin by Selina Tusitala Marsh.

We walked around the plaza of Museum Island with the newly built Homboldt Palace and heard the Berlin Cathedral bells tolling. There was going to be a storm, so we headed to where Annina works at the Kino Arsenal (an independent cinema) to watch a Frederick Wiseman retrospective. I met her cute colleagues who gave us bottled beers from behind the box office window. Before the 4-hour film was set to start we ran across the road to get the best fast-food burgers I’ve ever eaten from Burgermeister. The film called Belfast, Maine was a documentary detailing all the elements of an American town: church, school, healthcare, hunting, factory work, social care. It was a bleak and at times poignant long-ass film.

21/5/22

We woke up late and went downstairs to get food for breakfast. There is a fresh produce store on the corner of the street called Katofferladen, which translates to Potato Shop. We bought a punnet of strawberries, two sticks of rhubarb and homemade jam. Down the street there was a bakery where we got white crusty bread rolls, croissants and a pastry filled with spinach and cheese: Breakfast of Champions.

We visited a flea market where the stalls were crammed full of inexpensive wares. Mangled screwdrivers, phone chargers, chipped china. I rifled through some boxes as is my want and got two porcelain Chinese soup spoons for a Euro. Annina foraged a wonky golden candlestick and a beaten-up bell with stars like asterisks carved onto its body for me. It threatened to rain, so we ducked into a fancy Turkish café where we had sweet snacks and coffees and talked about what we feared the most.

It never did rain. The stall-owners were packing up and Annina bought a ship in a bottle and a vase with a broken lip that had been glued back together. We walked home stopping off at a well-stocked Asian supermarket where I bought soba noodles to make for our lunch. Annina read me an interview with Frederick Wiseman and I watched her 17-minute documentary she had made about Internally Displaced People (IDPs) in Georgia. A quiet, thoughtful, melancholic film. 

We walked through two large parks near her house: Goethe and Reheberge. Animals were being kept in the latter – I got to see wild boars! Dark and bristly fur, their bodies densely compact tapering down to tiny trotters, keeping themselves very clean. One was making satisfied grunting noises as it rubbed up against a wooden post to have a scratch. Small white tusks were visible above articulated snouts, a little longer than a pig’s and seemingly more dexterous. The three boars were happily rooting around and throwing glances at us humans who were watching them, while in the far distance we could all hear the thudding bass of a techno gig. The park has a beautiful lake with a fake beach on the other side. We sat overlooking the lake in the setting sun and talked about cultural differences in expressing emotion, as a businessman stripped off to have a swim in the lake.

We walked to Moabit where Annina’s friend Clara lives. Clara had invited us to a dinner party where she'd made the most delicious Syrian food. Stuffed roasted peppers, aubergines, courgettes with rice and meat, a rich red sauce, white creamed veg all served with helpings of olives, dill and lemon juice. The guests brought an interesting mix of heritages to the table I’d never experienced before. One girl was Jewish and had returned home to Berlin after living in Colombia for many years. An Iranian couple where the wife had lived in Tehran and Toronto. We spoke on the topic of strangers. How in some places strangers are suspicious or people in exile, while in some they’re welcomed or even seen as courageous for having boldly set out to find their own path. I realised that in Japanese there is no word for "stranger" only "someone you don’t know", apparently this is also the case in Farsi.

22/5/22

I packed my hold-all bag and wrapped my trinkets from the flea market in dirty socks. We had delicious breakfast and coffee again, then headed out to walk to Gesundbrunnen where I would catch my train to the airport. We stopped off at the Silent Green and enjoyed the summery garden there. We walked along the river and had an ice coffee in a café next to the flat where Annina used lived. At the station I bought currywurst sausages with a white bread roll and said ‘so long’ to my friend. It had been a real holiday from my norm and I'd been happy to see the city opening up post-Covid. I’d be visiting again while Annina is set to come to London in June. Good times ahead.

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.  

