George Fetherling's Travel Memoirs 3-Book Bundle. George Fetherling

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      — DODGE CITY R&R —

      Years ago, I was in Kuala Lumpur for a conference when I was struck so horribly ill with some consciousness-attacking disease (it felt as though it must be a disease) that I rang down to the manager of the hotel. I was phoning from a supine position, as I was too weak to sit up. The manager was Malaysian, of course. I begged him to find an English-speaking doctor who might be persuaded to come examine me. During his long pause, I thought I could hear him thinking: Hmmm, I suppose I must do so, for if this big nose dies in 401, I shall have to lower the rate.

      Eventually a South Asian doctor arrived wearing a lab coat and stethoscope and carrying his gladstone bag. He was followed by his nurse, also in a lab coat, pushing a large trolley with many crowded shelves of vials and bottles of assorted pills, powders, and liquids. Ah, I remember thinking to myself — proud that I could still think at all — this must be one of those places where physicians enjoy a monopoly on pharmacy. Rather than vice versa, as in some other countries in what was then still called the Third World (a term coined by a French anthropologist, Alfred Sauvy, in 1952).

      In my state, I was having difficulty understanding what the doctor was saying, but mention was made of brain fever. Researching the matter some days later, after an injection of stuff into one buttock and a quite difficult flight back to Canada, I learned that this ailment primarily afflicts people in nineteenth-century English novels. I concluded that I must have had a brush with something well short of the mildest form of encephalitis. That’s far too powerful a word to be using, but the episode was enough to leave me with a lingering dislike of KL. So it was that I was now in Penang instead. I left my Chinese hotel in George Town, took a short detour through Little India, and tracked down a European breakfast (how much easier adult life would be if I had acquired a tolerance for congee as a child). Then I boarded the ferry across the channel to Butterworth on the mainland.

      Naturally enough, few English names have survived in Malaysia, and those that have continue only as alternatives that are used rarely. Butterworth, for example, is the seat of the province of Wellesley, which nobody calls anything other than Seberang Perai. George Town is one exception. To complicate matters, Butterworth (for William John Butterworth, governor of the Straits Settlements, 1843−55), is also known as, simply, Bagan, a Malay word for “pier” or “breakwater.” It is an undemonstrative place of about a hundred thousand people. I made my way to the railway station where there is a taxi rank, for I was going to take a cab to Thailand. The plan was not nearly so ridiculous as it sounds, as the border is only about three hours to the north via the first-class motorway and the fare is quite inexpensive, varying a bit according to size of the car more than to length of the journey. I paid only 30 ringgit, which was about ten dollars at the time.

      English is a mandatory subject in Malaysian schools. How successful the policy is I couldn’t judge, but one will sometimes hear English being used as a lingua franca when members of different ethnic minorities attempt to converse with one another. I knew the driver had English for he demonstrated as much when he asked if I wished my bag put in the boot. Once we got underway, however, his mouth slammed shut and remained closed despite my repeated attempts to lure him into conversation. He was a young fellow, expressionless except in the eyes. I mentally ran through a list of Malaysian sensitivities, wondering if I had stepped on one or more of them inadvertently. On my previous visit (before I took sick) I heard a Kuala Lumpur yuppie upbraid her paying audience of foreign professionals, saying “You people come over here and expect to see jungle and rubber plantations!” She snorted contemptuously. I remembered this incident because the countryside we were driving through now didn’t seem to be advancing headlong toward development. So perhaps I was simply being cast in the familiar unwanted role of despised Westerner, or maybe I was seen merely as an infidel.

      Malaysia is one of those countries that doesn’t like to see an Israeli stamp in your passport, but levels of Islamic strictness vary widely according to locale. Based on nothing more than how women are dressed, there are luxury shopping streets in KL that you would almost swear were in the West — precisely as one would expect in a city of 10 million. And religious tolerance is naturally highest in areas where there are so many non-Muslims to be СКАЧАТЬ