U turns

Some time ago, a British friend commented that a traffic system that relied on U-turns as an essential means of getting from A to B was quite ludicrous. Like anything else, I have got used to the idea that U-turning could be a legitimate and essential manoeuvre. Gone are the days of UK driving where U-turning is rarely legal and often thought of as an amusing way to duck out of a navigational cock-up. Here in Malaysia, U-turn spots are signed all over the place, road signs are adorned with the hitherto humorous symbol of the big U. However, I don’t think I will ever get over the incredulity that hits me every time I come across the great highway U turns that I am obliged to use – or react swiftly to avoid – around KL.

For the uninitiated, let me explain. Sometimes when travelling on a three-lane carriageway, a U-turn is the only way to reach a destination accessible only from the opposite carriageway. Occasionally, someone may have thoughtfully built a special U-turn bridge, linking inside lane to inside lane. More excitingly though, you may find that the outside lane suddenly becomes a turning lane. Yes, the fast lane. So as you slow down or join the queue for the turn you are kept on the edge of your seat by the prospect of another fast moving vehicle piling into the back of your car. Best of all, having squeezed through the gap and made the turn, where do you find yourself? In the fast lane, of course, offering your rear end to unsuspecting high-speed traffic.

My friend's real mistake was in thinking that there was a traffic system at all.

The Petronas Towers, Kuala Lumpur

Iconic of the city, the Petronas Towers are stunning beyond belief. For a few years they enjoyed a reign as the world's tallest towers, but no more. But it really doesn't matter whether they top the world or not. There is no structure this tall that is so breathtaking.

The design is strongly Islamic, the floorplan of each tower being based on the eight-pointed star used so much in Islamic art. Each tower rises in five teirs, honouring the five pillars of Islam. There are numerous interesting features which I'm sure you can read about elsewhere. I once watched a television programme about the building of the towers and was delighted to learn that the project had encountered some very Malaysian problems, such as a poor survey which meant that while one tower was to be built on rock, the other was due to be founded on a muddy bog. The high speed lifts, designed I think by an American company, had to be slowed because Malaysians don't like to move so quickly!

One of my favourite pastimes in the vicinity of the towers is to watch people trying to photograph them. They don't fit easily into the average viewfinder, so people lie on the ground, or set the camera on the ground then contort themselves in order to see what's on the screen.

At night - that is, a clear night - their lights rise over the city. In the daytime their glass and metal gleam blue and silver with a shocking brightness. I like them best of all at twilight, when their faces can still be seen but the lights are already on against a deepening blue sky. I never would have thought I'd feel a moment of excitement looking at a skyscraper, but in this case I do. Frequently.

Demonstration for fair elections

At the weekend there was a large rally in Kuala Lumpur. 10 to 30 thousand people took to the streets in a peaceful demonstration demanding fair elections. The rally had been banned by the police (the constitution here forbids gatherings of more than five people without government permission), who had promised to arrest anyone taking part. Obviously it wasn't possible to arrest so many people, but tear gas and water cannons were used to break up the rally.

There have been recent occasions when rallies have been allowed to go ahead, for example anti-war demonstrations in the wake of the attacks on Iraq. So clearly, the government is capable of granting permission when it sees fit. So what message are they sending to their people and the world by banning this one? Malaysia claims that its elections are free and fair, so wouldn't it be better to let it go ahead and state that the demonstrators' concerns are being investigated?

I've talked to a few locals, such as friends and random taxi drivers, about their views. One thing I was told (and I have not investigated the truth of it) is that groups such as the police and armed forces do not get individual votes but are 'block voted' by the authorities. What most non-Malays will really want to talk about is racial discrimination. It is well-known that the various ethnic groups that make up Malaysia have different rights. If you are of Indian or Chinese origin, despite being 5th or 10th generation Malaysian nationals, you do not have the same chances, rights or financial support as the ethnic Malays. Malays get tax breaks, housing benefits, and need lower grades to enter universities, as well as being something of a 'chosen people' when it comes to promotions, selection for teams and so on. Coming from the UK, one of the most ethnically diverse countries around, this is hard to fathom and quite outrageous. Malaysians divide themselves up by race and often seem to have no concept of national identity. They call themselves Malay or Chinese or whatever, not Malaysian. Yet somehow, despite this, at street level there seems to be very little inter-racial tension and different groups work and socialize happily together.

Back to the election, there are plentiful allegations of multiple voting, uncounted votes and so on. The organisers of the protest stated that their goal is a change in the electoral process in order to prevent fraud. If the government really believes that their elections are fair, they should want to ensure that they are. They should want to show the people that they care about this. They definitely want the world to see the country as a forward thinking democracy, but their response to this demonstration has had people likening Malaysia to Burma.

