Arriving in Singapore in the dark, we were impressed by our ability to manoeuvre ourselves around the airport and successfully on to a train towards Little India. It did help of course that all the signs were in English and everyone we encountered was ridiculously polite and helpful, thank goodness for colonialism. We had become a little too nonchalant about booking hostels being the carefree and free-spirited Gap Yah’ers that we were, and were to pay a penance as we wandered around Little India in extreme heat and humidity, flabbergasted at the overwhelming smells, sights and sounds that bombarded us from every direction, trying to find a bed for the night. Joseph and Mary couldn’t have been anywhere near as sticky and sweaty or lugging around such heavy backpacks as Forrest and Bea, as we were repeatedly turned away from hostels. Just as we had resigned ourselves to sleeping in a stable for the night, we stuck gold and we were rescued by the amusingly named Dunlop Street Backpackers, fate intervening for fear that Forrest was going to lose LAD credentials by missing the Manchester United vs. FC Barcelona Champions League Final. We had considered traipsing across town to watch the game at the Reds Bar (unbeknownst to us closed down since the Cross Family visit in 2000), but the heat and stress overcame me and I wimped out, leaving Forrest to watch the game on his own at 3am surrounded by drunken louts in Little India.
Being the kind and generous girlfriend that I am, I allowed Forrest to sleep in a little under the pretence of catching up on his sleep after an exhausting night of travelling and late night football, however it was more due to the fact that I was more than happy utilising the free wifi and catching up with any of my programmes (the list is endless, but to name but a few: Grey’s Anatomy, 90210, Gossip Girl, Vampire Diaries, Glee, Private Practice, Desperate Housewives) that I had devastatingly fallen behind with due to extortionate internet costs in Australia. Once fully up to date with Meredith Grey et al, I woke the Sleeping Giant and dragged him out of bed to explore Singapore. Having been there before, I took charge of the day but quickly became disinterested in anything other than finding air conditioning due to the farcical humidity outside. We had our first taste of South East Asian cuisine in a food court under Raffles City (beef penang and chicken laksa) before braving the heat to explore the city. Although a fairly disinteresting mix of shopping malls and skyscrapers, we did linger for a while watching a cricket match at the Singapore Cricket Club, founded in the 1850s and once the hub of colonial British society, and admired the astonishing contrast between old and new alongside the river, where bumboats and traditional and quaint godowns (warehouses) are towered over by stainless steel and glass monsters. Obviously something to do with our relevant heights, we were then split over what to do next; I wanted to explore the tiny, squat godowns further, while Forrest was desperate to head over to Marina Bay Sands, a huge new development looming over the city. Tall beat tiny, and I trudged across the city and around the marina, praying to God that there would be a slight breeze 191 metres up.
When we finally arrived at Marina Bay Sands we were momentarily distracted by a stunning art gallery in its grounds, exhibiting Salvador Dali and Van Gogh. Basking in the air-conditioning of the gallery, we spent an hour or so looking for Dali’s famous lobster phone in the excellent exhibition, before we headed skywards. At the reception of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel, we had unwittingly acquired two free passes to the Sky Bar at the top of the hotel, simply by inquiring which way we were supposed to be going, so we escaped the crowds, queues and the entry fee which in turn allowed us to splurge on a delicious cocktail, whilst admiring the ridiculously impressive views over the city. After our cocktails we snuck past security to see the world’s longest elevated swimming pool with a 146 metre vanishing edge; we weren’t jealous at all though, especially not when we contemplated the journey back to the hot as hell Little India. We drowned our jealousy with the obligatory Singapore Sling in Raffle’s Long Bar. The cool and calming atmosphere of the bar transports you back to colonial times as you sip the sickly sweet pink drinks and crunch peanut shells underfoot. After a cheap and simple curry in Little India, we hit the hay in our air-conditioned dorm, with dreams of cricket and colonialism making me nostalgic for the motherland.
We woke with no desire to charge out into the heat, so we had a relaxed breakfast in the hostel before descending in to the chaos and capitalism of Orchard Road, described in my RG as “the Fifth Avenue, the Regent Street, the Champs Elysees, the Via Veneto and the Ginza of Singapore”. Obviously our pitiful Gap Yah budget did not stretch to the extravagancies on offer in the huge malls and designer shops, but we did manage to entertain ourselves with a game of “what we would buy if we had all the money in the world” however it only lasted a short while as we lost track of our money after the first shop where Forrest had spent ridiculous amounts of pretend money on an iPad, a MacBook Air and various other electrical pretend purchases and the game got a little depressing. To cheer ourselves up we splurged on a packet of Phizzy Pig Tails from Marks and Spencer and a new top and dress from Topshop (once again, I reiterate GOD BLESS COLONIALISM). We escaped the overwhelming heat of Orchard Road in the open space afforded by the Singapore Botanical Gardens, which provided us with a few hours tranquillity as we wandered around the Gardens, taking our time to admire the National Orchid Garden. Only to be rudely interrupted from our relaxed reverie by the hugest blood-sucking mosquitos I have ever seen.
