Posts Tagged 'malaysia'

A City Kid At Sea

Published April 22, 2012 Blunders , Dirty Tricks , Malaysia , Places , Southeast Asia Closed
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The damp Ramones t-shirt stuck to my skin with a mix of sun block, sweat and salt water that felt about as adhesive as wet cement. The noon sun beat down as I squinted, digging my oar into the crystal clear water and pulling hard.

“Left”—pant—“Right”—pant—“Right”—pause, pant—“Right!”

It was no fucking use. We were moving in circles.

Sea kayaking. It’d seemed like a good idea that morning, eating breakfast on the wooden deck of our guesthouse on Kapas Island. The morning glistened, the sun whispered through the branches, the breeze tickled my shoulders. The kayaks lay upside down in the sand beneath us, like beached whales with scratched, plastic bellies.

I’d kayaked before, right? I scanned my memory. Nothing came up. But I had to have done it, like once or something. I’d been a peddle boat, that was for sure, a row boat in Golden Gate Park once too. Did I want to kayak over to the next island, Josh asked, and check out the sea turtles? Um, fuck yeah—how hard could that be?

So we overturned the white vessel, dragged it across the sand til it was bobbing on a thin layer of surf.

We stared down at it.

“Which way does it go?” I asked.

“The pointy side goes in front,” Josh declared with an authoritative nod. “Right?”

I shrugged. “I nominate you as the expert.”

We continued to stare down.

“Where do we sit?” I asked. There were three indentations; all three looked viably ass-sized.

We looked up at each other and laughed.

Here’s the thing: I’m an urban person. While that might sound sophisticated and exciting, what it actually means is that I have no real-life survival skills. Or outdoor skills. I don’t do “activities.” I don’t know how to pitch a tent, don’t know how to make fire, have had two unsuccessful attempts at horseback riding that both ended in me being thrown from said horses. I was afraid to swim in water I couldn’t see the bottom of until I was 13. I’d last about three minutes in The Hunger Games.

I sometimes try to comfort myself with the idea that I’ve gained other important skills, specific to my contemporary, technologically advanced environment and valuable to my survival in that context. That’s bullshit. I can navigate Metro systems and determine how long the wait will actually be in a restaurant. These are the things I have to contribute to the evolution and survival of our species. Sterilize me now.

Josh and I got into the kayak, seating ourselves in a way that felt only vaguely correct. The plastic dug into our backs, our legs wedged awkwardly in front of us.

“Okay, I’ll call it out,” Josh said over his shoulder.

We started to paddle, me struggling a couple beats behind Josh. We glided out and for the first 30 seconds I thought, Outdoor activity! This is gonna be fun!

Then we angled toward the rocks.

“Right!” Josh called. We dug in. “Right!” he called again. We dug in harder. “What the fuck, why aren’t we going right?” he shouted as the tip of the kayak scraped into the rock. At least it was the pointy tip.

We pushed off the rock and tried again. We couldn’t get the damn thing to go straight. It careened in different directions, succumbing finally to a sad little drain-pipe tailspin.

We placed our oars down and took a break. “What are we doing wrong?” I asked.

Josh shrugged. “I think it’s the kayak. Maybe it has one of those… what are they called? Rudders? Skegs?”

I blinked. “You’re asking the wrong girl, dude.”

Just then, a perky orange kayak appeared on the horizon. It gliding effortlessly through the water, oars moving with a bird-like synchronicity. We watched as it neared.

The two figures in the kayak began to take shape: life vests and hats, towels across their legs to protect from the sun. Ponytails. Thin little arms. They moved closer.

They were two 12-year-old girls.

“Oh fuck me,” Josh muttered.

They zoomed closer. He waved his arms. “Hey!” he called out. The girls looked over. “Hey, can you tell us what we’re doing wrong?”

The girls looked back at us. “What?”

“We keep moving in circles,” I shouted over. “How do you, like, go straight?”

They looked at each other and giggled. “I don’t know,” one answered, her voice a prepubescent squeal.

“Try rowing at the same time,” the other offered.

“Yeah, we’ve been doing that,” Josh answered.

The girls giggled again. “Sorry,” they said politely. “Good luck!” Someone had raised them well.

They gave a little wave and glided off, rowing in perfect unison, moving in a perfect line.

We took swigs of water, picked up our oars, and gave it another go. In a couple minutes, we were doing sea donuts again.

More boats of little girls kept passing us. Turns out they were a class from the American school in KL, on a field trip. They all smiled and waved, returning our limp, dehydrated flailing with effortless, enthusiastic little wrist flicks.

I watched their boats bob towards to horizon. “That’s fucked up,” I remarked.

“Ask em for a tow?” Josh suggested.

“Totally,” I laughed.

It took about an hour, but we finally made it the two kilometers to the next island. We moved like a double helix—acrobatic, really, like some Cirque du Soleil shit.

From up above, it might have been beautiful.

Take Me Home, On a Malaysian Highway

Published April 21, 2012 Dirty Tricks , Female Travel , Independent , Malaysia , Music , Places , Sola , Sola , Southeast Asia , Subculture , Transit 3 Comments
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This is what this song with forever be: the Malaysian countryside, flat and scrappy through the window of a bus. Me crying.

