KUALA LUMPUR ~journeys 2010: journal with pfotos~May 01-05, 2010

~ back to the future for another new passport ~

May 01. Out to the Air Asia terminal at Tanjung Aru by local bus in lots of time. Noni comes out with me. I leave her sitting outside the terminal while I check-in. She creates a big mess around where she's sitting...litter, plant material, cigarette butts. There's a trash container within easy reach. It's her way of showing that she's sore at me for leaving. It gives the cleaners a sense of being needed. The supervisor comes out. They seem to feel sorry for her, understanding of her 'plight'. Eventually she walks off about 30 minutes before my boarding time. She's got about 5 packs of cigarettes. The cheap Filipino ones and the RM50 I could afford to give her. I stare after her with a numb feeling, moisture in my eyes. So that's that! I had been dreading a big scene. Emotions boiling over. Now I almost feel that would have been better! Mayday, mayday. I think I might need help on arrival in Kuala Lumpur. I've got RM9 cash.

“KL, as it's almost always called, started in the 1860s when a band of tin prospectors landed at the meeting point of the Sungai Klang and Sungai Gombak and named it Kuala Lumpur (Muddy Confluence). The lure of ore quickly turned KL into a brawling, noisy boom town, successively tempered by the rule of sultans, the British, invading Japanese WW2 forces and finally UMNO, Malaysia's ruling political party”. “It's a curious blend of old and new...” the guide book continues... “a fast-moving city...gleaming Islamic high-rises tower over multilane highways, though Chinese shophouses and old colonial architecture still manage to stand out proudly”. “Just south of the Masjid Jamek are the teeming streets of KL's Chinatown. This crowded, colourful area is the usual Chinese melange of signs, shops, activity and noise...Jl.Petaling is a vibrant evening street market selling souvenirs and other goods... The side streets are filled with old Chinese shop-houses and temples...” [Attribution: South East Asia Lonely Planet Publications 2001:454].

Mayday! Mayday! Kuala Lumpur. For me it's like back to the future. Dealing with big cities is my least favorite part of traveling. Public bus in from the '75km-away-south-from-town' KLIA. The bus costs Rm8 and deposits me at KL Sentral. Outside, wandering around for a couple of hours I try to get my head around a map. Where's Chinatown? I don't need a map to find an ATM though. Or an Indian restaurant. Wandering around after the meal a friendly Indian guy whose been traveling puts me right. Best to go back over the busy, big street to KL Sentral where I started out from and catch the LRT rail to Pasir Seni...the first station. Chinatown .

Done. The first night I spend RM33 or about US$10 at a backpacker hotel called 'Backpackers Travellers Inn' on Jalan Sultan. It has “typically small, windowless rooms”. It's clean but with thin walls. There's a rooftop bar. As I look down, Chinatown's alive with locals and tourists. I'm tired but happy. Alone again, naturally.

May 02. I change address today. The 'Lee Mun Hotel [Air-Con] Budget Accommodation'...as their card says... is up an elevator on the fifth floor. It's on Jalan Petaling and it's a couple of dollars cheaper at KM25. Both the room the first nite and this one have share bathroom. In the afternoons and evenings the Lee Mun's a short-time hotel for the [mostly] Indian girls and lady-boys working the outer fringes of Petaling market. Apart from an initial come on, they don't disturb me in the slightest. The cheapest hotels in Asian cities are like this. It's nothing new. It's a Sunday. It's also a day of getting used to being by myself. I aim to check out the Vietnamese Consulate and the British High Comm. tomorrow. Of course, I should be going to the High Comm. to get the passport organized first. But I need to know what getting back to Vietnam is going to set me back in total.

May 03. “The Golden Triangle is KL's premier business, shopping and entertainment district, crammed with flashy high-rises like the twin Petronas Towers...and the 421m-high Menara KL (KL Tower) telecommunications tower...At the northern edge of the Golden Triangle, Jl Ampang was built up by early tin millionaires and is lined with impressive mansions; it's now KL's 'Embassy Row'” [Attribution: South East Asia Lonely Planet Publications 2001:458].

