Green Sea Turtles

Tourist brochures and adverts for Malaysia always show pictures of sea turtles. We were going to go to Bali for a few days but ended up on Tioman Island instead as an erupting volcano caused our flight to be cancelled.

We found ourselves inside a glossy tourist brochure, staying in a wooden cabin on a nearly deserted white sand beach but with a pleasant beach café, which allowed us to take our own wine, a few hundred yards away. Pulau Tioman is a 2 hour ferry ride off the east coast of Malaysia and when you visit you understand why it was used as the setting for Bali Hai in the film of South Pacific; it is a perfect paradise with barely any development.

A longer beach walk brought us to a turtle refuge and we were invited to see the release of a group (what is the collective noun for turtles?) that were hatched that morning. Without human supervision their first trip down the beach is fraught with danger from birds and crabs who enjoy them as a crunchy snack. They are meant to be very very tasty but no longer on any dinner menu we can access. Apparently it took ages before a giant turtle was successfully taken to Europe because the sailors always succumbed to the temptation of cooking and eating them. Hence in 18^th century England diners had to make do with mock turtle soup.

Those that make it to the sea spend the next few years swimming hundreds of miles in the deep ocean and getting their own back on the crabs which they eat, as well as gobbling up jelly fish. As adults they undergo a complete change of lifestyle and live as herbivores in shallow coastal waters munching sea grass.  We were told that the females then return to the beach where they were born to lay their eggs but no one could explain how this is known.

There is an even more extraordinary claim made for the long fin eels in New Zealand. As adults they have a momentous life decision to make. They can stay in their creek and live a good comfortable but celibate life until they die of old age (like the turtles they have a similar life span to us) or they can swim out to their breeding grounds which are believed to be somewhere near Tonga and never return. The fantastic claim made is that the offspring return from the ocean depths and find their way to the family creek. But where is the evidence? How can anyone know the antecedents of an elver? Mind you it’s pretty clever to find New Zealand at all from thousands of kilometres away; Maori didn’t arrive until 13^th century but the eels have been commuting for more than 20 million years!

Ex-pat essentials

There are still many Orang Asli, the indigenous natives of peninsular Malaysia, living in the jungle and we visited a village in the Taman Negara. I take aim at a teddy bear target with a blow pipe that the men use to hunt monkeys for food. Everything is made from natural materials and the darts are coated in a poison sourced from a rain forest tree.

In the last blog I included an excerpt from The Travel Addict’s Puzzle which noted the bizarre thrill of experiencing an alien culture as an outsider, but back in town we are not just skimming the sights but are immersed in the way of life. So if living and not just passing through, what does the modern ex-pat need to hang onto from his or her own culture in order to maintain that perspective and fully appreciate being in a foreign land?

1)     Mustard: I put a jar of Old English on the table the other day and Liz remarked that it was well travelled. I actually remember being very pleased with myself at finding it in a shop in Nanjing, and so I must have chucked it in the packing for Siberia before it came with us to Malaysia.

2)     Crossword: I get Liz to print off the Guardian prize puzzle for me and, when I am with a group at the golf club and I can’t follow them speaking Malay, I can busy myself with the puzzle instead of sitting there looking completely stupid.

3)     Internet: There is a danger that this makes life too easy and allows us to avoid the challenges of life abroad. We use it to watch UK television, keep in contact with friends and family, download books and even get driving directions. Has it made the world too small?

4)     Booze: Living in a Muslim country we perhaps could change our habits but there is a strong tradition of the gin soaked ex-pat which is important to preserve. The government attitude is that if you want to do things which we disapprove of you must pay us a lot of money in tax, and so the non-halal section of the supermarket sells beer, wine and spirits at a price. Consequently, while Liz is busy at work I have to make regular trips to the island of Langkawi which is duty free. A tough life as shown below.

Eating out

Malaysia is rightly noted for its food but at times something different from the simple eateries serving chicken and rice in various forms, which is pretty much what is on offer in our small town, is required. For Liz's birthday we sought the comparative cosmopolitanism of Ipoh, the state capital of Perak, and ended up in an Irish pub.
This reminded me of passing through Kazakhstan's oil rich town of Atyrau and the following excerpts are from Chapter 8 of The Travel Addict's Puzzle:

I’m not sure what to do about money. I suspect that no one will want Kazakh Tenge once I have left the country, but I may not have enough for lunch and I don’t really want the embarrassment of having to rush to the ATM to pay the bill whilst making incomprehensible gestures, or frantically patting all my pockets searching for cash, which is a routine known in New Zealand as the Australian Hakka. I do manage to find some kind of supermarket and satisfy myself that I can spend any excess Tenge there, and so make a visit to one of the many holes-in-the-wall, and now it is time for lunch.

