Malaysian Vacation: Day 1

I originally intended to blog during my vacation. Then I decided it was just too much work. Because a lot of my vacation, as we will see, was spent in a blurry haze of movement and activity that left little time for monitor gazing. And thank God for THAT.

I decided to go to Malaysia on holiday for several reasons. One, I would be attending the Conemasters x Mean Machines 2011 gymkhana, a driving competition hosted and organized by my good friend Ben Lo.

Second, I really needed to get out of Hong Kong to give my lungs a break. I’d been breathing local air for over a year, and that’s simply not healthy.

So on October 13, a Thursday, I headed to Chek Lap Kok to board a Cathay Pacific flight to Penang, Malaysia. I was really looking forward to it, since I had never been there, and I had heard a lot of good things about it as well.

Now I admit I am not Mr. Cheerful. My own mother once called me a ‘social hyena.’

Which was odd since she was incarcerated at the time.

But I am at least aware that I am not often a fount of bubbly happiness. The best I have managed is to fine-tune my chronic irritation into something that apparently amuses others (see my movie reviews, for example).

Still and all, I do try, on occasion, to step away from this ugly ball of tension and vitriol that I call my personality.

Not watching local TV helps.

Yet doing so often results in what we might call problematic situations.

For instance, I am sitting in the gate area for my flight. Minding my own business.

Appreciating the fact that Penang appears to be an unpopular destination for Mainlanders and that they are, therefore, scarce.

Basking in the glow of my seat assignment in an exit row.

Giggling to myself about the woman I saw waiting for the same flight with breatst that were so enormous they were comical. And one of them was visibly tattooed.

Chuckling at the wry weirdness of this same woman wearing a low-cut t-shirt and no bra waiting on a flight to a nominally Muslim country.

I don’t know if cleavage is a crime in Malaysia, but if it was, she was going to be under the jail.

Good times, right?

Well, at least until the airport’s latest ham-fisted effort to make travelers have a nice time. We were treated/subjected to a juggler and a ‘magician,’ both of whose mediocrity was matched only by the invasive and puerile nature of the music they loudly blasted in accompaniment.

Trust me, watching a juggler f@#$ up his act and drop things doesn’t need a soundtrack. It sucks enough on its own.

But they left soon enough, which was good, and I went back to giggling about boobs.

It’s okay, I’m a doctor.

I boarded my flight easily and quickly, and took my seat next to the emergency exit over the wing.

I asked the flight attendant to explain the procedure for opening the door. I always do this in an exit row. I figure I probably won’t ever need to do it, but if I do I’d rather have something more than a vague idea of how to keep from drowning like a rat.

I was rather surprised when the totality of her response was “Touch wood, we won’t need to.”

I tried to impress upon her that I hoped the same but preferred to be prepared in any case.

She asked me if I wanted a blanket.

I looked at the door and tried to figure it out myself. F#$% these people.

My concentration for this process, and others, was interrupted by the arrival of a group of young Americans whose breeding and wardrobe identified them as what I have heard called Trustafarians.

These kids weren’t backpacking around Asia.

Listening to them prattle loudly about a lot of stupid sh*t became the early soundtrack of the flight. It was with some amusement that I listened to their astonished discovery that drug smuggling carried the death penalty in Malaysia.

Nice to know they did their homework.

Death by hanging is the preferred method in Malaysia, and it is carried out behind prison walls. It is not, alas, open to the public.

So that no one will see when one of these blithering idiots dances the hangman’s jig for the 50 tablets of dihydrocodeine discovered in his carry-on luggage by customs officials who were tipped off by a fellow traveller (who may or may not have put it there in the first place).

My lawyer assures you it wasn’t me.

There’s really no better cure for stupidity than a short rope and a long drop.

But never mind this nastiness. I’m on vacation for f@#$’s sake.

We landed (almost) without incident and I made my way to the baggage claim, where a large sign listed the numerous and interesting items that are, for lack of a better phrase, terminally prohibited in Malaysia.

Dihydrocodeine wasn’t on the list, but that guy had already been dragged off to parts unknown, bleating his innocence and so never noticed the absence.

Sodium arsenate is an insecticide, but Malaysian insects need not fear it, as it is prohibited.

So are, and I quote, “syringe-shaped pencils or pens.”

No, I don’t know, and neither did anyone I asked.