Rice

In my kitchen while pottering around I put the leftover rice from the curry last night into a bowl and pour hot water over it (I don’t know where I learnt this). I think it’s an interpretation of Japanese ocha-zuké, where you pour green tea over cold rice, adding some condiments to make it into a palatable refreshing gruel. It’s to decrease waste – my Obaachan absolutely hated wasting anything – a child of The War. If there’s rice stuck to the bottom of the pan then simply add water, put it on the heat and stir. Throw in chopped cabbage, ginger, maybe a dash of soy sauce, spring onions. Why not crack an egg? Don’t you worry, I know what to do with leftover rice.

I use both hands to lift my bowl and carry it surreptitiously into our garden, tiptoeing across the patio slabs so as not to get my feet dirty. I manoeuvre onto the wicker chair and listen to the birdsong trilling. Energetic weeds push up between the slabs – they must’ve gone through a growth spurt during this hot spell – peach coloured roses droop from their stems and the lavender is buzzing. I pull my spoon around the bowl and up to my mouth to get the intense salty taste of chicken stock, the spicy tang of curry cubes and the wholesomeness of white rice.

This is the first time I’ve stayed in London over summer. My world has shrunk enormously, just like everyone else’s and eating food has become an event. Slowly my mind feels like it’s being re-wired to approach situations differently, with more time and flex, simply, the world seems more bendy.

I’ve lived here all my life and still the habits of Obaachan bubble up inside me. For an eighty-six-year-old she moves pretty fast. She might be talking to you from the kitchen, but when you reply she’s already out in the back-garden sweeping the paving stones. I can never keep track of her movements in her own home because that is her domain. Her hair is tightly permed framing her robust face like a cropped lion’s mane; she usually wears an indigo smock with a fetching owl motif over her clothes when she executes her cleaning rituals. Every morning Obaachan gets down on her hands and knees and wipes the floorboards; vacuum-cleans the carpets, both upstairs and downstairs. I caught her once, astride the bath-tub in oversized wellingtons (to stop her feet from getting wet), reaching up to the corners of the ceiling with a mop. I told her to get down carefully and never do it again. What if she were to slip and crack her head on the side of the solid stone bath? She bared her teeth and laughed at me, saying she would never do it again. As if I believed her.

I speak to my grandma every Sunday, although since lockdown it’s been more frequent – it was the best thing we did getting her a smartphone. When I see her pixelated world on my screen it reaffirms for me that another reality can exist. I see the rice-grass spun rope hanging from the kami dana (shrine) in her living room. This small wooden shrine is a house for the many gods, or kami and is positioned just below the ceiling, so when Obaachan holds up her camera phone, the kami dana floats above her head in the background. On the altar stands two vases of freshly cut leaves, a cup of water, and salt on a white porcelain dish. It’s something special that over the many earthquakes her house has endured the kami dana has never come crashing to the ground. I examine the background while talking to her and occasionally I’ll convince myself that her world and my world are not contradictory. Even though our cultures are different, I perfectly understand us.

This physical distance that’s been imposed on us is not too dissimilar from how we used to live. I only get to see her once a year – meeting only once a year isn’t enough when you’re over eighty – we both know realistically there’s not many years left. But this virus has made plans uncertain, a mental breach of something we both held so dearly, the promise of seeing each other again. Missing someone like that isn’t something you can do every day, otherwise the pull gets too strong and becomes a strain. It wears you down and you start to lose hope. So, as long as Obaachan keeps cleaning and I stick to my work… holding the bigger picture in my head, we will share a meal together again. It will be alright.

We have a rice-cooker in Japan, which Obaachan uses every day. Usually she cooks 1 gō of rice for herself (approximately 1 cup) because rice doesn’t keep, but when I’m visiting, she cooks up to 5 gō a piece. ‘Rice tastes better when you are here’, she says to me because the grains become fluffier with a greater volume of water and cooking time. A pang of pity swells inside me because I am reminded, every day she eats alone. Obaachan who is such a good storyteller, captivating us with her funny asides and character voices. Why does she have to eat alone? Because her eldest daughter emigrated to England, her younger daughter married-out to another man’s family as is the way, and her husband died.

I think about her now as I eat my rice. The two of us separated by thousands of miles – it’s not impossible – we could be eating rice at the same time. Not in the same place but in the same present performing the same actions, as in a ritual, finishing off a half-drawn circle; stirring my spoon around the bowl’s edge, tasting the sacred white rice.