Kuala Terengganu

A three hour bus ride took me to Kuala Terengganu. I'd booked into the Ping Anchorage Backpackers, cited by the Lonely Planet as the "number one spot in town" for budget travellers. I would have to doubt their judgement on this one. The place is completely unmanned - you collect your keys from a shop downstairs then go up a floor, unlock a padlocked grille and enter the echoing bare concrete hallways of the 'hostel'. It had a rather prison-like air and my room, though big, was scarcely better. A massively stained dark green carpet covered the floor, curling up at the edges and joins. The room smelled dank and the 'hot' shower provided a trickle of cold water which after ten minutes had just about wet me. Within minutes of arrival I had decided to move to somewhere else in the morning.

So after a good enough night's sleep, broken abrubtly in the pre-dawn by the call to prayer from the mosque which I'd admired on the corner last night, I checked into the Seri Malaysia hotel, reminding myself that the huge cost of the move was actually less than twenty pounds. Friday isn't a good day to be exploring an East coast town in the off-season. Everything was closed. The tour operators told me that there were no other travellers to make up groups with so any hopes I had of visiting Tasik Kenyir or travelling up the rivers nearby were quickly dashed. Saturday wasn't any better - even the steps up to the top of the small hill overlooking the town were closed, as was Redang island, course. Pathetically, I stayed in my rather nice hotel room watching National Geographic channel until checkout time, knowing that the afternoon would be long enough. By the afternoon I'd even lost interest in taking the ferry across the river to the village where fishing boats are reportedly still made by hand. No doubt the boat-builders would not be working on the weekend either. I took a look at the markets and mosque and sat by the waterfront watching a team of cleaners and sweepers clearing a small stretch of sand by chucking the rubbish back into the river. Waiting for my evening flight back to KL, the day stretched out forever.

The beach on the East side of town was very pleasant though, so I strolled along, as slowly as possible. Had a paddle, had a cold drink. Kite sellers had set up stalls along the beach and a few people were flying kites. As soon as I reached the busier stretch of beach I was greeted by young grinning lads sitting around on motorbikes. I wasn't in the mood for chatting to these Met Rumpets, being leered at and asked inane questions such as "where you going?" and "where you come from?"(both of which I repeatedly answered "there" with a point in the appropriate direction). I'll usually talk to anyone, especially if I've got nine hours to kill, but their pushy arrogance and mocking laughter made me just want to push them off their little 125cc pedestals.

Luckily, there was plenty of good food in Kuala Terengganu. Chinatown offered lots of choices as well as beer and friendly service, and at a Malay stall I tried nasi kerabu goreng which was pretty good, though not as delicious as its unfried counterpart. The lady running this stall was sweet and delighted by my few words of Malay, even showing them off to her friends. I sat at her stall sipping lime juice for as long as my bladder would let me. I'd run out of things to read on the Friday and was forced to consider writing a novel instead. Luckily there were some newspapers around.

Eventually it was time to leave and I realised that I had been counting the hours for so long that I wasn't actually expecting such a time to come. There's nothing wrong with the place, but I had obviously been somewhat over-optimistic about the opportunities for seeing the area even just a week or two into the monsoon season.

Oh yes. It rained a lot.

Muzium Negeri Kelantan

The Kelantan state museum, Muzium Negeri Kelantan, appeared slightly unexciting in the way that I've come to expect such places to be. However, I was able to while away a pleasant hour or so learning everything I could want to know about keris (Malay daggers), from their design to their magical and mystical properties. Some can kill an enemy by flying through the air, others you simply stab into your enemy's footprint to render him deceased. Most importantly, I now know how to clean my keris, an eight step procedure involving banana stems, limes, bamboo, coconut water, smoke and wax.

Weapons used by women were another interesting feature of the museum, ranging from deadly hairpins for "protection against predatory males and others of evil intent," to the lawi ayam, a tiny dagger with a finger hole in the handle, held in the palm with just the tip of its curved blade poking out of the hand. While men conceal this hand in the folds of their clothing, women keep their lawi ayam "hidden in the coils of the hair as protection from a man with evil intentions." Obviously a lot of these men about.

There was also a small room displaying information about poisons made by witch-doctors, which were either ingested or carried magically by the wind to the intended victim. There were also samples of plants that could be use as medicines, love potions and so on.