A Monday. Mid morning, somewhat foolishly, I set out on foot for the Vietnamese consulate in Ampang Park! About five hours later, after misreading the address, but still walking, I finally arrive at their consulate...exhausted. It's closed for a holiday! I'll return again tomorrow. I won't walk again. Today I find my way less than 1 km further on up to the Ampang Park LRT station. And get the 'skyrail' back to Pasir Seni. I collapse, now really exhausted, into the bed in the room over the noisy market. It's not the market noise itself that annoys me a couple of days later. It's the advertising ditty. It goes round in circles every couple a minutes from about 3pm until 11.30pm. Drive anyone nuts, it would. That's what's with those store-holders down there! Don't hardly even notice it this evening.

May 04. It's back to see Vietnamese by LRT! Their small office is bursting full to overflowing with customers. Their charge for a one month tourist visa is 'kleptocracy' in action. RM260 or US$85 for a one month tourist visa! Would have to wait 2 working days for it. After I get the passport sorted, that is. Now I need to plead my case to the Brits! One thing about KL. Most of the embassies are conveniently in Ampang Park. The High Comm's a short way along from the Ampang Park station. One of those former 'tin baron' mansions. It's got heavy, but polite security. A supervisor there puts an end to some 'umming and aahing'. It's finally obvious to them at the FCO passport office that I'm in somewhat of a dire situation. They see the Tawau page used up by the small Malaysian entry stamp. Whew. Out of the woods yet again. Because they agree to issue me a new passport here in KL. It doesn't have to be forwared to Hong Kong as is now the FCO norm. And, I can come tomorrow to pick it up. Great! Time is of the essence of survival on a shoestring. I'm a happy LRT on my way back to Petaling.

May 05. Mid-morning the phone rings: “...passport should be ready in about an hour so why not come on out and pick it up”. The LRT again. On arriving though there's been a last minute software hitch. It'll take until tomorrow to sort out! I've experienced theunexpected before especially in PNG - land of the unexpected. I'm not overly surprised...just mildly pissed off. C'est la vie. I just get back to Petaling...nap for an hour...phone rings again. It's ready now! I thank whichever higher being is listening here in KL. Thank you, for the efficient, convenient...and cheap LRT. Funds are getting extremely low. Evening. Back at the digs above the 'inane-ditty-playing' Petaling market, Chinatown. Finally have my hands on the brand spanking new 48 page passport. RM804 or US$250 the damage! It's some kind of relief to resolve something that's been on me mind for the last 6 weeks. It leaves me with under US$200 to get to Vietnam! I have that US$450 in my account there. And work!

Decisions about the cheapest way to Saigon. Find out that an AirAsia flight to Saigon Monday is $75! But must have that visa. Another $85. Can't happen in time. I've got to get out of KL as soon as possible. An overland up to Penang, Bangkok, Phnom Penh and finally Saigon then. I'll get the cheapest visa for Vietnam possible, in Kampong Som/Sihanoukville on the way.

More of the nomadic! Why rush back to Saigon and work? But it's really going to be 'stretch.out.themoney.com'.

KOTA KINABALU Second helping ~journeys 2010: journal with pfotos~April 15-30

~ journeys end ~

don't they! On returning from Kudat we find a cheap lodging once again in Sinsuran. The room's a small one, not much bigger than a double bed! It's up on the top floor on a corner and next to the toilet and shower rooms. It has lots of fresh air courtesy of a missing window. It's RM20 per night and quiet. The place is a Filipino-run place called the 'Kudat'. It's affordable! And livable. It's 'home' for the remained of my stay...our stay together in Kota Kinabalu.

I continue the daily walk-abouts. We go out to Tanjung Aru beach...cheaply by local bus a couple of times...to break things up. But mostly it's cheap afternoons down at the esplanade fishing with Noni. Kota Kinabalu's not unpleasant but it's become for me, increasingly depressing. It's not a new experience! I've been just recently before Kudat. I don't have too much money left. The realization is sinking in that my journeys are about over. It's taken two rather short months to travel leisurely to Penang and Melaka then on to Sumatra, Madura, and Kalimantan before Sabah!