I can’t decipher anything on the menu but hear mentioned ‘business lunch’ and say that I will have one of those, whatever it is. It is alright but nothing memorable and the waitress keeps trying to get the table lamp to work despite my waving her away. I am unable to raise Liz on Skype but have a conversation with my brother-in-law in England.  I can imagine exactly where he is sitting, in a completely different world to the one that I currently inhabit. This must surely be another reason to travel; the ability not to immerse oneself into an alien world but to skim it- to live it but at the same time to belong elsewhere and to experience the bizarre thrill of the physical world and the emotional being in complete juxtaposition. Before I leave I unplug my re-charged little computer and turn the table lamp back on for them.

In the distance the sun is glinting off golden domes which I first mistake for a mosque, but these have the pinched tops of cake decorations my mother used to use or, for those who never sampled my mother’s baking, of confections such as St. Basils in Moscow or the Brighton Pavilion. The subtle difference in the shape of the dome reflects the divergence of belief; while Moslems revere Jesus as a great prophet, they don’t buy into the Holy Trinity bit, and maintain that there is only one God, which rules out divinity for Jesus Christ (and Mohamed). Of course not everyone has had the advantage of early schooling from Irish nuns, who were able to simply solve the conundrum of there being three-in-one by reference to a picture of a shamrock. With God-the-father in Heaven and Jesus in Palestine I was left with the assumption that it was the Holy Ghost who hailed from the Emerald Isle. As the Christian church survived its first 300 odd years without the idea of Jesus being divine, there is perhaps less difference between these two enormously powerful religions than the media would have us believe.

·       *                           *                           *                           *                           *                             *

I still have loads of time to spend in Atyrau and find what claims to be an Irish pub. This is a worldwide phenomenon and I have come across them, with names like Molly Malone’s or Nelly Dee’s, from New Zealand to China. They may even have them in Ireland. What they are trying to do is replicate the unique institution of the English pub, which is also found in Wales but not in Scotland or Ireland, other than as another attempt at a copy. It may be that they think calling something ‘Irish’ adds an extra layer of romanticism, or else the whole thing is an invention of Guinness marketing, which is quite a plausible explanation for the phenomena. It can never work of course because the English pub is a part of, and grows out of its environment. You might just as well dismantle London Bridge and rebuild it in a desert in Arizona (which for some unknown reason was actually done). The English country pub is something that I still have faith in and something that I miss in New Zealand, where they are just not quite the same.

It is just opening and I am handed a menu. The beer is so expensive that they can sell it for half price in Happy Hour, from 6 o’clock, and still no doubt make a good profit. It is 5.20 pm and the waitress seems to accept my suggestion that I stay sat outside reading until the prices become more reasonable. I wonder if this place explains the large number of banks in town as you would need to negotiate a personal loan every time you needed to raise funds to buy a pint of Guinness. At one minute past six I am at the bar, feeling very thirsty and ordering half a litre of their cheapest beer. They charge me full price. I object and they explain that while my watch shows the official time, and is correct for the train I need to catch, local time is an hour behind. I drink my beer and find my way back to the supermarket where I invest the remainder of my Kazakh Tenge in bread and cheese.

The Travel Addict's Puzzle paperback can be found at www.createspace.com/5714720 or from Amazon as paperback or e-book.

5 golfing tips for the uncoordinated

1) Do it
I actually believe that I am not much worse than the average at sports. The problem is that most people with my level of ability have the sense to give up rather than show themselves up. But should they? Why should taking part in any sporting activity be the exclusive preserve of those who are good at it? And why should taking up a sport put some kind of onus on the individual to become expert in their chosen field? We put far too much value on being the best and far too little on just taking part, this is why the majority of us end up as spectators instead of participants and top professional sports people are paid absurd amounts of money. I have a personal interest in promoting this because if others with my lack of skill persevered, I could take my rightful place as only just sub-standard instead of being totally useless.
2) Do it abroad
I'm now playing golf in Malaysia. The people here are far too polite to laugh outright at my often pathetic attempts at the game and, where in New Zealand I was often the butt of cruel jokes about the standard of my play, here my understanding of the local language is far from good enough to comprehend any insults spoken. They do sometimes ask how long I have been playing the game, thinking that I'm a beginner who will improve, and I have to own up to not being able to use learner status as an excuse as I first wielded a club 50 years ago.

3) Less is more
The harder you try the worse it gets. A career in social work has taught me that problems quickly become crises when the response to them feeds what caused the issue in the first place and a vicious cycle is established. It is annoying when a shot destined for the centre of the green doesn't even get off the ground, but a determination to give the ball an almighty hit is bound to result in greater failure and more frustration leading to a need to belt the thing regardless of the consequences. And this is all because of this totally unfair expectation that if you choose to play a game you must be reasonably competent at it. If it weren't for that I wouldn't have to feel the acute embarrassment at my failure which forces me to try too hard resulting in a total loss of control over my own body. And that is the problem, when your body refuses to do as it is told:
'keep your head down' right
'look at the ball' yes
'swing slowly' okay
whack fuck!
4) Be proud
Sport should be played for fun, winning or losing isn't important; especially when you're no good at it. Those of us lacking hand eye co-ordination can lead the way in championing the proper spirit of sportsmanship while the top players curse their luck and vent their anger on their equipment. Glory in being rubbish, take the high moral ground and remember that those at the top can only move in one direction. What would it be like to be the best at your chosen activity and expected to beat all-comers? I think that then the fear of losing would creep in and threaten to spoil any enjoyment of the game, an issue which I'm sure the All Blacks are currently acutely conscious of.
5 Most important) Do as I say: not as I do

