Vietnamese Postcard & Malaysian Aerogram 1994

Posted on July 7, 2024 by admin

On July 6, 1994, I mailed this card from Malaysia. It was a leftover from Vietnam, from which I’d sent some cards in late June.

I don’t remember seeing the upmarket Rex Hotel in Saigon, though perhaps we walked by it. The hotel is still around.

Mainly, the card was about how we weren’t in Vietnam anymore. I wrote: We’re in Georgetown, Penang Island. I didn’t come here two years ago. It has a quiet, pleasant feel so far.

Three days later, I wrote a letter about our time in Vietnam, using a Malaysian aerogram. Do such things even exist any more? I’d rather not find out.

A bit of an education, these aerograms. I didn’t know — and I didn’t remember until I looked at it today — that the hibiscus was the national flower of Malaysia. Specifically, the Hibiscus rosa-sinensis. As for the Rafflesia, also known as the stinking corpse lily, it is one bizarre flower.

Fifty Malaysian cents was a deal, though = U.S. 20 cents at the time. That was the same price as a postcard stamp.

In my recollection, Saigon was the opposite of quiet. In the letter I called it a “busy, energetic city.”

One of the things to do there is sit and watch the streets from the sidewalk cafes. You can see whole families balanced on motorcycles, and fewer riders (but not always solo) on bicycles, tricycles, rickshaws, and other motorized thingamabobs, numerous vendors and hawkers, kids kicking balls, idlers, beggars, dogs, cats, and roosters.

Fuzzy Jungle Pictures

Posted on August 29, 2021 by admin

We spent late August and early September 1994 at Taman Negara, the sizable national park on the middle of the Malay Peninsula. It’s a place of jungle walks.

We stayed where many people do, at Kuala Tahan on the Tembeling River. I’ve read that a road runs to that settlement now, but that wasn’t the case 25+ years ago — you took a boat much of the way.

Had a basic snapshot camera in those days, so I got basic snapshots of the Tembeling. Fuzzy pics to go with fuzzy memories.

Remarkably, whoever took the Wiki picture of the Tembeling River did so from the exact same vantage as I did a few years earlier, including what looks like the same tree in the foreground. Must be a rise on a path near the river, but I don’t remember specifically.

Kek Lok Si Temple, Penang

Posted on July 12, 2020 by admin

In July 1994 we spent a pleasant, and sweaty, few days in Panang. In George Town, that is. To avoid confusion: Panang is one of the 13 states of the federation of Malaysia, consisting of Penang Island in the Straits of Malacca, and a mainland component called Seberang Perai. George Town is capital of the state, located on Penang Island. UNESCO tapped its historic core — long after we visited — as a World Heritage Site, along with Malacca. I just thought it was a charming old dump.

“Georgetown turned out to be a low-rise, whitewashed, somewhat seedy town, good for walking after the heat of the day died down, and early in the morning,” I wrote about the visit. “I took a couple of good walks before Yuriko woke. Over the next few days [we] took in Ft. Cornwallis (nice clock tower), wandered around the Komtar Mall, saw the Kek Lok Sri [sic] temple, climbing its pagoda, swam at Batu Ferringhi beach, and rode the cable railway up Penang Hill.”

Here’s the view of George Town from Kek Lok Si, which is on a high hill in the suburb of Air Itam.

I’m surprised I didn’t take a picture from below, but that’s the way things were in those days — limited film, as opposed to the practical infinity of digital images.

“Ayer Itam’s most recognizable landmark is the Kek Lok Si temple. Also known as the Temple of Supreme Bliss, it is the largest Buddhist temple in Malaysia,” says Penang 500 Early Postcards. “The founder of KLS was Abbot Beow Lean (1844-1907), from the Kushan Abbey in Fujian, China… The KLS, sited at the foot of the Penang hills, consists of many prayer halls, pavilions, carved pillars, tortoise and fish ponds, and flower gardens linked by winding and ascending pathways.”