In the royal family room, I was interested to read about Tengku Muhammad Faris Petra, the crown prince of Kelantan, especially his education. At the Sultan Ismail Primary School he achieved five A grades and won the trophy for 'student of the year'. Following this he went to an international school in KL (no mention of any achievements) then to Oakham in the UK where he "was in the A-level class." There was no mention of his having got any A-levels though. I couldn't help thinking that maybe his primary school had overestimated his brilliance, in the way that Malaysian institutions shamelessly will in their dealings with royalty and other important figures. However, to give the guy his due, he went on to study useful things like diplomatic relations and European business administration, so it does seem that he or his family had some intention of his being well informed in areas that might prove relevant to his position.

One other thing that I found interesting was that in older photos of the royal family, women wore no tudongs. I'm not sure whether this is due to their status or simply because back in the seventies and eighties it was more acceptable for women to be seen with their heads uncovered. Certainly in the more recent photos, the women wore their tudongs.

Kota Bharu

I enjoyed Kota Bharu. It's a small city, easy to walk around and quite tourist-friendly with good signing, museums and plenty of good places to eat. Anyone visiting the town should drop into the tourist information centre just for a chat with Roselan. He's a delightful chap, very friendly and helpful, who enjoys dropping his bits of London English into conversation. Although I didn't arrange any tours with him, he happily gave me details of things to do. I was very tempted by his Malay cookery workshops, but unfortunately there were no other participants to share the cost, so I decided against it. ("I'm Jamie Oliver round here, pukka Malay food!") He wished me a slighly camp "cheerio," and I set off to follow his sightseeing advice.

People rave about the market in Kota Bharu and I suppose it is worth a visit if you haven't seen many Asian markets. The usual smells of fish, raw chicken and well-trodden vegetable scraps greet you as you enter the large circular market hall. Upstairs, the selling space is smaller, around the outside of the building, and from here you can look down into the main fruit and veg area below.

I visited the Kelantan state museum - more of that later - and wandered around looking at other places of interest, including the Second World War museum which focussed on the local landing and subsequent occupation by the Japanese. The craft complex was as touristy as you'd expect, but very nicely done. I was delighted to find, after hours of city streets, a hut in the food court offering foot massage. My masseur, a southern Thai, was an interesting guy to chat with. I even discovered that my feet were being cared for by the hands that massaged the Sultan.

Is this what happens when your floating restaurant is going under?

And yes, it was still open.

Zeck Travellers' Inn, Kota Bharu

Sultan Ismail Petra airport looks, from the runway, like a two-storey concrete car park encased in the walls of a mosque. Kota Bharu itself is a city with a small-town feel, typical of so many places in Malaysia. New buildings nestle between old wooden ones, Chinese shophouses flake away looking slightly unloved, potholed roads are bordered by drainage channels covered wonkily by concrete slabs, some of which are of course missing.

I stayed at the delightful Zeck Travellers’ Inn. This little backpackers has basic but pleasant rooms and a nice communal area out front. Zeck and his wife are a lovely friendly couple and it was them who really made the place what it was. Zeck gave me plenty of useful information about the town and possible excursions and Maria filled me in on the local foods I should try. I took her advice the first evening and went to Yatie’s stall at the night market for nasi kerabu, a delicious combination of rice, fish, salady vegetables and herbs and spicy nutty sauce which immediately shot to somewhere near the top of my top eats list. In the morning she urged me to join her family and friends for breakfast which turned out to be a sociable and entertaining way to pass the morning. She had cooked an excellent fish curry, making second helpings quite irresistible. I only wish I’d asked her for the recipe or even a cooking lesson.

So, well set up for the day, I headed out to explore Kota Bharu.

Sungai Gabai

I often used to cycle in this area and have been to the Sungai Gabai waterfall before. This isn't a remote and peaceful spot, but it is truly beautiful. The waterfall area is within a small and fairly well maintained 'recreational park'. Steps lead up past a series of waterfalls where the water pours down over well-smoothed rocks, including one very high drop. The volume of water isn't huge, rather it forms long delicate trailing veils as it falls. Following the steps up, there are a number of good viewpoints and well-used picnic spots.

As usual, the falls were quite busy with families preparing the most enormous picnics, boiling great vats of rice or unpacking dozens of take-away cartons. I like the whole local feel of the place, with dozens of people just enjoying an afternoon out. I've never seen any other foreigners there, so as usual our arrival caused a few interested glances and cheery greetings. At the top of the path the real fun begins - here there is a section of the river that flows over the rocks which form a natural waterslide before forming a safe swimming pool above the main fall. Like many groups of laughing adults and families our first priority was to cool off by sliding down. The rock is so smooth that it's quite comfortable even to slide down head-first on your stomach. Groups of young men like to try to stay on their feet, although their mates tend to try to take them out on the way down. However loud and raucous these guys are being they always make room for the children and help them over the slippery rocks at the top.