Red menace

The holiday a fortnight ago to celebrate Malaysia's independence was dominated by demonstrators in yellow shirts. Yesterday's holiday had demonstrators in red shirts. Apparently these people are pro government which, ironically as this was meant to be a celebration of unity in the country, can equate to pro Islam and pro Malay (as opposed to Malaysian Chinese and Indian). I was reminded of the political system here this morning as I walked past a cafe advertising porridge with crispy fried innards.
There's little evidence of the clothing companies doing so well in Britain but I did enjoy watching the Labour Party leadership on the BBC world news. At one point the ribbon of writing at the bottom had Corbyn news listed as 'sport' and I was pleased that it wasn't clashing with the Rugby World Cup. The establishment would have us believe that radical policies will never win an election but in the past things have changed; 100 years ago the country was not a proper democracy as less than half the population were enfranchised, 75 years ago most British people couldn't afford a nutritious diet, died for want of money to pay medical bills and a decent education was seen as a privilege and not a right. 50 years ago we were into the Wilson/Heath years and, well, since then nothing of any real significance has happened in British politics.
China has gone from the Cultural Revolution to unfettered capitalism, with the break up of the Soviet Union Russia has moved from being a planned economy to a criminal one, Germany has re-unified, the USA has progressed from Jim Crow (apartheid) laws to electing a black president and Britain is just same same; maybe a shake up is overdue.
In other news my book is now available as a paperback from https://www.createspace.com/5714720 or from Amazon.

The Law of the Jungle

The rolling English drunkard who built the rolling English road got utterly rat-arsed before going up to Bukit Fraser; there are more twists and turns than Agatha Christie could ever imagine and at the top could be Miss Marple’s village. Except of course for the monkeys. We stayed in an olde worlde English inn but lost the contents of the fruit bowl by leaving the window in our room open.

While we were enjoying the climate at an altitude a bit higher than anywhere in Britain, others dressed in yellow T shirts which the government banned the day before, were sweating it out in Kuala Lumpur’s Merdeka Square where they were demonstrating their unhappiness about reports that the Prime Minister had trousered $700 million he had found lying around (see blog Cracking Malaysia 30^th July). This action, although totally peaceful, has backfired as the police are now using all their resources to track down the uncouth protesters who stood on a picture of the PM, which according to The Star seems to be far more serious than worrying about that odd bit of money that has been mislaid.

We continued our holiday week-end with a trip to the jungle and read in The Star (which is majority owned by one of the political parties in the government alliance), that a woman had been arrested on suspicion of releasing yellow balloons from the upper floors of a building where the PM and his wife were attending an event. The charge is intentional insult with intent to provoke a breach of the peace. In the Taman Negara they know how to breach the peace. We tried out a blow pipe that the locals use to hunt monkeys once they have added the poison from one of the rain forest trees. The law of the jungle applies to some but not to all in Malaysia.

5 tips for survival at the airport

1) Don’t go 

Flying may have been exciting once but it’s now about as thrilling as trailing in the wake of my wife around Marks and Spencer’s. Forget the airport; catch a ferry, hop on a bus or take the train. On the planet’s surface you can see where you’re going and feel how far you’ve travelled and do it with the ability to stretch your legs or read a newspaper. If of course (like me) you’ve made your home in New Zealand then inevitably you do need to get up to 30,000 feet at some point, but it doesn’t have to be all the way. From China I found an interesting and inexpensive route through Hong Kong and Fiji, and when we moved from there to Kazakhstan I returned home by flying over the Himalayas to Delhi, and then travelling overland to southern India where I caught a low-cost flight to Singapore. Flying should be the last resort to get anywhere. 

 2) Big isn’t beautiful

When the plane is the only option choose to fly from a small regional airport rather than an international hub. They are often staffed by people who have retained some degree of human characteristics and where it can still be possible to persuade yourself that you are on a journey and not being processed for admission to Wormwood Scrubs. Even when they arrange for all the days flights to take off at the same time to reduce manning costs, it is hugely preferable to the crush of somewhere like Sydney. Last week on my way back to Malaysia I joined a long queue to check-in, which qualified me to go to the next stage of a much larger mass of people awaiting inspection at immigration, so that I could then join the army needing to have all their possessions x-rayed. Thankfully they caught the man in front of me who clearly intended to blow us all to kingdom come with his half used tube of toothpaste. 

 3) Arrive later 

There is a presumption that because flying is usually expensive all the documentation should be laborious. Why is it that a train ticket can be bought in 30 seconds but the equivalent for a plane takes 30 minutes? And then, ironically for a mode of transport that has nothing but speed in its favour, another 30 minutes to get from the terminal entrance to the departure gate. But then they say you should be there 3 hours before the flight time! Cut that to 60 minutes and the check-in queue is shorter, and you can arrive in the departure lounge just as the passengers who are worried that they may be forced to stand all the way are forming yet another queue to be first on the aircraft. 