Travels: Malaysia (Part 2)

Day 6. 18/4/19

Kuala Lumpur

Today was an early start as we were moving out of Melaka to Kuala Lumpur. Got up at 7:30am to have breakfast at a small Chinese-Malay restaurant by the side of the road near our hostel. The menu was limited and I didn’t know what anything was, so the woman who worked there gave us bowls of soup made of sweet soy stock containing lean pork meat and tofu. It was sweet, salty and tasted home-made. Freshly chopped chilli in soy sauce was dribbled on to a tiny plate to dip the pork in to. At Omni Hostel for the last time, we waited for a driver named Izad who never showed up, so we decided to get ourselves to Melaka Sentral to take a two hour coach ride to KL, no biggy.

While waiting for Izad I met a San-Franciscan who had been travelling for a few months and had ended up in Melaka. Her name was Linda, she had been adopted by her American parents as a baby from Vietnam, and now she was on a journey to find herself; her roots; her identity. She’d spent three months in Vietnam travelling solo until her tourist visa ran out, she couldn’t speak the language and didn’t know anyone – quite the bold move. I asked her whether she had taken a sabbatical from work. ‘No. I quit my job, I sold my house. I’m going to travel until my budget runs out, basically.’

Travelling in an air-conditioned box on wheels to Kuala Lumpur, I saw how the city enveloped us and was ginormous. The drop-off point was TBS (the central bus station) and as we were trying to figure out how to get to the main station, a ticket inspector-cum-railway official scooped us up. He gave us a colour photocopy of a metro map and took us to a balcony overlooking three railway tracks. It was still hot in the city, although of a different kind, an oppressive heat where there was no breeze, but you could get blasted by air-con every time you passed a sliding door. Pointing at the tracks he said, ‘This one is fast train to airport. This is slight-ly slower train. This takes you to KL Sentral, you want to take this.’

We headed across the concourse where people were busking, begging and selling fruit. The trains are of course, highly air-conditioned and riding in to KL for the first time was undoubtedly cool. It’s a real metropolis and seeing the Petronas Towers glinting in the sun was awesome. The Petronas Towers are Islamic architecture inspired skyscrapers, hence the shape of their spikes that look like minarets crafted in platinum shiny steel. The taxi from the station sped us around a busy and congested city – skyscrapers, causeways, not pedestrianised.

The place we were staying at was funnily enough called Platinum Face Suites, which was a hyper-modern tower block that was also a 5-star luxury hotel (I still don’t get the AirBnB set-up, it was likely dodgy, so best not question it) which came with an infinity pool on the roof. The elevator had 51 buttons for each floor and our room was on the 37^th. Yikes. Faux marble-top kitchen island, rose-gold statement-wall and floor to ceiling windows, from where you could see construction workers standing in the shell of another hotel being built opposite. A super impressive view nonetheless of KL’s blistering skyline. One odd sign hung on the polished wall saying ‘Be Happy’ in Cath Kidston style font, which really jarred with the minimalist psycho vibe of the room, though it gave a nod to the fact we were meant to be staying at a hostel.

I was mega hungry as we hadn’t eaten yet, so we got a Grab to an Indian restaurant. The driver was agile, dashing in and out of traffic jams during rush-hour, which in KL strikes at 3 o’clock he told us. We were dropped off outside a restaurant called IndianSpices Village. They laid out a huge banana leaf to use as a plate then served up an array of small dishes, each containing different sauces and curries, which were juicy and spicy and devourable, served with roti, poppadoms and rice. Heaven of flavours and textures. I ordered fried bittergourd that did not disappoint! Maybe the best bittergourd I’ve ever tasted - crispy, crunchy and bitter.

After gorging and cooling off in a/c we walked in to the muggy, polluted, metropolis atmosphere. From the main station we would take the KTM commuter train to the end of the blue line, to Batu Caves, where there is a large Hindu temple built in to the side of a mountain. You get tokens here instead of train tickets, like poker chips and as I was waiting for the train, I dropped mine out of my pocket. A nice woman held me gently by the arm to pass it back and I was left stunned; for not being used to close proximity or physical contact with strangers in London. She was simply being kind and that was the surprise.