Around 5pm we boarded the bus which would take us across the border into Malaysia, and one step closer to our desired destination - Thailand. Having learnt from our experience in Singapore, we had wisely pre-booked accommodation as wandering around Kuala Lumpur aimlessly at midnight wasn’t in the least bit appealing. Unfortunately, we hadn’t banked on all the taxi drivers in the city not knowing where our hostel was, giving us the useless explanation of “there are too many hostels in this city, we can’t possible know every one”, which would have been plausible had we not supplied an exact address. Eventually, after circling around for 30 minutes we got out of the taxi close to where we had got in, and found an internet café which informed us that the hostel was a stone’s throw away. We checked in to our wonderfully cheap yet air-conditioned double room, enthusiastic about our whistle-stop tour of KL the next day. We had decided that the best way to see the city in the short time we had available would be the ubiquitous ‘hop-on-hop-off’ city bus, which doubled up not only as effective tour guide but also proved to be an excellent relief from the stifling city humidity. Our first hop-off stop was Chinatown, which although undeniably exciting for the senses was no more impressive than say Manchester’s equivalent, but we did purchase our bus tickets to Langkawi, a tropical Malaysian island, from the impressive bus terminal adjacent to the Chinatown gates – something Manchester’s Chinatown certainly doesn’t have on offer. After fighting our way through the stalls selling bright red pork, suspect looking snacks (I think at one point I glanced the dreaded foetus eggs out of the corner of my eye) and the constant barrage of ‘you wan’ buy dvd?’, we found our way to an oasis of calm inside an ornate temple at the end of the street. The intricacies of the temple were astonishingly beautiful, and it felt as though we had found an example of the ‘real’ South-East Asia that had so far been clouded by colonialism and capitalism. After lighting an incense stick as an offering in the same way one might light a tea-light in a Catholic church, we took a deep breath and fought our way back through the hawkers stalls and back on to the bus.
Despite Kuala Lumpur being not only a capital city, but an extremely popular tourist destination, in actual fact we found little that we actually wanted to ‘hop-off’ and see. Whether this was because we had come directly from Singapore where we had had a jam-packed couple of days being touristy and sightseeing, or perhaps it was a little more to do with not wanting to leave the heavenly air-conditioning inside the bus, but we were more than happy seeing KL through the somewhat murky windows (‘glare-free’ and ‘picture-perfect’ my ass) of the bus. Having heard great things about the Islamic Art and Culture Centre, and being the knowledge and culture hungry Gap Yah’ers that we are, we decided that this would be an appropriate next stop. The Centre was located in a stunning white marble (?) building, right next to the equally stunning National Mosque, and the atmosphere inside was one of such ridiculous calm and serenity that I couldn’t help but wonder whether we had come to the right place. We spent an hour or so wandering around the Centre, attempting to understand the complexities of Islam, whilst admiring replicas of the world’s great Mosque’s, ornate ancient Qur’ans and jewellery that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Tiffany. Okay, okay, if I’m being completely honest it was a little boring, but still a lovely way to while away an hour, and the air-conditioning wasn’t too shabby either! Back on the bus we headed over town to KL’s most famous landmark – the Petronus Towers – where we had lunch and wandered round the shops. It is possible to go up to both the bridge connecting the two towers, and for even more money to the top of one of them, but in order to do so one must queue at the ticket desk from 6am (or earlier) and hope that you manage to fight off very un-British people who don’t understand the concept of queuing in order to get one of the 250 allocated tickets of that day. Needless to say, just waking Forrest up early enough to get there would have been enough of an issue, so instead we had chosen to go up the KL tower, which is higher than the viewing platform of the Petronus and would mean that we would be able to get photographs with the Towers in it. After wandering around the shops not buying anything until it was early enough to see the city in day time, but late enough that we would also get to see the city at dark, we made our way to and up the KL tower. A short head-phone tour guided us around the tower, and informed us as to what we were seeing through each window, and Forrest spent a decent amount of time taking perfectly positioned photographs through every pane of glass in order to capture the entire city (available on Facebook for your viewing pleasure). As far as cityscapes go it was distinctly average, with the highlight of the Petronus Towers being obscured by their own enormity, so Rio De Janeiro’s incredible aerial views remained safely at the top in our Gap Yah accolades.
Once Forrest was satisfied that he had taken enough photographs of buildings both in daylight and in the dark, we walked back to our hostel, via a very tasty thai green curry and pad thai, and back to the bus station to board a bight nus (just trying to mix it up a little!) which would take us to Kuala Perlis. If any of you have ever been on a bus that drives at a thousand miles an hour with the bolts jangling loose out of the wheels so that they feel like they’re going to spin off at any second then you’ll comprehend how well we slept that night. It was a welcome relief therefore to board the dubious-looking ferry at 6am, as a mild storm blew, over to Langkawi where there would be a beach instead of skyscrapers, manic tuk-tuk drivers instead of bus drivers and best of all – the entire island was duty free! When we arrived we quickly checked in to our hostel and rushed down to the nearest beach, desperate to experience the white sands and turquoise waters of South-East Asia, but instead we were greeted with what looked like an entire rubbish truck had dumped the waste of South-East Asia onto the beach. We tried to remain optimistic as we made our way along the beach, avoiding the debris that had been washed up, but in actuality we couldn’t help but feel slightly cheated of our idea of nirvana. Paradise definitely not found.
