Short sad update

My mobile blogging remains an unfulfilled techno-dream. My providers don't function well in Myanmar, but worse - a local sim there costs 1k USD. I kid you not. One thousand American dollars. Talk about trying to milk it from the tourist.

At this rate, I'll be happy if my pen and paper doesn't get snatched away in broad daylight.

Looks like my blogging luck will now depend on the availability of internet cafes - now how expensive THEY'RE going to be, is anybody's guess. I might have to start depending on charity for free speech soon.

Another pre-travel ponder

I always get a little nervous before getting to Malaysia. No matter how much i try to prepare myself, I just am not. The more I think of the notion of "returning", the more I feel isolated from the reality of it.

The first thing to accost me is usually the language - alien yet understandable, brassy yet a comfortable lingua franca.

And then there are the usual mistakes and misunderstandings that constantly underline my existence there - the misconception by everyone, no matter what race or background, that I'm Malay, not Indian - and therefore by default, that I'm Muslim, not Hindu.

Hence, my nose-piercing gets stares, as does my uncovered head, growing sinfully lustrous hair. I'm too fair to be Indian ( as per the horrifically steretyped notion in Malaysia that all Indians are the colour of charcoal ) but too well-spoken to be Melayu-mari. Many taxi drivers jump to the proud conclusion that I must be 'kacukan', or to be less elegant, 'campur' - of mixed parentage. Despite my polite ( and these days plain bored ) efforts to say otherwise. One even went so far as to try and convince me that my parents must be of mixed breed ( operative word being convince ).

And then there's the rabid materialism of Kuala Lumpur - a vision of exciting urbane-ness that always fascinates me. A metropolis of cutting edge technology and infrastructure that can rival any global city, in terms of on-the-face sophistication, streamlined skyline, and never-close-shop malls.

Thing is, I like to leave it at that. Once I stay long enough to scratch the surface, the packed-tight seeds and wounds come crawling out - the race for more money, the judging of character based on the latest designer jeans you have on, the left-behind forefather generation spouting wisened wisdom on ears deafened by the din of construction.

And then I grieve, I mourn, I question, I exasperate, I relinquish, I resign, I return.

A year later, the cycle begins again.

 

 

Travelling Travails - the prologue

After a couple of months of people wondering if I'm going to be perenially just 'bereft' and nothing else, I return to my blog in a flurry of pre-travel activity, organising little frustrating details that insist on going wrong and ruining that big rosy picture in your head. The kind that leaps up from Vogue Travel and such-like, replete with jet-setting Ralph Lauren travel kits and L'Occitane aromatherapy air-mists.

The reality is more about yelling at your travel agent for failing to understand the minutiae of visa-acquisition and listening to an automated voice on the phone at Malaysia Airlines educating you on the advantages of Enrich points ad-infinitum.

And doing 12-hour work shifts in between.

It's a little hard to envision the final destination when in this quagmire - a brief return to the nation I was born in, followed by a much-anticipated, much-planned, a little scary trip up to Myanmar ( a name nobody here recognises unless you whisper 'Burma' conspiratorially ) to experience, evaluate, and dare I say it - perhaps understand - what it was like for my maternal grandmother, when she lived as a little schoolgirl in Rangoon of old.

I hardly trust myself in these trips back home, since all the great self-made promises of remaining calm and breezy and most of all, adult, during my trip almost instantly vapourises at the sight of friends, family, heck, even buildings and smells and language. I'm a mess when I arrive, and a mess when I leave.

So when it comes to this trip up to Yangdon ( Rangoon! ) - and with my mother no less, wanting to explore her own mother - I field awed gasps from Brisbane-white Aussies with serene cool, and silently quake in my Jacqui-e heels.

I'm endeavouring to set up Mobile Blogging as we speak - though that's not confirmed - and will be texting my experiences as and when they happen. Instant images are out of the question ( very sadly ) since they're yet to be supported by non-American mobile providers, but then I've relied more on my words to paint my stories anyway. Something that might change next year if my duty-free shopping this time goes according to plan.

So buckle up my honeys, it's gonna be one crazy ride for me. Pray I get back in one piece, but really, don't expect much sanity in the forthcoming weeks.