Along with a pagoda in a mix of styles: Chinese, Thai and Burmese. It’s behind Yuriko here.

And what’s a Buddhist temple without some Buddharūpa?

This monumental statue, depicting Guanyin, didn’t exist — or at least wasn’t in its present physical form — when we visited. As I understand it, Guanyin is a bodhisattva associated with compassion. Sounds like a good fellow to have around.

Boh Cameronian

Posted on March 28, 2019 by admin

Not long ago I was informed that I could add a relatively inexpensive item to the Amazon basket to bring an order (that other people in the house wanted) up to the no-shipping-charge level. Funny how that works, but what to get?

I believe this is derisively known as a First World problem, but even in a context of affluence, that doesn’t count as a problem. It isn’t even an annoyance. Also, isn’t it time to retire that hoary old division of the world? (Not bad, but not my favorite song of theirs; that would be “Invisible Sun.”)

I decided I didn’t want to add to my household clutter, even things you (I) can’t have too many of — books, postcards, cheap coins, maps — so I got a box of Boh Cameronian.
Boh Cameronian! It’s been nearly 25 years since I had a fine cup of Boh, which is tea from the Cameron Highlands of Malaysia. I became acquainted with it on my first visit to that nation in 1992. Two years later, we visited the Boh tea plantation up in the highlands.
Note the long-sleeve shirt. The Cameron Highlands were a hill station for a reason.

I’ve never seen Boh tea on the shelf in the United States, unlike Typhoo tea, even in stores that carry unusual or rarefied imports. In more recent years, I checked on line for the tea. I found it, but at astronomical prices.

I hadn’t checked in a good while, and never on Amazon. When facing my First World problem, I was inspired to look for Boh. A box of 60 bags was available there for about $12, plus no shipping. Twenty cents a bag. More than, say, Lipton, but you don’t buy Lipton for nostalgia value, or much of anything but price.

Even if I took the recommendation on the box and limited one bag to making one cup of tea — which I suspect is merely to encourage more consumption — that would be 20¢ a cup. More likely I will make a pot with each bag, or about three cups: around 7¢ a cup. Entirely worth it.

The marketing blarney on the box is in English and Chinese. The English:

Boh Cameronian takes its name from the Cameron Highlands, one of those special regions in the world blessed with a superb environment for growing teas of unique character and quality. Here, at 5000 feet above sea level at the scenic Boh Gardens, time-honored methods and innovation are combined to yield fine teas. Founded in 1929 by J.A. Russell, the pioneer of Malaysia’s tea industry, Boh teas are today renowned for their freshness and distinctive flavour.

The company offers a short history of Russell and the Boh plantation here.

I haven’t opened the box yet. It came just yesterday. A pleasant moment over the weekend might be the time to make a pot of Boh. I doubt that I can wait for that first cup till it’s nice enough to sit out on the deck, but I bet I’ll enjoy the some Boh al fresco in the near future.

A Day in Malacca

Posted on July 1, 2018 by admin

July 5, 1992.

Up fairly early and went to Bukit China, which sports a massive hillside cemetery populated by Malaysian Chinese. The graves have peculiar, horseshoe-shaped walls surrounding small areas dug out of the side of the hill; the gravestones themselves are in the dugout. Some look new, others neglected.

A long walk then took me to (1) the Dutch Cemetery, which contained mostly British graves and (2) the Dutch Church, which is Anglican — and there was a service going on in Cantonese, I think. I sat in a while.

Had lunch at Kim Swee Huat, not bad fried noodles, sweet and sour pork, and a great fruit lasi. On the way to lunch I saw a Chinese funeral procession pass by on the street.

[Wish I’d added a little more detail about that, but I did take a picture in which the procession is barely visible.]
[As well as some pictures of the streets of Malacca. Including an example of baking fusion of some kind.]
From lunch I went back up to Bukit St. Paul (St. Paul Hill). [Bukit St. Paul features the ruins of St. Paul’s Church, among other things. A church structure of one kind or another has been on the site since shortly after the Portuguese conquest of Malacca more than 500 years ago.]