Things perked up considerably when we made our way across to the next beach along, and although it still wasn’t the utopia we had been looking forward to it was a damn-sight more attractive than Blackpool and we spent a lovely few hours sunbathing, reading and sleeping in the sunshine. When I woke, I was alarmed to discover that clear blue skies had been replaced by thunderous black clouds and barely had time to wake Forrest and pack our stuff up before we were caught in a huge tropical thunderstorm. Seeking refuge from the rain in the nearest bar, we did the only thing we could do under the circumstances – drink. And drink we did, with jugs of frozen daiquiris, beer and cider our tropical island paradise soon turned in to a typical rainy summer’s day in a caravan in England complete with board games and cards! We found an extremely old and dusty Scrabble board, and we didn’t let the fact that it was a German edition deter us as we made up our own rule that if you put down a German word using the ‘umlaut’ tile then you automatically received triple points. Despite both of us having almost ten years of German lessons under our belts, neither of us managed to think of one German word, let alone use the umlaut’, but I of course utilised my English Literature to its highest degree and came out victorious with the highest-scoring word of the game – joint. As in something shared obviously. A moment of respite from the rain gave us just enough time to race across to one of the many massage parlours to indulge ourselves in an hour long Malay massage, before Forrest let loose in duty free and found a bottle of Penfold’s 2002 Vintage Shiraz which was enjoyed with a screening of The Fighter in our hostel room as we prayed for nicer weather the following day.
Mark Wahlberg answered our prayers and we woke to beautiful sunshine, which this time stayed with us which meant we got a full day relaxing on the beach, watching the plethora of paragliders overhead and organising our way up to Thailand. We had received a recommendation of the best Malay food in Langkawi from the guy we had bought our bus tickets from, and after a hard day’s sunning ourselves we had a beautiful inexpensive meal of chicken satay, curry puffs, beef penang and yellow chicken curry, accompanied with the Malay equivalent of blue WKD, which in my humble opinion was far finer than the previous night’s wine! The next day was a travelling day, so armed with fully-charged iPods, inflatable pillows and snacks we embarked on the day-long journey from Langkawi, Malaysia to Phuket, Thailand.
Not wanting to soil the next episode of The Gap Yah Chronicles (‘The one where we find the turquoise waters and white sands’) with Phuket and its awful old men with their Thai brides, I’ll quickly say that we stayed in an Irish bar, had a pretty nice Thai meal across the road and went to bed early so we could wake up in time for the 8am ferry out of Phuket and on to a (slightly) less seedy and destroyed version of Thailand. It was time to follow Leonardo DiCaprio’s footsteps in search of The Beach…
FORREST'S FINAL THOUGHT...
“Taxi Driver: Where you from?
Forrest: Clitheroe
Taxi Driver: Where?
Forrest: Clitheroe, in Lancashire, England
Taxi Driver: What?
Forrest: I suppose the two closest places are Blackburn and Preston
Taxi Driver: Who?
Forrest: Well, I mean the nearest big city is Manchester
Taxi Driver: Manchester!!! You from Manchester?! Manchester United my team!! Wayne Rooney very good, no?
Forrest: Well, yea…
Taxi Driver: Wow… you from Manchester! Manchester United my best team very long time! And you from Manchester! You only pay half price sir”
The conversation above, albeit with slight variations, has become a daily staple of our Gap Yah adventure. And not just with taxi drivers, with everyone and anyone, wherever we have visited. Manchester United have managed to penetrate every civilisation on this planet and epitomise the word ubiquitous (a word that always appears in this blog for some reason?). Even the deep Amazonian jungle or the remote Andean mountains have not managed to escape their global onslaught. I recall a conversation with Francisco, our native Indian guide who came from and still lived in jungle, about who should partner Rooney up front, Berbatov or Hernandez?
The Manchester United shirt is without fail, whether you’re in South America, Australia or South East Asia a daily sight. There’s an endless stream of sports bars showing live Manchester United games, or if not live games, repeats of games. The merchandise is, to quote the Gap Yah youtube clip, “everywah”. As I sit here typing this in Thailand, I could quite easily help myself to a traditional Thai Singha beer, complete with the players (Park, Giggs, Scoles etc) of their global sponsor Manchester United plastered all over the bottle. And therefore coming from Manchester, or at least saying you’re from Manchester has great benefits whilst you’re travelling… excited, smiling faces greet you wherever you go, reduced price taxi rides, half price drinks and a near-celebrity status.
However, whilst Manchester United’s global reach and dominance is explainable, some things remain unexplainable. You may have noticed that in the conversation above I did mention I came from Blackburn. Hello?! Blackburn?! Blackburn Rovers?! Winners of the Premiership in 1994/95? Winners of the Carling Cup in 2001/02? Winners of the FA Cup in 1884, 1885 and 1886? Colin Hendry? Simon Garner? Robbie Slater? Ewood Park?... don’t pretend you’ve never heard of us.
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