 4) Don’t trust the airport 

 Airports are in monopoly situations and they are open to all manner of ways to rip-off their customers. Just getting there you are expected to pay a premium on any public transport; most blatantly in Sydney where there is a gate fee to get onto the railway. In the terminal some airports do dodgy deals giving monopolies to organisations such as banks, food outlets and of course the duty free shop. Don’t assume that you can always save money in these as they vary greatly depending on whether or not there is any competition and all work on huge mark-ups. Do the arithmetic as it is quite easy to pay more for duty free than you can buy the same item for in the country that you are visiting. The only organisations who expect you to pay more for nothing are the currency exchange people; always look at how large the difference is between the buying and selling rates and then take money out of the ATM instead. 

 5) Be careful what you smuggle 

I usually travel with just hand luggage and assume that the people with huge suitcases are either moving house or smuggling something. Hallucinogenic drugs and machine guns are probably a bad idea to try to take into any country but beyond that you need to know who you are dealing with. In New Zealand for example the main threat to national security is perceived to be from apples. There is a team of highly trained sniffer dogs who earn the government a lot of money by catching miscreants trying to sneak into the country with a Braeburn or Cox’s Orange Pippin. But I doubt that anyone would take the risk for the sake of a Golden Delicious.

The Travel Addict's Puzzle Published

The big day has arrived

The Travel Addicts Puzzle, subtitled Around (most of) Half the World in Forty Days, is now available from Amazon as an e-book for the ridiculously low price of $3.49 or equivalent.

The book relates the adventures I had while travelling alone from Eastern China to Bulgaria on public transport. My present tense progress is broken up with the story of how my wife and I managed to reach China overland through South East Asia, despite having totally different expectations of the journey.  Subsequent travels through China are largely of me chasing Liz around the country on crowded hard-sleeper trains, while she travelled in style on planes and bullet trains for her work.

Cracking Malaysia

The Alfa Romeo braved the traffic to bring us back to Kuala Lumpur this week and I was interested that the country was in headline news on the BBC, albeit not for the right reasons. After seeing on world news that Prime Minister Najib Razak is being accused of pocketing nearly US$700 million from a development fund (1MDB) which he set up, I was keen to get the morning paper and learn more about it; and that was when the real surprise came.

Hari Raya

A positive aspect of religion is that it crosses borders and unites people from different cultures who share in the same rituals and follow a shared calendar of events, (although of course it also has a frightening power to divide). While Ramadan can be tough in the heat and humidity of Malaysia (I know of one person who was hospitalised and put on an intravenous drip because it is forbidden to take oral medication in the day), in Turkey the period of fasting goes from 3 o’clock in the morning until after 8 at night and in latitudes further north the time for eating and drinking is even less. But this can still be turned into a communal event as in Istanbul the whole of the ancient hippodrome, which in daylight belongs to coachloads of tourists, is regained by the locals to break the fast, and every patch of grass is claimed by a group to set out their picnic.

Bulgaria

Our holiday continues to the Black Sea coast of Bulgaria where we have an apartment. Bulgaria is a small but complex country; we first came here in 1993 when the tourism industry was just beginning to flex its muscles after straining against the contradictions of communism. Eschewing the purpose built resorts of Sunny Beach and Golden Sands we found the delightful ancient town of Sozopol with its cobbled streets and old wooden houses perched on a peninsula and with perfect beaches for our young family.

Istanbul

We are on holiday and passing through Istanbul; a city which I love for its time worn buildings and its focus on the waterways where handsome old ferries knit together its constituent parts. But most of all I love it for the feeling of being at the crossroads of the world with the vastness of Russia to the north, the mystery of Africa to the south and Europe and Asia wedded together by the suspension bridge over the Bosphorus.

Cracking Malaysia

“In two weeks we’ve had more contact with our neighbours than the last four years in China and Kazakhstan” observed Liz as she sampled a coconut coated gelatinous confection that had been handed over the wall by one of the young girls next door.

The Chinese, perhaps because of the enormous scale of their country and its population, treat those outside their immediate group of family, friends or colleagues as of no consequence and not worthy of even the most basic consideration. As individuals the people are invariably polite and helpful, but there is no social mechanism to feel any kind of empathy for strangers, and foreigners are often viewed with the kind of interest that would be accorded to a zoo animal.

Fast or Feast

We’ve now entered the holy month of Ramadan, the effects of which permeate every aspect of society. We are spared the shopping jamboree which marks a modern Christian festival but there is still a commercial aspect. The irony is that fasting focuses everyone’s attention on food, and preparations to break fast dominate, seemingly to the exclusion of the fast itself.

