This was originally entitled: The Sights, The Sounds, The Smells
This story takes place during my third year in Japan. Ashley had already left Japan to go back to Georgia, and I'm afraid we didn't depart as friends, which sucks in an immature way. Sorry, kiddo.
Now is the winter of my discontent. I had just spent the past several months getting back into physical shape - I'll tell you how in the next blog! I was essentially girlfriend-less for the first time since arriving, though I was still able to sleep with anything that moved. At least that's what I'm telling you all right now.
While Matthew was still indeed in Japan, he was very much involved with Takako - the beautiful local Ohtawara girl who would become his wife in a year or so. Matthew is not in this adventure.
As a young, hip guy with hair longer than his memory, I planned a winter vacation to Singapore with two other AETs - Tim Mould, and James (Jimmy Jive) Dalton. While Tim was deviously quiet and funny, Jimmy Jive was outrageously funny. He's a fellow Canuck - from Stoney Creek, Ontario - and if anyone knows of his current whereabouts, please drop me a line.
We left Japan's Narita Airport in the early evening, and arrived at Changi Airport in Singapore at 1AM local time. Because we're stupid guys, we didn't plan ahead and book a hotel. We were going to run and gun it the entire time.
We found a flop house that cost us each Y700 ($7). We got what we paid for.
It was a single room with a large king-sized bed and a shared bathroom.
After the flight, none of us had time to go to the washroom, so our priorities really had to go. Opening the bathroom door, we saw a cockroach the size of a beagle sitting on the toilet reading a newspaper. It looked over at us, wiggled its antennae, and hissed something incomprehensible - either "Occupado" or "Hsssssssss". We slammed the door shut, bolted it and placed all the furniture against it. For good measure, we put a couple of towels and sheets by the door should it try to sneak under the door frame looking for toilet paper.
Along with Tim and Jim, we also picked up a fellow traveler named John. Yes, these are their real names. John was a nice guy. We met him on the plane, and when he mentioned that he and his friend Zeke (probably an alias) needed a place to stay the night, we invited them along.
The problem, however, was not with John... it was his shoes. They stunk. Blech!
Try to imagine a ton of rotting, fermented natto that has gone bad (I know, its an oxymoron). Now combine that with two litres of four-month-old milk. Huwwwaaaaggh!
We quickly pulled away the furniture and towels, unbolted the door, opened it, tossed the shoes into the bathroom, and then re-secured the area. The cries from within were truly horrific.
Oh, the guys in the other room who shared our washroom - they were from Pakistan, and both were coughing up a lung reminiscent of the plague. We never really got close enough to them to say hello.
We five then settled down for the night: James and I had a chair each, John slept on our knapsacks, Zeke may have been under the bed, and Tim, the bastard, slept on the bed after winning a round of jun-kin-po (rock-scissors-paper). We were lulled to sleep by the rhythmic sounds of snoring resembling a jet plane with asthma - though I didn't hear it as I was fast asleep.
The next day was spent in head-turning, eye-popping appreciation of Singapore's natural beauty - it's women!
I wish I could show them to you - but someone had a stupid house fire and lost one or two photo albums.
Tim left us to catch a plane to Thailand, leaving just Jimmy Jive and myself - we left John and Zeke so they could find their own hotel rooms for themselves and John's shoes. Blech!
We spent the day walking the entire length of the City/State of Singapore - it took us 35 minutes - and did some shopping. I went to a clothing shop to have some shirts, jacket and pants made for me - for about $100 - and had it delivered to my hotel the next morning. It was a pair of raw silk black pants, a blue with purple thread silk shirt, a green with red thread silk shirt and a red silk jacket that I only realized weeks later made me look like a parking valet. The best part, beside the price? I got to design all of the stuff myself.
Later that evening, we took a junk boat cruise where we ruined a date and stole a girl. Now that's internationalization! I'd tell you how that happened, but I think we were all pretty drunk. Probably.
We spent Christmas eve in a bar where we counted down the holy night a la Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve. Party hats, noise makers, the whole magilla - and this was Christmas Eve - not New Year's Eve.
Upon entering the bar, Jim and I were immediately set upon by a pair of very forward and un-pretty 'women'. Shunning them, I was immediately surrounded by six very pretty 'women' with scarves around their throats, who wanted to dance with me. I lost sight of Jimmy Jive, but assumed he was having the same luck as me.