Not even Ben, who was waiting for me just outside the customs area.

He was waiting with Cindy, who worked for Mean Machines, the auto show that Conemasters was partnering with for the event.

“Cindy’s waiting for one of the models, who was on your flight. Did you see a girl with big t*ts?”

“ Huge. And tattooed. That girl?”

“Yes!”

Her name is Amy Fay, and she is a Vietnamese American model who currently specializes in automotive modeling. Or so I was told.

She had quite a lot more luggage than me, which makes sense since she is much shorter and slighter than me (though I think we have the same chest measurements) and wasn’t staying any longer than I was.

My luggage was a gym bag. She had two large suitcases and a ‘carry-on’ bag whose outsized nature was only overshadowed (literally and figuratively) by the outsixed nature of Ms. Fay’s breasts, which explains how she managed to get the carry-on bag on board. Apparently not all male flight attendants are gay after all.

Rank has its privileges, but boobs have more.

The four of us exchanged introductions and oddly protracted handshakes with Amy and set off towards our respective cars.

I was talking with Ben, looking ahead of me, when I felt a hand grab my left breast and tweak my nipple.

I looked over at Amy, who was grinning. “I couldn’t help myself,” she said.

“How would you like it if I did that to you?” I asked, immediately thinking I should have simply done it, unfamiliarity with the laws in this place be damned.

It would have been easy. Remember, she wasn’t wearing a bra. And it was cold in the airport.

Downright nipply, if you will.

But I decided that I should at least get out of the airport before I started breaking the law.

We left the terminal and split up to our respective cars; Cindy and Amy to the organizer’s 4-door sedan (whose trunk struggled mightily to accept all of Amy’s luggage), and Ben and I to his ride, a Subaru Impreza that was slightly more sporty:

Ben wasted no time in showing me just howsporty. The only thing more fun than watching cars go fast is seeing it from inside the car. The ride was a bit rough, but that’s the way sports cars are supposed to drive. I didn’t mind.

I’ve often wondered why there are certain things that should scare me but don’t. I have no fear of flying, even in light planes. I don’t mind being in fast cars weaving through traffic (assuming I know and trust the driver). I realize that I should be at least aware of the risk, but instead I simply find myself amused, entertained, and happy.

Going illegally fast is a lot of fun. Someone I know apparently can get to Kuala Lumpur from Penang faster by car than by taking a  plane.

And have a car to drive when he gets there.

This person’s resemblance to Ben is strictly coincidental.

After driving at high speed through the city, w e headed over to a sticker shop to meet some of his friends.

When I say sticker shop, I don’t mean little stickers, though they had those too.

I mean a place where they do serious, professional automotive graphics: 

When we got there, they were working on a Ferrari. Okay?

I met Justin and Victor, two drifting enthusiasts who would be competing in the gymhkhana.

Justin had recently bought a car just for the event, a very clean Toyota KE70:

Victor drives this Mazda RX-7:

Anthony is a photographer and videographer. He would be the official Conemasters photographer for the event, and was the head of a team of cameramen. I will provide links to his work later, and you can see that he obviously knows what he is doing.

When we were finished at the shop, we headed off to parts unknown (to me) for a late dinner. We decided to eat at one of the many roadside, outdoor restaurants found in Penang.

I had been told that the food in Penang was amazing, and I had been promised that I would experience an abundance of said wondrousness. I can say that this is the truth.

In other words, the awesomeness of the food was on the same magnitude as Amy’s cleavage.

The food was incredible, and I ate as much of it as I could. Here’s photographic proof of the spread:

Some people wanted things that weren’t on the menu:

Victor (l) and Justin (r). They’re just friends.

For me, the beverages deserve special mention. I’ve seen the word flagonnumerous times, but never thought I would get to see one in real life.

Justin’s brother Allen and Ben Lo.

The containers of watermelon juice we got can only be described as flagons. They were huge. And the juice was delicious.

After dinner, Ben dropped me off at my hotel for the night, the Good Hope Inn.

I had a Graham Greene moment.  Penang is a former colonial city, one that has, unlike Hong Kong, maintained a visible similarity with its past. So as I lay in an (admittedly air conditioned) hotel room staring up at a rotating ceiling fan, it was possible to feel, if only vestigially, what life must have been like in the 1960s, an era when this part of the world was going through a generous number of upheavals.

I switched off the light and went to sleep.