Malaysian Vacation: Day 2

I awoke early on Friday. I had slept well, but like any good traveler was much more interested in doing than sleeping. I was in a new country and wanted to go out and see it. I had gone to sleep the night before very happy to be in Malaysia.

It’s a nice place. It has it’s idiosyncracies, to be sure, but even these can be interesting. To wit: the sign in the lobby of the Good Hope:

No smoking is pretty universal. But no durian is a local thing. Let’s face it, durian stinks. So please, leave it in your car. You might wonder about ‘no helmets,’ until you learn that a good portion of robberies in Malaysia are committed by people wearing helmets with mirrored visors to conceal their identity. So please, lose the brain bucket indoors.

My room at the Good Hope Inn was small, clean, and most importantly air-conditioned.

I’m not one of those people who wants to stay in a nice hotel very often. For me, a hotel is simply a place to sleep, bathe, and leave my clothes. So I tend to save a fair bit of money when I travel because I don’t mind eschewing (!) luxury.

That said, I am very much too old to even think of staying in a hostel or any other place frequented by backpackers. Even I have my limits.

But that’s not to say that the Good Hope Inn was not impressive. I learned this the moment I opened the curtains.

ZANG!!!

The building is orange. And I mean orange.

But even from the 2nd floor, I still had a pretty nice view.

One of the first things I realized in Penang is that I have become accustomed to being surrounded by tall buildings. The other thing I realized is that Hong Kong is so thoroughly polluted that you can almost forget there is such a thing as distance.

So a lot of my time in Penang was spent looking further into the distance than I had in years. People would often ask me what I was looking at, and all I could say was “the distance.”

The view from that window may not be spectacular in the traditional sense, but its a nice change from my usual environs.

And it certainly bears saying that the air in Malaysia, unlike Hong Kong, is not breathtaking, so to speak.

I took a walk along Gurney Drive, which is one of the tourist epicenters. But it was not even 8:00AM, so there was little commotion. In fact, the coffee places like Starf*cks weren’t even open yet.

A good friend who calls Penang her hometown had advised me that the ‘beach’ along Gurney was not anything one would want to see, and I must say she was right. I have no photos of it, for this obvious reason as well as my own niggling (!) aversion to being an obvious tourist.

Odd, really, that I have no aversion to being a very public @sshole at times, but I guess that’s just part of what makes me special.

So after a short walk, I returned to my hotel room to await the call from Ben that meant he was on his way. We were supposed to eat breakfast, so I didn’t eat anything on my walk.

Back in my hotel, I ended up doing something I never thought I would stoop to. But I was bored and vacationing in another country. No one would know if I didn’t tell them.

But now I’m telling you, because the shame is overwhelming and I was raised Catholic so I have a confession compulsion.

I watched Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid.

I feel so dirty.

The movie was irredeemable crap, though it did at least have an entertaining monkey.

I assume most of you never heard of it, but I can’t claim that privilege.*

But the best part of the film was watching it in Malaysia, where the government has decided that people shouldn’t hear bad words in English. So they hire Malaysians, for whom English is a second language, to censor the dialog in the film.

This results in some very amusing gaffes, like “F#$% [censored]!” I don’t know why the word ‘you’ is offensive, but we can trust the Malaysian goverment because the people in charge wear really great uniforms.

I know this because their photos have the kind of ubiquity and prominence that Mao would have killed 40 million people for.

Wait, he did.

The movie helped pass the time, and soon enough Ben called to collect me from the Good Hope Inn. I checked out, since we would be spending the weekend on the Malaysian mainland where the Conemasters event was being held.

But there were things to do. Places to go. People to see.

Cars to work on.

First stop: Ben’s garage. I didn’t take pictures because people were working. And because Ben took lots of photos and he’s a very good photographer.

To see more (and better photos of my visit and the things I was doing, check out Ben’s blog, HEREor HERE.

He dropped off some rims to be worked on, and we headed to breakfast. I’m not sure where it was, but it was a very interesting place in the middle of the older part of the city. We had a local specialty, toast cut into small squares that you dip in soft-boiled eggs in a coffee cup. It was great.

So was lunch. We ate at a restaurant in Straits Quay, a very nice new collections of shops and eateries. I can’t remember the name of the place, though I am sure Ben will remind me, but the food was again great.

Digression: About the only decent thing I did as a kid (or adult) was to read voraciously. I always appreciated the notion that a book was a pretty good substitute (especially if it was the ONLY substitute) for travel. So now, as an adult, I enjoy being able to visit places I read about as a kid, even if the places themselves are, quite naturally, very different from when I read about them.

It therefore tickles me to be able to say I had lunch while looking out over the Strait of Malacca, or (as per my last entry) ‘I fell asleep in Penang, lulled by the ceiling fan.’

Late that afternoon, the car was finished, so it was time to head over to the mainland on the Penang Bridge. This blurb that I copied from Wikipedia tells you a LOT about the government of Malaysia:

Penang Island is connected to the mainland by the 13.5-kilometre, three-lane, dual carriageway Penang Bridge (completed in 1985), one of the longest bridges in Asia. On 31 March 2006, the Malaysian government announced a second bridge project, tentatively named the Penang Second Bridge. The bridge is currently under construction and is expected to be completed by the end of 2013.

Penang Second Bridge. Now that’s creativity at its finest. As is the grossly optimistic/delusional completion date.

All I can say is what I was taught: Malaysia boleh!!!

But I can also say that the second bridge (or should I say Second Bridge) is needed. Because the first one ends up more constipated than a vegan tourist in Britain during rush hour.

Ben made what I like to call a command decision (to quote him: “F@#$ this!” ) and we bailed out at the next exit.