I reckon I've got about two weeks worth of funds to gently blow before I must leave. Should I try to find a job and stay together with Noni? I have the feeling that it'll probably be a disaster. As a result I don't make much of an effort. I did make it out the university to have a look around though. And I did have an interview at a girl's Catholic school but nothing eventuated. I was relieved.

I'd stopped recording my daily activities and impressions on meeting Ms.Noni. By Wednesday, April 28 however I catch myself writing: “No jobs here. And Kota Kinabalu's definitely worn off anyway. Today buy a flight out to KL for Saturday, May 01. Just enough dosh left to do the new passport thing and find a job in Thailand, or head back again to Vietnam.

I thought, about 10 days ago, “...there are job possibilities here, and I'll give it until the end of the month”...but nothing has materialized! I continue introspectively: "I'm spending considerable energy love-making and combined with equatorial malaise for anything but pfotos this leaves me with absolutely no motivation or energy to write up the events I am experiencing...as I was doing”. “Ill write up later when I'm on my own and a bit more centred and balanced”, I continue.“Killing time in Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok waiting for the new passport I'll have time enough”. “I'll just let the pictures tell the day-to-day story of the second Kota Kinabalu visit”. I then try to analyzing the situation and my feelings: “I'm less at ease...why?”.

“Ms Noni's definitely crazy. I could handle this at first but not so much now...lately I'm becoming more 'uptight' with her...especially her antics in public. Earlier they seemed fun...just frolics! “Probably she's just milking another foreigner cash-cow. I feel like I'm once again just a walking ATM" This is often the lot of a foreigner boyfriend in South-East Asia. But it's unsustainable for this poor nomadic English teacher. “Like, literally, she's eating like a horse and getting fat. And she hasn't had her period like she should have, so could she be pregnant?”. “The old vasectomy hasn't let me down at this late stage, has it?”. "If she's pregnant, well,she was before I met her...on the rebound I think, from...”. To finish up this lone diary entry I find written: “Been in the same room for the duration” as if adding explanation...“Been in the same room for the duration”!

Our well-worn daily routine, perfected since Kudat's been going something like this. Sex in the morning after which we head out to the Indian 'roti restaurant' to start the day proper. I'd spend seven or eight ringgit on roti and kari ayam...my favorite. After that, in the afternoons there's sometimes a short expedition, for example down to the Fish Market or up Lookout Hill overlooking the town or a longer one out to Tanjung Aru beach. On one occasion we just kept walking in the heat of the day into the distance ending up at the far end of the airport runway. On the way back though, we sat and ate and drank at the very pleasant mid-beach restaurant.

Most days we'd have a bit to eat above the day market down on the front followed wiling away the afternoon at the 'new' esplanade'. Planes taking off from Tanjung Aru climb over the city banking out to sea overhead. Noni always yells out to them "Bye, bye, babe". I'd think, yeah, I'll be up there in a couple a days time not sure whether to laugh or cry!

Noni fishes with some line and hooks she finds. I hang around observing the sea and the waterfront. Evenings are always spent at the Filipino Night Market eating cheap delicious fish or my favorite terangbulan. We'd then buy our cheap Filipino cigarettes and wander back to the lodging for an ice-cream at one of the convenience stores along the way. Back at the room I'd upload the days pfotos and together we'd look through them together, Noni seeking faces and animal shapes in the clouds! We're generally asleep by 10!

Kota Kinabalu has delicious sunsets. Everyone who's visited Kota Kinabalu has surely witnessed tremendously colorful skies in general and sunsets in particular. The esplanade's excellent with it's offshore islands and cloud-banks just above the horizon. Another great sunset vantage point is on Lookout Hill. The special thing about sunsets from up here is that the town's buildings many with lights already on are silhouetted! Nature is to the fore on the walk up from Merdeka Park. Freedom...Independence...