Afterwards I visited the Muzium Budaya, the Cultural Museum. The wooden building is a marvel of its kind, and the displays interesting.

[Again with an abbreviated description. Per Wiki, “the building is a modern reconstruction of the palace of the Melaka Sultanate. It showcases the history of the region.]

Afterwards, I went back to my room to cool down, though stopping at a bookstore I discovered along the way, where I bought The Roman Games by Roland Auguet.

Around sunset, I sought out dinner, and had a remarkable one at Sri Lakshmi Vilas [even more remarkable, it may still be open], a south Indian daun pisang. That means banana leaves, the “plates” on which the food is served.

I had mutton and fish and rice and veggies on a banana leaf that I ate with my fingers, which is the way to do it. Not the best Indian food I’ve ever had, but pretty good, and certainly the most interesting presentation. Even better, it cost M$5.30, or a little more than $2.

After eating, I took a walk through old Malacca. The Kampong Kling Mosque wasn’t open to me, but light and noise were pouring from the open windows of one of the side structures, which I figured might be an attached school. Some rambunctious kids were inside.

Nearby, I saw the Sri Poyatha Moorthi temple and the Cheng Hoon Teng temple. At Cheng Hoon Teng, a large ceremony of some kind was going on, with a lot of chanting. I watched for a while. No one paid the slightest bit of attention to me.

Thursday Odd Lots

Posted on July 27, 2017 by admin

“What’s so funny, Dad?”

“That sign across the street.”

We were in Wisconsin during our recent trip, and had stopped at a place where I could access wifi. The sign was visible from there.

“That’s not funny.”

“Maybe it will be for you someday.”

What would happen if you used this granite for landscaping? Would your back yard suddenly cause you dread? Kafkaesque landscaping, now there’s a concept.

Looks like Kafka does some good work, though.

Here’s a sign you don’t see much any more, though I’m pretty sure that they were common once upon a time. I think even my high school cafeteria, which was in a basement, had one in the late ’70s. They’re so rare now that when you do see one in situ, you take note. Something like a working public pay phone.

This one is on Sixth St. in Calumet, Michigan. It even has a capacity number. What was once an unnerving reminder of the nuclear Sword of Damocles can now “add a cool tone to a man cave or retro game room,” according to Amazon, where you can pick a reproduction up from the Vintage Sign Co. for (currently) $18.99. The note also calls the item a “vintage style WWII metal sign.” What is it about basic chronology that flummoxes so many people?

Something else I saw, a little more recently, in Bucktown.

Shiva Shack? C’mon in for a bit of destruction and then transformation.

Also in Bucktown: a game of beanbag on the sidewalk.

Maybe there to remind us what politics ain’t.

Recently I picked up The Happy Isles of Oceania (1992) by Paul Theroux. It’s been sitting on my shelf for a number of years. So far it’s a good read. I understand that he has a reputation as a snob, and some of that comes through in his writing, but I don’t know the man personally, so I wouldn’t have to put up with him anyway.

He writes well, at least about the places he’s been, and that’s all that counts. His description, early in the book, of hiking on the South Island of New Zealand, is a fine bit of work, and had the unfortunate side effect of making me want to drop everything and go do that. The mood passed.

Theroux’s work did influence me to go one place. In the early ’90s, I read his Sunrise With Seamonsters, a collection of essays and travel bits, and one piece included a mention of the Cameron Highlands on the Malay Peninsula. It’s a former British hill station, more recently a getaway place for Malaysians and the trickle of tourists who’ve heard of it. His mention of it was probably where I first heard of the place.

When I went to Malaysia for the first time, I made a point of going there, and did not regret it. Besides cool temps, you can enjoy jungle walks (unless you’re Jim Thompson), a butterfly garden, a nighttime view that can include the Southern Cross, and eating Chettinad cuisine on a banana leaf, with your hands.

This is what life is, according to the song.