It’s more than food though. Ramadan should be a time of piety and goodwill to others, but I’m sure that on the first day I detected the nuance of a slightly cavalier attitude. The town roads were a bit busier in the evening and the engine note of the small motorbikes, the main form of transport, had just the touch of a manic edge to them; the throttles were opened a tad wider producing (or reflecting) an excitable busy buzz replacing the usual languid day to day routine. Here is the contradiction; the month is meant to symbolise humility and meekness but the fast, particularly going without water from sunrise to sunset in the heat and humidity of Malaysia, is inevitably is seen as a challenge. Human nature is such that enduring the privations gives a sense of achievement which is not necessarily consistent with the sought after state of piety.

Making the Earth Move

Every day for the past week or so the papers have been talking about the foreigners who stripped naked and urinated on Mt Kinabalu and how this did not cause a fatal earthquake. That there is a need to debunk the connection between offending the mountain and triggering a natural disaster does of course lend it a degree of credibility, and there are certainly some who believe that the tourist’s behaviour was responsible for the shake that claimed 18 lives. One letter to the daily paper expounded that it was all to do with geography in a tone which suggested that the writer was fed up with the primitive beliefs of some Malaysians, but then compromised the reasoned argument by saying that if it had been the spirit of the mountain it would have reacted instantly and not waited for innocent people to come along.

Two men and two women, one a Briton, were arrested but the media was quick to point out that the charge was one of Public Indecency; they weren’t accused of causing earthquakes.  But there was nobody there to be offended. The only reason the authorities knew of their behaviour was because they took pictures of themselves which they posted on social media. The real reason they were arrested was because of a perceived offence, not against any person or group of people, but against the mountain.

The four that were caught were remanded in custody ostensibly for breaching the standards of decency that are required from a predominantly Islamic country. But the offence had nothing to do with Islam; those who were outraged believe that the mountain is sacred and should be accorded respect. In my opinion this is no sillier than any other religious creed and visitors should ensure that they act accordingly, but I sense that while the actions of the culprits are universally condemned, many Malaysians are struggling to reconcile their national identity as a modern forward looking and technically advanced nation, with the beliefs of a primitive animist culture.

I suspect that a desire to not appear lacking in westernised ways has led to the authorities ignoring the wishes of a revered Bobolonian (High Priest) that the wrongdoers atone for their crime by each offering a sogit (fine) of a buffalo to the mountain. This is a shame as, not only would that be consistent with the Malays historical attitude of looking for recompense to victims above punishment of culprits, but it also seems appropriate that a buffalo is offered to ask forgiveness for wandering around in the buff!

 

Malaysia is a multi-cultural and multi-racial society and there is a general tolerance towards those who hold different standards. On the light railway in Kuala Lumpur I noticed two young women sitting together companionably, both engrossed in their mobile phones. One was covered from head to toe in traditional manner while the other girl barely had a stitch on. It seems to me that managing to combine high moral standards with an attitude of tolerance towards other groups is a strength of the country which some other nations would do well to follow, but there is a need to have some cultural awareness and sensitivity; unless of course you want to be accused of causing the earth to move.

Roads

“The Alfa does 136 mph, that’s well over 200 kph” I read from Wikipedia. “You better wear your glasses when you’re driving it then” said Liz. Sometimes I just slip them on to overtake things.

Perhaps because of its oil reserves Malaysia is a petrol-headed kind of country. The British built railways, as they did the world over, but since independence the money has gone into the road network with luxury coach liners plying their trade up and down the expressways, little motorbikes whizzing everywhere and more and more cars clogging the tarmac arteries as the country and its people become wealthier. Pedestrians are an endangered species.

We are now settled in a large rented house in Kuala Kangsar but it has been a fraught week to get here. Because we were delayed (see below) we missed a meeting with the landlady and had to spend five days in a tiny hotel room. But of course before leaving Kuala Lumpur I had to collect the car.

After a nightmare of Kafkaesque bureaucracy, where I even had to give a fingerprint, I finally got in the Alfa and set off to drive the 30 odd km. back to the hotel. But I didn't set off; I couldn't find reverse with the Selespeed gearbox (which is similar to that in Sebastian Vettle's work car as both Alfa Romeo and Ferrari are now part of Fiat). I had to ask the man at the garage for help and then drove to the petrol station. But I couldn't get the pump to work; I think it was designed to take credit cards. Finally filled with fuel I turned the key but nothing happened; I panicked but then tried with my foot on the brake and the car started, and I got as far as the first set of lights. They turned green and the engine revved but the car didn't move. I struggled with the gear lever and finally pulled away and bowled along what appeared to be a motorway at a good speed until I reached the first set of toll booths.

From our hotel in KL

Fortunately I found reverse this time as I realised that I was at a gate that didn't take cash, and I manoeuvred around the car behind, after it had reversed back. I had studied the map carefully and before too long I saw the sail shaped building where Liz’s new employers have their offices on the 52^nd floor. I was in heavy traffic now but could see the hotel where we were staying, and then saw it disappear as the road pulled me away in the wrong direction. All the roads seemed to be like motorways but I eventually got back to the hotel and the path that I had walked along earlier in the day, but there was a solid wall between me and it; again I was swept away and wanted to scream with frustration as I saw the road on the other carriageway, which I would have to come back along, gridlocked with traffic. 

