From Indonesia with Love
Selamat malam, my friends!
On the 15th of June an immigration official at the port in Penang stamped ‘Malaysia OUT’ in my passport, and I boarded the ferry to Medan, on Sumatra. (As it goes, the ferry left 1,5 hours late due to some problem with a bunch of illegal immigrants that were being sent back on the same boat, but didn’t want to, or something.) The ferry, that looks like a kind of large floating bus, took about five hours to cross the somewhat rough Strait of Malacca, and during this time movies were shown for our entertainment, with bits of Malay karaoke in between. I was sitting with a bunch of other foreigners and we watched the first movie in total amazement. I’m sure it’s about the weirdest movie I have seen in a long time. It was a Chinese vampire horror-comedy, with the voices dubbed in Malay without first erasing the Chinese. We, the foreigners, were totally bewildered but the Malays on board (the majority) absolutely loved it and laughed at moments that we didn’t find funny in the least. Sense of humour is one of those big cultural differences that is very hard to overcome; I rarely have a good laugh with a local person. But all this on the side.
Dear friends, sawasdee kha!
From Jakarta I greet you in Thai. It’s been a long time since I wrote, and there is a lot to tell. I left you last time with the coming of my mother to Thailand. For three weeks she came, and early morning on May 18th I went to Bangkok International Airport to pick her up. Her, and her rucksack - because she was coming as a real backpacker! We started off with a few days in Bangkok and visited the Royal Palace. The Palace is comprised of a whole complex of buildings, and you can only enter a certain area. But it was absolutely stunning, so richly adorned with gold and semiprecious stones, mother of pearl inlays, carved wood, such detailed decorations, so enormous. We wondered how a king could have such a palace while there is also such poverty in some areas in the country. But like most Asians (and unlike most Europeans), the Thais love their royal house, and they truly revere the royal family. In every shop, kiosk and taxi there is at least one large picture of the King, and when you go to the cinema there is a little homage to the King between commercials and movie. The palace, apart from its cultural value, is part of all that, I suppose; it shows his majesty. After Bangkok we headed north and made a small loop, travelling by bus and train, and once by plane (my shortest and cheapest flight ever: 25 minutes for 25 guilders), and we spent the night in small guesthouses or little huts, sometimes clean, sometimes not; sometimes with a decent mozzienet, sometimes with a rag full of wholes. The real backpacker-thing, and my mother took to it very well. Only this one night, when we were sleeping in this hot little shack, when the power fell out and there was no light or running water, she was slightly unhappy… For the rest we did lots of backpackery things, went on an elephant ride in the jungle, went rafting on the Kwai river, slept in a tree house, and she did it all. The Thai loved seeing us together. ‘Mama? Mama?’ they asked when they saw us. ‘No no, sister’ would my mum say. She got ‘adopted’ as mum quite a few times by young Thais.