Rainier cherries, which are in season now. Very popular around the house, and we buy them in large quantities while we can. I’m glad that there are still some foods, some fruits, that have a season.

I’m not all that keen on Rudy Vallee, but his version of the song is good. And the lip sync from Pennies From Heaven (1981) is amusing. I saw that movie when it was new, probably because Steve Martin was in it, but I don’t remember very much about it. Maybe I should watch it again. I know I was too young then to appreciate its songs.

An Old Ringgit

Posted on April 27, 2015 by admin

Warmth + Rain =
At least here in temperate North America. Flowers are emerging, too, as well as bush buds. The trees are still more cautious about the whole notion of spring, but they’re coming around.

Tucked away in my envelope of nearly worthless — sometimes flat-out worthless — paper money is a RM1 I picked up either in 1992 or ’94. The formal name is a ringgit, though informally it’s a Malaysian dollar.

By the early 1990s, the note was on its way out, replaced by a dollar coin, an example of which I don’t have. These days, RM1 is worth about US 28 cents; I remember it trading for about 40 cents. I’d do pricing in my head in dollars, even though my pay was in yen, and 40 cents to the ringgit made it easy: half minus 10 percent (Singapore dollars were half plus 10 percent in those days).

The portrait on the note is Tuanku Abdul Rahman ibni Almarhum Tuanku Muhammad (died 1960), the first Yang di-Pertuan Agong of Malaya. That is, the supreme head of state, elected by the country’s other sultans, in office before the country was reorganized as Malaysia. I don’t think there’s any monarchical position anywhere else quite like it.
That’s the National Monument in Kuala Lumpur, which memorializes the Malaysian dead of the Japanese occupation and the Malayan Emergency.

Taman Negara 1994

Posted on September 7, 2014 by admin

Taman Negara is a large national park — more than 1,675 square miles — slap in the middle of the Malay Peninsula. I understand the name means “national park” in Bahasa Malaysia. As a park, it’s older than the independent nation of Malaysia, starting as a smaller game reserve in the 1920s and taking its present size in 1938 as King George V National Park. That gives you an idea of who persuaded the sultans of Kelantan, Pahang, and Terengganu to designate parts of their realm as parts of the park. Even now, the park is technically in all three of those Malaysian states.

Reaching Taman Negara from Kuala Lumpur involved a bus, and then a boat trip upriver to park lodging, about three hours each. We stayed at the cheapest part of the lodging — a small row of bunkhouses sleeping four each along the river — a few days in late August/early September 1994.

You might think it’s a jungly place. It is.

There wasn’t much else to do at Taman Negara besides walk through the rainforest, some of it on steep ground, since the park is in the Titiwangsa Mountains. We enjoyed the walks, and then idled back at the lodge’s common building, where we took out meals and read.

Various sources tell me that rare mammals live in the park, such as the Malayan tiger, crab-eating macaques, and Sumatran rhinos, but we didn’t see anything so remarkable. Rare mammals with any sense stay away from people tramping through the jungle. Bugs, on the other hand, seek you out in the rainforest.

Our bunkmates for a couple of days were a young Australian man and woman, a couple. For some reason, she was at pains to stress the independence and fortitude of Australian women, which I don’t doubt at all. Maybe she was trying to impress the point on Yuriko, who doesn’t doubt it either.

So I found it a little funny when she make a loud fuss about an insect that had gotten into the cabin: a gorgeous green-and-brown (I think) walking stick-like thing, maybe six or eight inches long, with large insect eyes. She insisted that we, the Australian fellow and I, kill it. We didn’t want to do that, so if I remember right, we shooed the creature onto a piece of newspaper and tossed it out the door.

One day we did the canopy walk. The park bills it as the longest one in the world. Maybe it is. It is way up in the trees, maybe 60 or 80 feet.

Of course it wobbled. Yuriko says she’s not sorry she did it, but doesn’t want to do another one.

Been There, Seen That

By Dees Stribling

Tag Archives: Malaysia