Johor Bahru to Kuala Lumpur

He was sitting about four rows behind me on the bus from the airport, but when we started moving, he got up and sat in an empty seat across the aisle from me. He stared a little too long so I gathered my bags a little closer. When the bus reached its final destination I followed him forward to ask the driver why, in fact, its final destination was not the train station as advertised. He, the passenger, overheard me and said it was quite nearby, then walked off. I wandered in the general direction he'd waved in until I saw him again. He'd stopped to talk to a shopkeeper; I heard "stesen tren" (which is in fact the street Malay for train station, and not at all me being rude about accents) then he beckoned to me to follow. Still a little wary, it being 9:15pm in a place I didn't know, I trailed him through the streets of Johor Bahru, past Chinese Buddhist cemeteries and Sikh temples and Hindi flower sellers and all the sights, sounds and smells available on a 15-minute walk through this big Southern Malaysian city until he pointed across a busy road and said "train station." Then he turned around and walked back the way we'd come. I stood for a moment just absorbing the sinking sense that comes with having misjudged somebody, then I walked over to the entrance. On the escalator, a man stepped too close. I smiled at him, he smiled back at me. Then he stepped closer and I clutched my bag. Inside the station, I felt him at my back, slowing down when I did, dodging the crowds as I did. I stopped and let him pass, looking up at the signs. Making a quick decision I turned right and as I reached another corner, sensed him at my back again. I stopped and turned, and there he was, right behind me. He smiled and said, "Excuse me, I'm terribly sorry, but are you looking for the Singapore train? Because I'm going to that platform so I can show you if you're lost." In those words.

He was a kind businessman on his way home, helping out the only, clearly lost, orang putih in the station.

My excuse for being such a suspicious foreigner (which is honestly not my normal state when travelling in Asia) is that I'm simply a little overwhelmed by 'civilisation' (and I use that term with great reservation!) There are just so many people and cars and bright, bright lights.

The train from Johor Bahru in the far south of Malaysia to Kuala Lumpur in the centre of the west coast is an old Malaysian one.




My friend and I arrive at our seats to find that I've unknowingly booked us a private coupe... The beds are already made up (it's nearly midnight) and we have a small shower and toilet to ourselves. No window on the top bunk, but then there isn't much need for one as we're due to get into K.L. around sunrise. I almost immediately lie down to sleep, but I obviously haven't counted on the evil masterminds who control the trains, and who immediately turn on the aircon at its lowest setting, leaving me to shiver all night under my thin blanket. Which is okay, because I'm awake anyway from the loud clunking and clanking as the train stops, starts, stops. We arrive in Kuala Lumpur a little late, at 7:15am, black-baggy-eyes announcing our travellerhood.

The Great Railway Bazaar (sort of...)

Trains have always held a fascination for me. Honestly, who would fly when there's a train available? You arrive at the station ten minutes before departure, the stations are usually in the centre of cities, you can take as much luggage as you can carry, and you can get up and walk to a dining car. Plus, if you happen to have a bottle of water on you when you pass through customs, you don't get treated as if you were about to blow up Air Force One. Reading Paul Theroux's books about travelling from London to Japan by train in the 1970s and 2000s made me wish I'd been born a few decades earlier so I could have taken a train through the Khyber Pass in Pakistan, and drunk tea from samovars on a Turkish Orient Express.

So I'm doing the next best thing, and travelling one section of his journey - from Singapore at the far south of the Asian peninsula, to the Thai/Laos border where the trains stop. It will involve 8 trains altogether, plus one flight within Laos, covering about 2,150km through four countries on trains with names like Song of the Night, Jungle Line, and the Silk Express.

Seriously. Is it possible to get more steam-age-romantic than sleeper trains through the Orient? ;)

I Do

I was lucky to be invited to a wedding recently. Well, I say lucky - actually I was one of about 300 names on the guestlist, alongside the canteen lady, the gardener, and that odd man that lives three villages down the road. Such is a Sabahan wedding, at least in the village: everyone is invited to celebrate with the family. When I tried to explain to the teacher inviting me that at the last wedding I attended, we had 120 spaces and that was it, she simply couldn't understand. "Not everybody could come?" "Well, no, we only had a few spaces at the tables." "But why didn't you just let people sit outside?" "Well, we didn't have enough food for extra people." Long silence. "You didn't make enough food?" And I can see the horror in her eyes.

Anyway. I felt very privileged to be invited. It was a Catholic wedding, so the first part was in the town church. We got hurried up to the front at the end to take a place in the photos, which felt a bit odd. I can just imagine the conversations twenty years down the line, when Mum brings out her wedding photos and her teenagers ask her who the orang putihs in the photo are. She'll be stumped, as we actually never met her - not before, and not during the wedding - she was far too busy to be paying attention to who was in attendance! (I was invited by her mother, who teaches at one of my schools). 

After the church wedding, we all drove out to the village where the bride's mother's house had been transformed, ready to welcome the hundreds of guests with plenty of makan-makan. The entrance area had a pre-prepared photo of the happy couple and a guestbook and some happy Pooh bears and some flowers and two thrones and some more flowers and... 

We were sad we couldn't stay too long - we watched the couple arrive, greeted with traditional gongs, and then we ate with everybody - we almost got away with sitting in the rows of chairs at the back, but my lovely friend Madiah (mother of the bride) saw the two of us, and immediately bumped us up to the secondary tables. 

So we got to eat some great Dusun food in style :)