On May 01 the Sabah journey comes finally to an end. I've got to leave! I take what little I've got...and freedom. It's out to the Air Asia terminal at Tanjung Aru by local bus in lots of time. Noni comes out with me. I leave her sitting outside the terminal while I check-in. She creates a big mess around where she's sitting...litter, plant material, cigarette butts. There's a trash container within easy reach. It's her way of showing that she's sore at me for leaving. It gives the cleaners a sense of being needed. The supervisor even comes out. They seem to feel sorry for her, understanding of her 'plight'. Eventually she walks off about 30 minutes before my boarding time. She's got five packs of the cheap Filipino cigarettes and RM50 I could afford to give her. I stare after her with a numb feeling, moisture in my eyes. So that's that! I had been dreading a big scene. Emotions boiling over...And journeys begin ~

KOTA KINABALU Jesselton Point ~journeys 2010: journal with pfotos~April 09

~ kotuku and history ~

Friday, April 09 we make a short outing from our lodging in Sinsuran to Jesselton Point wharf. It's just a short walk along the waterfront from the centre of Kota Kinabalu. Or you can take a local town bus instead. We returned to the central town that way. It's a hot one!

Mid-morning Ms.Noni and I head down to the esplanade stopping off for a bite to eat on the way. Then we take a noon stroll along the tourist esplanade, to the right, away from the Filipino and fish market. Like most tourists we encounter the huge swordfish statue on the traffic roundabout. There are also giant stone fish statues on the boardwalk nearby. Ms.Noni loves to frolic in public! It's really hot.

We take shelter on a park bench conveniently placed under the welcome shade of adolescent trees. This is the capital of Sabah and it's a place where nature's to the fore. I remember yesterday having seen a giant bird statue being 'frolicked on' in a street not far away! Looking over the harbor now I realize the bird signified. White herons frequent this part of coastal Sabah. The central fish market nearby must provide a easy ready made take aways!

They're definitely white herons! 'Kotuku' is the Maori word for these beautifully graceful birds. These days they're a famous icon of the west coast of New Zealand. Kotuku don't live there. Rather they arrive to mate and nest around November. No doubt some of these birds I'm seeing right now on the esplanade at Kota Kinabalu have made that flight south to Okarito, New Zealand!

To our right about one kilometre distant I can see the tip of Jesselton Point wharf. From the statued esplanade where we're sitting it's possible to walk along the waterfront. This waterfront's developing. Although it's not completed yet, this impressive new extension to the existing esplanade bears warning signs against entry. But it's easy to access.

And it looks like most of the structural construction work's completed so there's little risk involved. It's a favorite spot for local fishermen. Under it's protruding concrete buttresses live some apparently homeless folk. It's a place we increasingly frequented on our return from Kudat. I was pretty penniless though we weren't homeless! We just liked to hang out fishing away the afternoons. Today though, it's just the most direct and appealing way to walk from the esplanade to the wharf at Jesselton Point.

Jesselton Point wharf's been welcoming visitors for a long time. In former colonial times it was the main disembarkation wharf for Sabah. Today, some of that history's on display. Large reproduced photographs decorate the wall to our left at the entrance. One scene in the early 1900s shows cargo ships anchored nearby. Another shows it's state as a result of WW2 when the British destroyed most of the town's infrastructure before abandoning it. History on public show. And for free!

Today Jesselton Point welcomes all, including both British and Japanese tourists. They as well as local tourists, come here to catch ferryboats to the beautiful TAR National Park islands.

KUDAT ~journeys 2010: journal with pfotos~ April 10, 2010

~ my kinda place ~

“Kudat is in the very north of Sabah and gets very few Westen visitors. It has a noticeable Filipino influence...the Sunrise Hotel, in the old part of town...is a friendly place”[Attribution: South East Asia On A Shoestring Lonely Planet Publications 2001: 527]. The 'Tip of Borneo'. “Could dat” be my sort of place I'd thought back at Tawau as I was considering 'where to go next'. Well, now from Kota Kinabalu it's only a convenient, comfortable three hour shared-taxi ride away. So my Sabahan journey of 2010 continues to this northern tip of Borneo close to the southern Philippines. It's a region not so long ago notorious for the kidnapping of tourists but these days there's absolutely no such threat.