When the train came, I immediately fell asleep because it was nice and cool, and I had a belly full of curry. I woke up at Batu Caves, the terminus. Here is a massive cave complex on the outskirts of the city where a Hindu temple has been built inside the rocks, with 272 bombastic, colourful steps leading up to it. There are monkeys who are unafraid of tourists picking up junk food everywhere. Up the flight of stairs I saw a monkey vomit in to his palm then fling it at some tourists who were climbing; I made eye contact with the monkey and he didn’t look guilty, only tired of life.

The monkeys were the highlight of the Batu Caves because the Hindu temple and statues inside it were sort of dilapidated and tacky at the same time. There were those aggressive purple strip lights you might see in a club, highlighting the ceiling and garishly painted peacock statues adorning rocks. Some of the temples had worshippers in, but mostly it was pigeons and people trying to entice tourists to buy a garland or get a white stamp on their forehead. There were also wild chickens and cockerels scraping at the ground. It’s much busier at pilgrimage and festival times, I hear, but when I was there it was empty. I did see an interesting statue of a blue god who had been grotesquely cut in half from head to waist by a sword.

Walking back down the steps you could see the smoggy heat haze off KL in the distance. I wanted to get back before nightfall, so I could get the most out of the rooftop pool with a view of the city. We departed the Batu Caves, passing by a turtle pond crammed full of them, where a vendor was throwing in stale bread. Got back on the train and arrived at the station, Dang Wangi, nearest to our Platinum Face Suites. We swung by a Seven Eleven on the way home and picked up banana leaves containing rice and chicken curry that you heat up in the microwave and an array of saccharine drinks.

Dressed for a swim, we hit the button for the 51^st floor where there was a luxury swimming pool, lit up from within to make the water glow azure. You could swim right up to the sheer edge where the water looks like it’s falling in to the city. The view of the city was wow. The glinting Petronas Towers were bang in the middle emanating a white light from its spires, and all the surrounding buildings glittered, while other skyscrapers showed-off multi-colour light displays. There were also a lot of hi-tech selfies going on in the pool, with much posing and torch flashes for front-lighting. One father was getting his photo taken by his entire family who acted as paparazzi. I took half a dozen photos for a model-esque group of friends, who were in the most fashionable swimwear that made each of them look like a Sailor Moon character, with their long legs and minuscule waists.

The rooftop infinity pool felt luxurious and ridiculous and I was already looking forward to seeing more countryside. That night we went back to our en suite room with a skyline view and had a bath, then slept soundly until the morning, when again we would be on the move.

Day 7. 19/4/19

Cameron Highlands

It was a hot and dry walk leaving Platinum Face Suites across tarmac roads with cars whizzing by to reach the metro. First thing’s first, I had to get breakfast, so I found a food court in KL Sentral station. I had a big bowl of curry mee noodle soup, which was both creamy and spicy and an ice matcha latte that was insanely sweet and tasted a bit like melon (that could have been why it was so green – maybe it was melon flavoured and not matcha.) The sugar rush helped us find a phone shop, where we got hold of a Malaysian sim card for my Nokia banana-phone, which was way cheaper than paying for roaming charges. Smart moves.

From TBS bus station we got the next ticket available to the Cameron Highlands. It would be a four hour journey so I stocked up on snacks and got comfy. The ride went by relatively quickly. When the bus started winding up mountain roads, I knew we were getting close, as we drove over deep valleys cut in to verdant jungle and reddish rock. I was scared of the tight bends, but Aidan told me these were pretty mild turns for a mountainside, plus these roads were in excellent condition, better than the ones back in Peckham.

The Cameron Highlands is a famous tourist spot where there are tea farms and hiking trails; city-dwellers go there on daytrips to enjoy the cooler climes of Malaysia. It was amazing to see so much greenery after the city. There was only one bus stop at the main town called Tanah Rata. When I stepped off the bus the temperature was about 5ºC cooler and the insipid humidity had lifted. Aidan thought it was amazing, but I couldn’t really appreciate it because I was desperate for the toilet and running around with my heavy rucksack on, trying to find relief. I pegged it over to the hostel.