And we went to the mall.

Which I was pretty excited about. Not because I like malls (though living in HK, it sure helps to love them since it seems that a part of the Basic Law mandates a mall at every MTR stop). I was excited about this mall because it had a Borders Books.

I miss Borders. So when I got to visit the Penang store, I almost started weeping with joy.

Almost. Perhaps unsurprisingly, I managed not to.

I made a quick perusal (!) of the bargain books and found what were, for me, irresistible treasures (for several reasons).

First, Tommy Chong’s ‘unauthorized autobiography’ of Cheech & Chong:

As a child of the 60s and teen of the 70s, Cheech & Chong were instrumental in teaching me about comedy, drug use, and aggravating my parents, three things at which I have been told I excelled.

The added bonus, the cherry on the sundae, the happy ending to the massage, as it were, was the absolute irony or weirdness of finding a book about two of the world’s most famous dope fiends in a country where people are regularly put to death for the same thing the book is written about.

As I paid for the book, I glanced at a local newspaper on sale at the counter. Halfway down page one was a story about a Western tourist convicted of carrying 50 tablets of DHC into the country. He  was sentenced to hang. Good, I thought. That’s the only cure for these ignorant scum. Anyone dumb enough to get caught carrying drugs ought to be removed from the breeding pool post haste.

But never mind these digresions.

The other book was a fascinating, if depressing read about the last days of American involvement in Vietnam:

I would disagree with the cover blurb’s assertion that it is really about the USMC; while they figure in the story it is actually much broader in scope. A very good book and fairly well written.

I can’t say the same of Tommy Chong’s tome; while the book is entertaining, it is obvious that Mr. Chong is never going to be considered a great writer. But then its not his job, is it?

We spent enough time in the mall that Ben declared the bridge should be clearer, so it was back into the Impreza (now sporting orange rims) and off to the bridge.

It was less crowded, though in Penang that’s a highly relative term. See, there’s very little public transportation in Penang, and as a consequence, the ratio of people to vehicles is nearly 1:1.

In a city of over a million people that was laid out during the 19th century.

A lot of people can’t afford cars, so they buy motorcycles.

Consequently, driving in Malaysia is never dull no matter how fast or slow you drive.

So for a lot of reasons, it was a very interesting experience driving over the bridge. As I previously noted, there was darkness and distance. There were innumerable Malays on motorcycles taking what might be called a creative approach to traffic laws and driving.

The soundtrack was cool too; Ben played me a CD by Fatboy Slim and David Byrne that tells the life story of Imelda Marcos.

Yeah. I was driving across a bridge in Penang in a souped-up Japanese car listening to songs about Imelda Marcos while dodging motorcyles.

Sometimes I love how scintillatingly weird  my life can be.

We made our way to the mainland, and to our new home for the next few days, the Ixora Hotel. They were a sponsor and so we got the hook up, as it were.

We dropped off our bags and headed out to Auto City, because we needed to set up the track for the following day’s practice sessions!

But first… FOOD!!!

I can’t remember what this is called, though if pressed I’d have to say Ho Lun Mei.

Because it was f@#$ing tasty.

It’s a good thing I wore loose clothing to Malaysia, just as it is a good thing I only stayed a week. I could quickly eat myself double there.

After dinner we headed to Auto City to start laying out the track. Unfortunately, the space hadn’t yet been cleared of cars, so we couldn’t exactly start doing what we went there to do.

So what did we do?

Donuts.

Not the food. The activity!

I had never drifted before. But almost everyone I met practically insisted that I ride in their cars while they checked out the surface at Auto City.

The track was split down the middle between two different types of road surface, one being tarmac and the other bricks. This meant that the cars would constantly be sliding in different ways during the course.

The only way to get a feel for the course was to practice.

I can’t explain what its like to be in a car that suddenly goes into a 360-degree spin. It feels like all the blood in your brain gets pushed to one side and the whole world turns into a big blur.

It’s amazing.

Especially when you do it two or three times in a row.

I later learned a trick about drifting, but I’ll save that for later. I got to drift in Ben’s, Jackson Foo’s, and Victor Liew’s cars. I was grinning like an idiot. It reminded me of a situation years ago, when a friend turned to me in the midst of the experience and said “This feels like we should be getting in trouble for doing it.”

That’s what drifting feels like.

An Australian term for drifting and other associated automotive behavīors is ‘ hooning.’ Victor spent some time in Australia and has a sticker on both sides of his car:

It might be hard to read there, so let me help you:

Hooning may not be a crime, but it is so much fun I can see why it should be.

Between practicing, hanging out, meeting people and practicing (I know I did), we didn’t get back to the Ixora until almost 3:00AM. I was ready to fall asleep at the front desk, but Ben insisted on changing our room. I heard him say he needed a room with a single king bed. I wasn’t sure why, so I asked him.

“So I can spoon with you,” he said with the straightest face I have seen in a long time.

I was so tired I thought I may have been hallucinating and let it go. Which is just as well because what he was doing was splitting our shared room into two rooms; someone on the crew had decided (foolishly) to stay at his mother’s nearby house rather than the hotel, so there was an extra room. Ben was generous enough to let me have the extra room, and I was very flattered.

Look what the person gave up for a weekend at Mom’s:

“No, it’s okay, I’ll stay at my mom’s house…”

Somebody f@#$ed up, and for a change it weren’t me.

I took a shower and spent much too long figuring out the alarm clock. Because I needed to be awake in four hours.

No rest for the wicked, I guess.

**As I point out here,Anacondas was released to 150% of the screens that Zhang Yimou’s Hero was. F#$% you too, Harvey Weinstein.*