April 10. Off to Kudat. After staying in Kota Kinabalu for three nights, it's pack up and check out time from the Filipino-run 'Pamol-Swiss'. It's has Rm30 per night rooms. It's a 'lodging' in Sinsuran, downtown Kota Kinabalu. The open-air taxi and minibus park's conveniently just around the corner opposite the Indian roti restaurant we've been frequenting most mornings. There's a photogenic mosque on the hill behind the taxi 'park'. There are also less attractive, somewhat dated tenement apartment buildings adjacent. There's a 'water machine' on the sidewalk for cheap refills and a few big, old 'rain-trees' for shade from the searing sun.

The road to Kudat's inland of the coast most of the journey. There's some very pleasant scenery. Not an oil palm plantation in sight! Yet! And always the towering presence of that prime piece of Sabahan “real” estate: Mt.Kinabalu. It's Sabah's main attraction "...the highest mountain between the mighty Himalayas and Mt.Puncak Jaya in Papua. Mt.Kinabalu towers 4101m above what's left of the lush tropical forests of northern Borneo and is the centrepiece of the vast 750-sq-km Kinabalu National Park” [Attribution: South East Asia On A Shoestring Lonely Planet Publications 2001:527-8]. Today's the closest I get to it...on the coastal journey north to Kudat!

Kudat. The original town is near to wharfs. Further west there's an esplanade and modern, soulless, but typically Malaysian small-town architecture. Beyond lies the golf course and up-market hotel and marina. Continue along the coast and you're at the Tip of Borneo. The taxi pulls in on the main street of the 'old town'. A stone throw away, just across the road, we check in to the Sunrise Hotel for RM28 or US$9 per night. It's a strange room. Cheaper because guests must share a toilet; it's without a mandi inside. It also doesn't have a TV or a fan. It does have a noisy old air-con unit. And most unusually, wall-to-wall carpet and a wall-length mirror which Ms. Noni loves. There are cheaper RM20 rooms but they're really, really basic. Ms. Noni and I stay five or six nights...everyday exploring the town and it's surroundings. Always on foot.

Sabah has lingering nuances of having been a slightly upper-class British colony. The British North Borneo Company ran the place until incorporation into an independent Malaysia in 1963. In Kudat though there's not much evidence of this. These days Borneo and Sabah attracts the more adventurous traveler. There are not many in evidence in Kudat...at least at this time of year! Most I assume go on the mountain or dive off Sempurna, popularized by Jacques Cousteau: one of the best dive sites in the world. Later, back in Kota Kinabalu I overhear a tourist say that the plastic rubbish spoils it a bit! In the five days in Kudat we meet only one expat. John's English and maybe in his late 40s. He sold his yacht about five years ago now and bought land out at the Tip of Borneo. He loves it here. We agreed....let's keep Kudat a secret, eh! Other expats he explains, can be found hanging out at the yacht marina and golf club! Some teach English language here but I don't bother to track them down!

Laid-back, free-and-easy and relaxed as I might be here, I experience increasing worries about money and renewing my passport. I worry about Ms Noni too. She's great, but I'm paying both our ways. I'm burning through something like US$25 a day! On doing some sums, I've spent Rm900 in 12 days which is a lot for me! My health is good. I do lots of walking. I'm eating very well too...wonderful seafood and of course roti kosong/curry ayam...and sex.

But it's definitely "doing something 'bout it time". That's why I tell Noni on the fourteenth that we go back to Kota Kinabalu. Perhaps I must find some money. The only way I know is to work. There are schools here in Kudat, but I haven't made any effort. Could I live happily ever after with the girl? She doesn't want me to leave! But I may have no option. Regardless of obtaining employment, I resolve to stick around Sabah until the end of my Sacom money or for another couple of weeks at this rate! That leaves me with the about US$500 in my Thai bank. It's maybe just enough to get over to Singapore or Kuala Lumpur for a new passport and back to Vietnam...where I have US$450 waiting.

Postscript. Six weeks later...I haven't had to stop traveling. I write this up in a very good $5 room in Nha Trang, Vietnam. I muse that I do now have a new passport...4 pages gone already...and very little money, no job and a visa-expiry in 3 weeks to deal with. I've really got to get round to taking earning some money again seriously. No passengers either since Ms.Noni. Back to normality but with the odd emotional feeling welling up when I think and write about my Kudat journey and the mostly carefree, relaxed days spent together 'cruising on foot' around the town and it's appealing environs.