Then I saw a narrow little road that I thought could get me into the hotel complex. I was greeted with lots of piping hoots but at least I could stop here away from the flow of cars. I wound down the window and was informed that the little road was actually a lane for motorcycles. I engaged reverse again. It was getting dark, rain was starting and I desperately wanted an ordinary street and not a blessed motorway to drive along. At last I found one, and ended up in a building site. I fought my way back to the main road and studiously avoided the lanes with green road signs, which were the actual motorways and which could take me several miles in the wrong direction. Finally I pulled in to the car park under the hotel, went up to our room, and poured a large duty free whisky.

The next day we left for Kuala kangsar. Half way there the car broke down and we were stranded for 24 hours. I don’t want to talk about it.

Cars

My perception is that countries in the Far East are very safe and have low rates of crime, but trying to confirm this through Google is a fruitless exercise as there is so much contradictory information that none of it can be relied on. But wherever you are in the world there is one common denominator of moral values which can always be relied upon, and that is the perfidy of horse traders and their successors; used car dealers.

Having been city dwellers in Kazakhstan for 9 months, and in China for the 3 years before that, we have not used a car other than for a few weeks of the year when back in New Zealand. So we resolved that we would get one to properly explore Malaysia and this has been my all consuming task for our week in Kuala Lumpur.

Left to her own devices Liz would get a brand new lease car which would probably be a nasty little locally produced Proton or Perodua; given a free hand I would buy the cheapest and most interesting wreck I could find, like most of the 40 odd cars that I, or Liz and I have owned, most of which ended their days with us.

She agreed that we buy a big old Mercedes Benz as long as it was shiny and looked smart; I would have preferred something ready dented but this seemed a fair compromise. Every used car in Malaysia has been owned from new by a little old lady who only ever drove to church or the mosque. I quickly discovered that I could not believe all I was told. An advertised 1997 model I looked at was built in 1992 (imported in 1997) and I wasn't allowed to test drive it until we had negotiated an agreed price. I saw an immaculate 1980 car that had only done 34,000 km which seemed too good to be true, especially when I found the service record in the glove box which showed that it had had a 55,000 km service 30 years ago.

Test driving these cars I felt that even the 6 cylinder models seemed a bit dull to drive and the best was the first I looked at; a 1990 3.2 litre model. But then I discovered that the annual road tax increases exponentially with the size of the engine. This car would cost ten times as much to tax as one with half its cubic capacity. I wanted Liz to come and see it as I felt that her approval would mean that it would not be entirely my fault if it were to fall apart before we got it home, but she didn't have the time and said that I would have to make the decision on my own.

So I bought an Alfa Romeo.

Cracking Malaysia

We left Siberia on our 32^nd wedding anniversary and arrived at Kuala Lumpur the next day both tired, fractious and ill tempered. We fell out. I considered getting a divorce, but I have really been looking forward to coming to Malaysia and without Liz I would have no reason to be here, so we made up.

I have been here before, but never for more than a few days passing through, so this is an opportunity to properly get to know the country. First impressions have a dreamlike quality because KL, where we are this week before moving to a much smaller town, is such a contrast to where we have been living. Whenever possible I like to travel overland and get an understanding of how far I’m going but there is something magical about flying and, after a fitful night on the plane, we’ve stepped out into a different world as cleanly as Alice through her looking glass.

From a low density town built in the middle of nowhere to a skyscraper city constantly expanding; from our Soviet style apartment block to a 5 star hotel; from a land which is extremely cold and very dry to one which is never cold, always humid and where it rains at some point almost every day; from bread, potatoes and horse meat to rice, noodles and seafood and from copious beer and vodka to what has so far been a very disappointing attempt to find something to drink.

Next week we will be further north, in Kuala Kangsar where we will be making our home and which is also the residence of the Sultan of Perak. I have always found that the truest experience of a country is to be found in the small places and not the big cities, so once there I will try in earnest to crack the code to understanding life in Malaysia. But for the next few days we have to put up with the hotel.

From cold and dry to hot and wet

This is the final update for this blog not just because it is the end of spring but because it is the end of our time in Kazakhstan. Next week we will be starting a new life in Malaysia from where I will write a new blog.

The melting ice, I imagine all the way back to the Altay Mountains in China, caused the River Irtysh to swell and flood the land on the left bank as far as the eye could see. I hadn't understood why a path I often walk on is raised on an embankment, but that became a mile long jetty around a watery landscape with Sunday picnickers dotted along its route. The locals in Pavlodar aren't pork pie and a bit of tomato people; their picnics involved advanced pyrotechnics to barbecue skewered meat over twig fuelled fires. Now they've gone and the water has rapidly receded, but they've left all their rubbish behind.

Attitudes towards litter seem to be a clear marker between developed and developing countries. A couple of months ago I was travelling through Myanmar and remember on a rail journey carefully kicking the remains of my meal under the seat in the hope that it would eventually be found by a cleaner. I realised that if I left it in view a helpful Burmese would dispose of all the paper and plastic in the local manner by throwing it out of the train window.