Father’s Guesthouse is really nice, low-key, full of backpackers and beautifully furnished. They had maps of hiking trails lining the walls and and a Twin Peaks reminiscent wooden reception desk, and lots of French guests. Leanna who worked there led us past a fishpond to our lovely little room, advising us that when we took our shoes off on the porch, we should bring them indoors because the dogs in the area were prone to chewing them to bits. The room had a revolving ceiling fan and a window with a balcony along with chairs to sit outside. Beneath our balcony was a fenced off area where a white a kitten was cavorting with a bit of bric a brac, and on the other side of the fence were children playing badminton.

The kids all waved up in our direction as we stood on the balcony admiring the great green block of mountain in front of us, with banana trees growing at the foot of it and a strip of village homes in between. What a place. So much cooler and fresh too, it was a delight. I was watching the makeshift game of badminton while Aidan showered, when the shuttlecock got hit over the fence on to our side, startling the kitten. A boy in blue looked up at me and beamed this incredible smile, which kicked me in to action, so I ran downstairs barefoot to the back garden and and picked up the shuttlecock and passed it back to him. The boy said, ‘Thank you’ and so the kids carried on playing. Then the small white kitten came and played with my toes and purred when I stroked her for ages. I named her Lily.

It was late in the afternoon so we couldn’t do any major walks. On the map Aidan found a waterfall nearby called Parit Falls, even though TripAdvisor warned us it may be polluted with rubbish we still decided to go. The waterfall was next to a playground and had bits of litter floating in it, but not enough to warrant a review (who bothers to write a review for a nature spot? Who are they criticising?) Orange sunlight poured in between the branches and the woodland was a nice change to the hot and sticky streets, although ominously I noticed the bugs were much larger.

Back at Father’s Guesthouse my partner in crime asserted that he would do some laundry because he’d only brought seven pairs of pants for a two week holiday. He explained he’d been going through them at an unprecedented rate as he was changing pants every time he showered from the heat. There was supposed to be a laundrette, which was open until 10pm and so we walked up and down the main strip with no luck finding it. A taxi office pointed us back in the direction we’d just come from. Finally, we stumbled upon a small room with five washers, five tumble-dryers and three small old ladies sat on a bench. They seemed pleased to see new faces and chuckled sweetly, as Aidan tried to work out how to use the washing machine, dispense the detergent, etc.

While his wash was spinning, we went to have dinner at a quite well-known restaurant across the road called Ferm Nonya. It was busy. Large round tables dominated the floor space, perched around each one was a pack of tourists finishing off their feasts. I saw the carcass of a lobster being taken away and the white table cloths were stained with splodges of dark sauce. We got shown to a seat pretty soon, then I ordered a bunch of things that looked nice - particularly I remember the baby ferns in garlic sauce. Aidan ran back for his washing and we wiled away the evening, picking a route to walk tomorrow and speculating on whether the restaurant owner was famous, as the table next to us were getting their photos taken with her, as were other people.  

Day 8. 20/4/19

Cameron Highlands, Tanah Rata

Currently sitting in a restaurant after being driven back from Cameron Valley Tea House #1. We started out on foot this morning, taking hiking trails no. 10 and no. 6 setting off from Father’s Guesthouse. Aidan downloaded the Maps.Me app beforehand, which was indispensable as it led us along trails we weren’t exactly sure about; a lot of trails disappear part way, blocked by sandbanks or cut off by a valley, so the app was useful to let us know when to carry on.

Trail no. 10 was an uphill start that became steeper and steeper, which began as a regular road and ended up as jungle thicket. We started in town, Tanah Rata, walked past a residential complex called H2O, then circumnavigated Tan’s Camellia Garden, which we almost walked through and were shooed away by its owner (fair enough, they must get tired of hikers accidentally traipsing through their flower garden.) We reverted back on to trail 10, which became a massive building site of red flattened earth, dusty and totally barren. It looked like Mars.