After I while I left my friends and the children playing and walked on up beside the river. Here there is no proper path and a bit of scrambling over muddy roots is necessary. Higher up, the lads were jumping into a narrow channel where the water gushed between two walls of rock. In another place they showed off to their girlfriends by diving quite impressively from higher rocks into another pool. Above all this, I had the river to myself. Quietly it burbled between the trees, looking like a true jungle stream. I watched a spider spin a picture-book perfect web in a matter of minutes. I paddled across to sit on a sunny rock and drink in this image of Malaysia, Malaysia as I'll always remember it.

A load of rubbish

To a visitor, probably the worst thing about Malaysia is rubbish. There’s litter in the streets, on the beaches, in the jungle and on every river bank. Waterfalls attract heaps of the stuff, even waterfalls that are two hours' walk from any road. Presumably people go to a waterfall simply because it is so beautiful, so how can they think so little as to leave rubbish behind? And I’m not just talking about a carelessly dropped sweet wrapper – I’m talking about piles of bottles, plastic bags, food-cartons and left-overs.

Out by a swimming spot in a pretty river, a friend of mine encouraged other picnickers to make use of her bin-bag. Grudgingly, they did. Then with a big grin on his face, one man threw the whole bag into the river.

You have to be quite determined here about refusing plastic bags in shops and at stalls. Even a snack like a single doughnut comes in a paper bag which is immediately dropped into a plastic one, even though it is almost certainly for immediate consumption. People don’t say no to this, but the second they walk away, the bag is dropped. Or binned, if in a shopping mall – the one place where people seem to use bins. City streets are kept reasonably clean by an army of sweepers, but in the countryside the rubbish just heaps up.

At the Gap resthouse, on the way up to Fraser’s Hill, I watched a kitchen worker come out of the hotel, cross the road and empty a whole bin of waste into the trees.

Snorkelling off Perhentian, I started to dive down to pick up drinks cans. I tossed them into our boat. As we moved around the island to different snorkelling spots, my pile grew. Returning to the boat after a swim, I noticed that they had all gone. Either they had vaporized or our boatman had chucked them back into the sea. This is one of Malaysia’s most gorgeous islands, it relies heavily on tourism, yet people are happy to spoil it.

Everywhere you go, you see people simply dropping rubbish where they stand, even when there is a bin nearby. They toss it out of car windows. My polite “Excuse me, I think you’ve dropped something,” only receives a reply along the lines of, “I don’t need it,” or “It’s finished.”

In the UK, only louts and children do this. In Malaysia, it’s the norm. And almost nobody seems to mind. This year is ‘Visit Malaysia Year’. There is a huge awareness campaign, sponsorship abounds and no doubt the budget is huge. I can’t help feeling that what they really need is a public education drive along the lines of a ‘Keep Malaysia worth visiting’ campaign.

Jalan Alor

Jalan Alor, in the heart of the city, has to be one of KL’s greatest nightspots. This is a place to come for food. All sorts of food. The street is crammed with local restaurants and food stalls, serving every Malaysian dish you could wish for. The abundance and variety can seem quite staggering. The little carts that make up the majority of stalls advertise everything from frog porridge (soggy rice – with frogs of course) to carrot cake (a savoury stir-fried mush). Bundles of squid hang above woks alongside leafy green vegetables. The air sizzles with the sound of frying and a thousand delicious smells assail you. There are barely-cooked shellfish which ooze blood (?) as you pick them from their shells, there are butter prawns with fried curry leaves, wantons, laksa, black pepper venison, soft-shell crab, lala, steam boat, chicken fish and a hundred kinds of noodles. Sugar cane squeezers grind to produce glasses of sweet, refreshing juice, while a huge stack of spent canes builds up on the pavement. On long thin barbecues satay is grilled, row upon row, smoke billowing as the cook fans it vigorously breaking off only to slop spicy peanut sauce into plastic dishes.

There are fruit stalls where you can buy mangosteen and rambutan and a dozen other local treats. An old man weighs huge, spiky durians before splitting them open with a hefty swing of a parang. At a table nearby, groups of people bite into the gorgeous, rich, creamy flesh of these mighty fruits whose stench overwhelms unsuspecting foreign passers-by.

Tables from stalls and restaurants spill out over the pavements, onto the road, where they butt up against parking meters, streetlights, parked cars and trestle tables full of pirated CDs. While you eat at one cafe, you can order extras from other nearby stalls. Cars nudge their way between pedestrians, men selling tacky light-up toys or packs of socks and children selling tissues. Mini-skirted girls in Heineken or Tiger outfits flit between tables taking orders for beer.

The whole street is buzzing. The lights and movement, sounds and smells give you a kick of excitement, but the atmosphere is always relaxed and friendly. This is Kuala Lumpur at its best.