When the ice outside our apartment building melted it revealed a layer of rubbish that had been held in its grip all winter and was quickly dealt with by a cleaner with a brush and cardboard box. But in contrast to this attitude I also saw community groups tidying and prettifying their surroundings. This I learned is subbotnik and we were involved in cleaning up Liz’s school one Saturday.

Subbotnik was keenly promoted by Lenin as voluntary Saturday work on community projects. It seems like a metaphor for the tragedy of 20^th century communism that it became debased from an opportunity for communities to work together, in order to take ownership of and pride in where they lived, to an enforced duty which effectively made it unpaid labour. It is good to see the tradition of subbotnik return to its original meaning nearly 100 years after it was first introduced, and it is a reflection on the hard working Kazakhs that they embrace it as a way to take their young country forward.

It may be easier to just not make the mess in the first place but, in a world where we interact with our electronic devices more than with our neighbours, there is a need for some form of shared social activity, and picking up litter can be as good as any.

Siberian central heating and spring cleaning

Spring here isn’t the gradual change of season found in temperate climates but a transformation into a completely different world. For more than half the year the people are in a state of semi-hibernation; only leaving their homes out of necessity, heads down and eyes fixed, swaddled in layers of protective padding, to get to their place of work or forage for food from the local shops dotted at the bottoms of concrete apartment blocks.

But then the world moves on its axis and children emerge to kick footballs and play on the swings, old woman who haven’t been seen for months occupy the wooden benches and blink in the warm sunlight, and from our apartment can be heard a rhythmic thwack. This is spring cleaning. Young men are sent out with the rugs from their homes which they drape over the children’s’ playground equipment and ritually beat. No doubt this was an important task after a winter in a yurt with a wood fire that had been kept burning for months but, with a custom of always removing outdoor shoes and central heating, it seems less of a necessity in apartment living. And the central heating is ‘central’.

January 7^th is Christmas Day in the Orthodox Church which uses the Julian calendar and May 8^th Victory Day to celebrate the successful conclusion to the Great Patriotic War, but in Pavlodar the dates that everyone knows are October 15^th and April 20^th; this is when the heating is turned on and off. It comes from a power station on the edge of town through many miles of large bore pipes which are mostly underground. The system constantly needs attention and there always seems to be a digger working somewhere to remove the sandy soil and fix a leak, but the radiators are fed with water that makes them too hot to touch and they kept our apartment warm and cosy. The only control on the temperature is to open and close the windows.

We went back to the centre of town for the end-of-war celebrations. There was marching and bands playing patriotic tunes and the crowd was much larger than it had been for Unity Day. The bulk of casualties from the Second World War were borne by the Soviet Union and it is commendable that their sacrifice is not forgotten, but I felt saddened that bloodshed and chauvinism had so much greater appeal than the tolerance and understanding celebrated on Unity Day. A hundred years ago Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon and their contemporaries changed how war is perceived in our culture and commemorations are now sombre affairs where tribute is paid to those who died in the service of their country. Here in the old USSR the emphasis is much more on celebrating victory and triumphalism.

I preferred Unity Day.

May Day in Kazakhstan

While next week’s UK election looks to be a close call, the Kazakhstan presidential election last week was something of a non-event, with the incumbent polling 97.5% of the vote. Nursultan Nazarbayev has uniquely been in power since before the country existed, as he was previously president of the Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan, and is now viewed as the father of the nation whom it would be unpatriotic not to vote for.

 In fairness he does seem to be an extraordinarily capable man with sound common sense and, most importantly for a nation builder, policies that seek to encourage peaceful co-existence, co-operation and inclusion. A fine example of this was the Mayday holiday; in a delightful contrast to the machismo of Soviet era tanks and rocket launchers rolling through Moscow’s Red Square, Kazakhstan now calls this Unity Day and celebrates the diversity of ethnicity in the country.

The Kazakh people love singing and dancing and without a cloud in the sky in Pavlodar, a stage was built in front of the main civic building and the road closed to traffic. But what we found most interesting were the couple of dozen stage sets that had been erected opposite and decorated by different groups to display their culture. I read that there are 120 nationalities (a looser term than countries) represented in Kazakhstan and we had fun deciphering Cyrillic writing and trying to guess what region each display represented. We had our picture taken with an Armenian girl from Liz’s school, were given fizzy drinks from Ingushetia and practised our Chinese with some men from Xinjiang Province. Many of the groups belonged to the old USSR or present day Russia, and probably had their roots in Stalin’s practice of sending people or populations he didn’t like the look of to Siberia.

While the mean spirited rise of UKIP shames Britain, I like to think that President Nazarbayev’s drive for a country that sees difference as a positive attribute, and strives to respect all its peoples, stems from a natural desire for equality and fairness. But it is also a pragmatic response to uniting a vast country whose borders are lines on a map more than showing any cultural cohesion. A quarter of the population (half in Pavlodar) are ethnic Russians and the president will be acutely aware of recent events in the Ukraine.