Sometimes songs get wedged in you; sometimes you know it when it’s happening, have that vague feeling of a future memory forming. Like hearing “Pumped Up Kicks” on the fire escape of a Soho loft, the first week I left home—afterparty of an art opening and 800 sleazy Italian guys offering me cigarettes, that sweet kid from Manchester in his first 2 weeks in the States, too shy to admit he was lonely. Which wasn’t the first time I’d heard the song—it was being shoved down my throat on a daily basis—but I don’t know, I just had this feeling then, that the air, the night, the lights from the apartment across the alley—that it was all being stored up somewhere and that whenever I’d hear the song from now on, this moment would come crashing back with a nostalgia for something I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

Well, I heard “Pumped Up Kicks” in one of those malls in KL and turns out I was right—standing in the gleaming florescence of consumerism, I felt a kind of homesickness for that moment. In a city that wasn’t mine, talking to some kid I didn’t know, watching the dim figures move through the next building over. It doesn’t make sense, but I know you know what I’m talking about.

One of the ironic benefits of living abroad, I was telling a friend recently, is that I have so much more time to read music blogs and download music that, while I can’t actually go to any real shows, I’m way more in the loop than I was in the States. So a string of 4+ hour bus rides, chasing across the east coast of Malaysia, what ended up kind of characterizing my trip—it gave me lots of time to catch up on all the new albums I’d cluttered my phone with.

So, “Take Me Home.” It’ll be this: an overly air-conditioned bus, roadside restaurants passing through the tinted window—“restorans,” metal tins of food, men smoking and women’s scarves flapping. Smooth highway and pocked skin—the poor part of a rich country. Swinging curtain that won’t snap shut brushing my shoulder, bag of banana chips and that constant feeling of having to pee that I have on long bus rides. Two seats to myself so I can curl my knees and pretend that no one can see me when I start to tear up—when he hits the keys on that warbly keyboard and it sounds like something from a well come rise up—“I’ll be so still for you.”

I swear it’s not just that I’m about to get my period, that I’m not just tired—I straight start crying on my bus and I’m surprised by it, you know? Like—Really? This is happening right now? Yeah, yeah, it is.

It’s the night before maybe; the song stirs something in it. Wooden porch of a beach chalet, ramshackle sea-shell clatter, cat at my feet, bug spray and cigarettes and brandy in his cup. He offers me some; I say no. He has wrinkles in his forehead that makes him cuter. He has strings tied around his wrist and bad taste in music but it isn’t that that stops me. It’s something else, I’m not sure what, but I just can’t do it. I smile and say I’m tired and go back to my room before it can happen, before anything can happen, and something about that makes me wanna cry then, in that moment. But I don’t. I play (and lose) a couple games of Sudoku on my phone and snap out the light.

So maybe I’m making up for it now. But it’s not that even really that scene I think about now, not the moment of it at least, but more the feeling. The “goddammit.” The “this again.” The “damaged goods.” “Like a shadow of a shadow of a shadow.”

I’ve been joking about it, that I’m writing “How Not To Get Laid Across The Fucking Planet.” Since I don’t know what the hell else I’m writing. I’m doing research; I’m in character; I’m method acting. Hahaha, it’s all so fucking funny. I’m dragging myself across the planet like something caught beneath the tailpipe; I’m dragging myself down this Malaysian highway and I don’t know where I’m going—I’ve got no guidebook or maps—and I’m turning the music up so I can’t hear any of it, trailing behind me, scraping against the pavement and possibly screaming but probably just whimpering—behind me and I can’t hear it, except for now, in the pitch of a high note—“Like a foooooool.”

“What’s the dating scene in Phnom Penh like?” Josh asked me a couple days later. I spit out a sour psssh—“Fucking dismal,” I replied.

But I knew that, I knew that going in, and you wanna know the fucking truth? I sought that shit out. Like a kind of relief, like a cop out, like “I won’t have to deal with that at all.” So it was weird, you know—as weird as the shopping malls and overpasses and Starbucks—to be hit on in Malaysia. I should have been stoked right? I should have been giddily shouting a “fuck yeah” the way I was the first day in KL, right?

Well, I wasn’t. I was alone in a mold-smelling chalet; I was crying on a fucking bus; I was listening to sensitive bummer music some older version of me would have laughed at and closing my eyes and rocking my head like a goddamn blind person, feeling god-knows-what welling up inside me and pushing the backtrack button over and over and over, so I must have listened to that song like 12 times in a row—knowing that it was getting seared into me, that some future version of me was sitting somewhere, smiling in nostalgia hearing this song again. Why are we always nostalgic for the most painful shit? For the shit we never really had to begin with? Or is that just me?

The Malaysian highway passed. Eventually, I got where I was going.

Glitter and Consumerism in KL

Published April 14, 2012 Being American , Culture Shock , Dirty Tricks , Expatify , Malaysia , Places , Southeast Asia , Transition 3 Comments
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Let’s just say that my mind is blown.