The trail led us to some steps that were cut in to bare rock, which were so sharply steep it was more like a ladder. I saw half-drunk water bottles left lying at the the bottom of the steps because you needed two hands to climb it, so I guess they’d been sacrificed. Luckily we had a rucksack. I’d brought a selection of sweet breads and snacks from Seven Eleven and Aidan carried two litres of water, which were totally necessary because the walk was pretty intense.

Once in the vegetation I kept getting stung by mosquitoes and my face was sweating buckets, I was scrambling with both hands and feet, everything was salty and itchy. The trees were tangled and the leaves were luscious, the climate wasn’t too humid and the heat was bearable at about 26º C. I walked over thick roots embedded in the mud, clinging on to them for help up squelchy surfaces. Caterpillars bristled, butterflies had eye-shadow embroidered on their wings, and lizards darted across tree bark. The air buzzed with birdsong and cicadas.

We shot out in to an opening high above Tanah Rata. There were swallows swooping past us with mean agility and grace, and large-arsed flying black beetles that defied aerodynamics. While we were admiring the swallows, an English bloke rambled past, it was funny to hear a familiar accent this far from home. The trail winded up to an electricity pylon, where an impressive panorama of the deep green landscape opened up before us. Surprisingly, there were no beetles or birds hovering over this clean concrete platform.

I sat down and ate the sweet breads. One bun filling was candied pork floss, another was plain sugar and butter called a Mexican Bun, all were incredibly sweet and/or spicy as usual. We carved on down trail no. 6 where we met an older couple down the mountainside who weren’t sure where their trail had disappeared to (download Maps.Me!) The way down was a muddy, slippery slope, like a log flume through sub-tropical jungle. I managed to stay fairly upright, not muddying my bum - very grateful to whoever maintains those trails for putting in stretchy long hose-pipes to hang on to!

At the foot of the mountains enormous banana trees lined the edge of a stream burbling through the forest. We walked out on to a chayote grove that was well maintained and luminous yellow-green, then further down we passed a tin shack where an old man and woman were crouching down, making tea from a kettle. It was the hottest part of the day and I can’t imagine it’s much fun tending to the fruit trees during that. We passed other workers too, looking after plots of fertile land on the way to the Cameron Valley tea farms. I saw an aubergine grove for the first time in my life and the flowers are so delicate and pretty, who knew?

On the farmland ravens were pecking at clumps of dirt. A large rain cloud was following us over the mountain peak we’d just climbed, gradually darkening the skies behind us, so spurring us on down the road. I peered in to a shallow pool of water, sheltered beneath leafy trees containing a school of wild goldfish, swimming cautiously reflecting colours of russet, fiery orange and gold. As the dirt road turned in to tarmac, a scooter passed us by carrying a kid and an adult, loaded high with cardboard boxes of snacks and dried foods for the village I could see up ahead on top of a small clearing.

The village looked like it had grown up with the planation, and I assume a lot of the workers lived there with their families. We were now entering the tea fields proper! I got to walk through irrigated farmland with the water rushing through the ground, I passed clipped round hedges in neatened rows, soaked in rich tea-leaf greenness, waiting to be handpicked or tended to. The both of us sat under a corrugated iron shelter and drank in our surroundings, while finishing off our water bottles and the last of the chicken-floss and mayo sandwiches. It was cool and serene under the tin roof. All around vibrated green.

Village kids came running over the horizon. One boy who was wearing a red T-shirt and jeans (who was sort of the leader of the gang, there were five of them) waved and shouted at us on the way, ‘Where are you going?’ I sort of fumbled a reply, worried we might be trespassing. Unperturbed he zealously ran past the shelter and turned around, stopping his other mates in their tracks, ‘Hello!’ he shouted, ‘What is your name?’ Rimi & Aidan. ‘Where are you from?’ England & Japan. Satisfied he ran off with his followers trailing behind. The kids I’ve seen in the Cameron Highlands seem to have a lot of independence and freedom to play.

As we carried on hiking, a large sign reminiscent of the Hollywood one came in to view that read “Cameron Valley Tea” running high across a ridge of a planation. In the corner of a field stood a miniature tin shack painted red. Inside it was propped up a golden framed piece of Chinese calligraphy and incense sticks, some glassware with liquids in and other small offerings. There were workers picking tea in straw hats and gloves spotted around the landscape, hauling baskets and bags over their shoulders. There were two workers in a field, one was spraying the ground with a hose and the other was lending a hand, lifting the heavy piping over the bushes. During their strenuous work the guy controlling the hose waved to us and shouted over the jet, ‘Ha-llo!’