The variety of nationalities did not extend to the food, and we sat at one of the temporary outside cafes to eat plov, a ubiquitous Central Asian dish of rice, vegetables and horse meat cooked together in a giant pan over an open fire. While the first president, as he styles himself, is undoubtedly extremely popular, it is against a background of there being no effective opposition, which really makes the electoral process a charade. Evangelical democracy, touted as a new religion and used as an excuse for carrying out all manner of evils, may be overrated but the overwhelming support that Nazarbayev has garnered gives him the power of a benign dictator. The question then arises of who will follow him and will they be as benign.

Some measures have been taken to limit the power of future presidents (the first president is exempt), such as restricting their tenure to two terms, as is the case in the USA and China, but there does not seem to be a clear mechanism for a successor to rise up. Maybe Nazarbayev has learnt a trick from Elizabeth 1^st  and is not keen to have a potential rival, but he cannot last forever. Or maybe he can. He is revered in the country more than is generally attributed to mere mortals and from his election posters he is clearly getting younger.

Eating a horse

Yurts give an odd contrast of the temporary and the permanent. We ducked down to negotiate the solid wooden door set in the canvas and felt structure and I took off my boots to protect the thick richly patterned carpet. A group of people attired in intricately embroidered costumes invited us to squat down at a large polished table full of food, the shape of which echoed that of the yurt, with its latticework frame supporting the ribs of the structure soaring to the top where it was open to let in light and air.

More than a dozen yurts had appeared overnight on the playing field at Nazarbayev Intellectual School in Pavlodar where Liz works. A stage had been erected for performances of singing and dancing and all the teachers were in traditional dress. Nauryz is the spring celebration in Kazakhstan which dates back 3,000 years, but then our festival of rebirth is named after the ancient pagan goddess Eostre, who surprisingly was more concerned with fertility and rabbits than with chocolate.

Before the USSR Kazakhstan was part of the Russian Empire and before that home to a nomadic people who moved their stock around the vast steppe. They had no interest in international boundaries, but this is the only culture that the country has to draw upon to provide a national identity. The festival on the school playing field acted out the old traditions, but they can still be found in reality away from the cities. Last year I stayed in a yurt half way up a mountain in neighbouring Kyrgyzstan and, although my hosts told me that they only used them in the summer months, when they moved their flock up to the higher pastures, it seemed to me that little had changed over several centuries.

Inside the yurt each table was laden with food and I was given a larger helping than I really wanted of beshmarak. This is the national dish of chunks of horsemeat served on a bed of pasta. With the usual cutlery of just a spoon and fork I struggled to separate a piece of flesh from a lump of fat but the horse was quite tasty. Less so was the kumys, fermented mares’ milk. I was handed a bowl and, after gingerly taking a sip, I had to fight to control my features as they tried to screw into an expression of disgust.

The scene was splendid with the yurt decorated with tapestries and animal skins and even a live eagle adding to the atmosphere, but I was feeling awkward about the food and drink in front of me. I tried to ignore it and pretend that it wasn’t mine but I was a little relieved when the group we had found ourselves with suddenly got up and bade their goodbyes. It was at that point I was informed that we were with the judges who were assessing the standards of hospitality. We went straight to the next yurt where I was immediately presented with a large plate of beshmarak and a deep bowl of kumys.

Spring in Siberia

Spring in Siberia

Last week, when the dense coating of snow and ice had just died miserably, this path was mantled in an ooze of mud which made me abandon an attempted walk. Now the ground is mainly firm and this backwater of the River Irtysh, that has for five months been a solid expanse of ice thick enough to have cars driven on it, is reflecting clear liquid around its edges.

The ground which has been held in the iron grip of winter for so long seems to sigh with relief, as the tension eases from the boughs of the silver birches and the crows flap with an energy that suggests an expectation from life that exceeds bare survival. But I’m still wearing my duck down jacket and I would not risk stepping out of doors without a woolly hat. In the extreme cold my eyes were running with tears before I got a hundred yards from the warmth of our apartment and I would wear the ushanka I bought in Pavlodar market, the fur-lined ear-flapped headgear with the stereotypical Russian band of dark fur visible across the forehead.

This is Kazakhstan, not Russia, but the cold, the snow and the river recognise no borders. Incredibly there are still fishermen literally on the river. They bore holes through the ice and huddle in little tent-like structures. Lighting a fire to keep warm would clearly end in disaster so they rely on vodka to keep the blood in their veins flowing. It is a macho community and the size of any fish that can be landed is of course governed by the size of each fisherman’s auger.

I follow an earth embankment which takes me on a round trip inside a peninsular jutting into the might of the Irtysh and meet some coarse haired cattle. They are newly released from their winter prison and can barely contain their excitement as they explore the outside world as if newly born. And of course they are. Spring in Siberia is so sudden and so extreme that the whole world; the cows, the trees, even the soil is reborn. It almost makes me understand why some people are religious.