Back in November, when I landed in Phnom Penh, there was a sale on Air Asia. I looked into my crystal ball and determined that come April—Cambodia’s hottest month and when the biggest holiday of the year shuts down virtually everything for a week—I’d be ready for a vacation to the developed world. So I booked tickets to Kuala Lumpur.

I really can’t remember the last time I was so excited for a trip. Riding the tuk-tuk to the airport, I was literally vibrating (I’d also had a ton of coffee). The idea of a city with sidewalks, a Metro and Western fucking shopping malls was as exotic to me as… well, Cambodia is to some people.

One of the incredible things about living in a developed country for me is how quickly things become normal, how quickly you adapt to your surroundings. I really don’t feel like Phnom Penh is that ramshackle; when I return from a trip the provinces, in fact, Phnom Penh feels like the glittery big city.

Are we starting to see where this is going? Are we starting to see how wildly impressed one would be any Monorials and overpasses, by international chains and consumerism, by diversity and hipsters, air-conditioned walkways and traffic lights people actually obey?

I am not in any way ashamed to admit that I spent my first day in Kuala Lumpur completely inside shopping malls. I didn’t sweat all day, and it was glorious. I rode glass elevators and ate Krispy Kreme donuts and reconfirmed that I really just don’t like Starbucks coffee. I heard “Pumped Up Kids” inside a Forever 21; I heard Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros in a Topshop. I passed women in burkas and women in booty shorts, both clutching Coach bags. I ate in a motherfucking food court: I had sushi and Turkish coffee and some kinda weird Taiwanese shaved ice that was really not that awesome. I tried on pants that fit me and bras that fit me, that weren’t three-inches thick with padding.

I bought some nice-ass work clothes and paid for them on a credit card and signed my name and got one of those itemized receipts with the credit card digits blocked out with little stars.

I was dazzled, and utterly unashamed by how dazzled I was.

There was a time when I would have been mega critical of the malls of KL. I would have deemed them inauthentic, not real cultural experiences. Well, they aren’t—everything is imported, corporate, packaged, temperature controlled. And that’s what’s so amazing—how inauthentic they are.

Cause you know what I’ve realized? In Cambodia, my most “authentic” “local” “cultural” experiences have been really uncomfortable. I’ve been hot and confused and unable to communicate and unsure of how to bathe myself and mildly-to-extremely sick to my stomach. Which isn’t to say that they haven’t been important, valuable experiences, just that they haven’t been easy. Not like, say, a corporate shopping mall.

We’re obsessed in the West with authenticity. Travelers are always looking to get off the beaten path, away from the tourist circuit. We scour Yelp to find the best local restaurants. And remember that Lana del Rey thing? People were so pissed off because she tricked us—we thought for a minute, you know, with a shitty youtube video, that she might be “real” and not some music executive’s wet dream of indie.

Maybe those are anecdotal, but I kinda don’t think so. Living the last 5 months in a developing country, the majority of what I buy and what I do is non-corporate—I buy produce at the market, top-up cards at roadside stalls, bottles of water from mini-markets set up in a family’s living room. I guess that’s pretty authentic, when you think about it.

But still. I was so fucking excited to be in a shopping mall I couldn’t take it.

Cause it’s in you, you know? Consumerism such a deeply rooted part of American culture, such a deeply rooted part of myself, that I’m often not aware it’s there. You’re constantly interacting with it—even if you shop at local mom-and-pops and go out of your way to support small businesses, you’re still interacting in opposition to it. You’ve been marketed towards since you were a toddler; you’re a unit of consumption and you consume. In one way or another.

Until you move to Cambodia. And you can’t. Because, aside from KFC and a Mango, there’s just not the option. And you don’t miss it. Or you don’t think you miss it. Until you land in KL and you wander through the pristine malls, floors glittering and piped-in music playing, with stars in your fucking eyes cause it’s so goddamn impressive.

But, now the third day, something else has happened—I’ve begun to get sick to my stomach. That’s probably because I’ve been stuffing my face with every thing I pass that catches my eye, because who knows when I’ll get another chance. It’s like a sleeping beast has been unleashed—the problem being that I’m now indigestive and constipated and gross-feeling.

Which is metaphor of course for consumerism. Not that I’ve even been buying much stuff, other than some work clothes, but just that I’ve been around it, been in it, so startling and dazzling. And so soulless. All the manufactured identities you’re supposed to buy in to; all air-brushed models; all the feelings of not having, of not being good/thin/rich/beautiful/cool enough; all the subtle alienation—the inoffensive, comfortable, sparkling clean wanting-more-ness.

All the bras that fit me.

All my favorite make-up.

All the brands I like.

Which I guess is just to say—man, you don’t realize how complex and conflicted a relationship you have with consumerism until you’re out of it and then you’re plunged back into it. And you don’t really know a place until you leave. Cambodia was becoming so normal to me; I was forgetting what made it special, different, fuck-up and amazing and and exactly where I’m supposed to be right now.

Lauren Quinn is a writer and traveler currently living in Hanoi. Lonely Girl Travels was a blog of her sola travels and expat living from 2009 to 2012. She resides elsewhere on the internet now.

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