As we entered the official Boh Tea planation (you could tell because there was suddenly an influx of tourists) a bitch-dog barked loudly at my heels, but she was all frills and no panties because when I turned around to look at her she slinked off and hid beneath the tea bushes. Clean clothed tourists were ambling around taking photos in front of the Hollywood sign and we walked up a a steep flight of stairs to the what was called Tea House #1.

Aidan ordered a large pot of tea and I sat across from him and a marvellous view of the rolling tea fields beneath us. Popping off my walking shoes, I hung my tired feet over the railings and sipped Cameron Valley tea from a cup, whilst watching the swallows swoop down to snatch midges in mid-air. The table top was red and a little bit battered, although the English tea was delicious and light, also the views were breath-taking. The moment we stood up the other tourists made a beeline for our table.

We walked out of Tea House #1 without a plan. I befriended a dog in a blue collar who was sleeping by the side of the road with golden fur, brown eyes and pointy ears. I named him Polo. He was great company as he came with us along the busy stretch of road, although I was anxious Polo would get hit by a passing car, he seemed chill about it and scampered about, rolling on his back over patches of grass, showing off his tricks. Polo followed us to the next Tea House #2, which was booming with tourists and then I lost him in the crowd.

Coachloads of tourists made their perfunctory stop at Tea House #2 to stock up on boxes of Cameron Valley tea and memorabilia. I asked a guy working at the check-out whether he could get us a taxi, and he helped out mightily by telling us to wait as he called a cab company, even though the place was heaving with people over the Easter weekend. The check-out guy passed us on to a security guard who was maintaining a stream of cars in to the busy car park. We waited in the shade of a hot day, watching tourists jump on and off of buses, quite hectic, then the taxi came to take us back to Tanah Rata.

Back on the the main street, we sat in a restaurant where I had my favourite ho fun noodle soup and drank a refreshing lime juice. I bought a notebook in a 2RM Store and five ball-pens in a pack (none of them worked. Great.) I bought another pen at a newsagent, then we went back to Father’s Guesthouse, where I found out that I’d got sunburnt on my neck. Urgh. So, I asked Aidan to slather after-sun on my neck and I took a nap lying facedown in my pillow.

Post-nap my sunburn had crept down a little, it’s always aggressively stingy pre-nap I find, you can deal better with almost anything after a nap. We walked up to a Chinese temple on top of a hill in Tanah Rata that doubled-up as a steamboat restaurant. Buttercup yellow shone from the hundreds of bare lightbulbs screwed in place; colourfully lit-up altars, offerings of fruit piled high on plastic plates, all so colourful; pinks, greens, blues, red. There were leaping dragons on the gabled roofs and the smell of incense. The clouds that night were enormous in the sky, like majestic stage-sets glowing rouge.

We then went for food at a street market in town. It was probably my favourite meal so far in Malaysia, as much for the fun vibes of the place, as the big bowl of flavoursome rice I ate. It was described as a “Cameron rice” on the menu and it was like nasi goreng; spiced pickled strawberries (a delicacy of CH) mixed in with fried rice, stir fried king prawns, baby corn, spring onions, peppers, and a savoury spicy sauce. The tastes were so punchy, and so were the colours on my plate! Totally delicious. The people sat around us were families as well as tourists, there was music, kids chasing cats scrambling between adults’ legs, bare light bulbs and football playing on a TV screen in the back.

A young girl in a bling cap was eyeing up the chips being fried in a wok by her older sister waitress. Raw marinated chicken was being slammed on to cutting boards with a big knife, being chopped up in to bits for the grill, next to an Islamic charity stall that was playing prayers over a tinny loudspeaker. When we went to pay for the food at the counter, I saw two large white fish living in a murky fishbowl of green tinged water, circling slowly, eyeing each other up. I bought a 2L bottle of water. All in all, the Cameron Highlands was good.