Anyhow, we quickly made our exit from this transvestite bar after 56 minutes of 'getting down'. Truthfully, they were all very nice and knew we had wandered in by mistake. They made us feel welcome - I swear that's all we felt! - though we all drew the line at them attempting to give us a make-over.
Malaysia was next. We traveled eight hours by local train to its capital, Kuala Lumpur. Almost immediately after leaving the ultra-modern, capitalist Singapore, the air outside the train became stagnant, old, fetid and decayed. There was a smell of incense that permeated everything. We passed by shanty towns that were sunk into fields of red mud, and saw chickens plod relentlessly through the garbage thrown from the moving trains by its conductors.
Third-world mentality was clearly evident when our train was delayed for 20 minutes by goats that refused to vacate the tracks. The conductor explained to me that they only had a cow-catcher on the train, and to use it on a goat could be punishable by five years in prison, sodomy, and then death by sodomy. I thought that the prison term was too severe.
We checked into the only Holiday Inn in the country and ate at McDonalds (where, incidentally, we ate all our meals - so much for an adventurous spirit, but who the heck needs dysentery?).
We spent the next day touring the city by a hair-raising motorcycle taxi ride carting a two-seat carriage. We visited beautiful mosques, played with some chickens, and listened to an old woman play La Bamba with an Arabic beat on a Casio keyboard. Breathtaking.
To relieve the excitement, we visited the local Hard Rock Cafe. People, the place must be experienced to be believed. The women - Wa-hoo! Photo evidence did exist at one time - I swear! Stupid fire!
The next day, we spent nine hours in a bus to go to Georgetown, Malaysia to see an old battle fort that was pretty cool. (The photos of the fort were actually quite boring, but there was a guy there who looked like Santa Claus on vacation; plus there was a shot of a woman being kicked by a wild donkey; plus there were some graphic cartoon images on a sign at a US navy base - warning that trespassers would be shot - the image showed a person in mid-fall with someone in army drag pointing an M-16 at the victim - ahhh memories - that's all I have).
Anyhow, the bus was delayed for about an hour after we were stopped for speeding. The driver was shot by the police to hasten the justice process.
By the time we got a replacement driver (we really did get a new driver, and while I never saw him get shot, we did hear a gunshot), and wheeled into a smokey bus terminal from Hell, we could only find a room in the sleaziest place in Southeast Asia. To avoid a lawsuit, I won't give its name. It's the Central Hotel. We walked in with our newest friend Glenn, whom we met on the bus (By the way, it's NOT cool to sit at the back of the bus where the washroom is), and screamed in three-part harmony.
Glenn, I should add, is not a weak girly AET-type like Jimmy Jive and myself. He was an alternate member of the New Zealand weightlifting team at the 1990 Commonwealth Games. Anyhow, what made us all scream, was the moving carpet. Have you ever seen Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? You should... that scene in the movie was based on this room. So... let's just say there were thousands of insects crawling all over the place. Why they were there, I have no idea, but that scared me even more.
While we waited for our room to be fumigated, we went to the local karaoke bar in the hotel to get a few drinks to settle our collective nerves. Apparently all of the bugs left as soon as the fumigation began, as we saw them march out of the room and move to the bar where they changed in a reverse Frank Kafka-esque way to look somewhat human, becoming our waiter and barkeeper.
After having to pay extra for the fumigation (roaches are apparently very bad at math), we were followed by the barkeep and waiter to our room where they transformed back into the icky bugs and alighted to the safety of the walls, while the poison gas still sworled around the floor. There was no carpet in that room, by the way.
The three of us wrapped ourselves up in separate cocoons and staked out a portion of the bed - which we pulled into the centre of the room - and made muffled plans to get the Hell out of Malaysia as soon as possible.
The rest of our winter vacation was spent on an all-night train, another bus from Hell with mechanical difficulties, a stop at the Singapore Hard Rock Cafe where we spent New Year's Eve with four very sexy women - we have photographic proof! We had lost Glenn before that... perhaps he was taken by the roaches. We then had a 5AM ride to the airport with zero sleep because we didn't get a hotel room.
It was good that we left Singapore when we did. As of 12:01AM New Year's Day, Singapore enacted a law forbidding chewing gum. Those caught with it could be punished by caning. Yes, caning. Perhaps sodomy, too. I don't chew gum, so I'm unsure of the details.
At the Singapore airport, the X-ray machine accused me of concealing an uzi in my backpack. Yeah, I'm a stupid gun-toting smuggler who hides weapons in a backpack. Arrest me, beat me, hurt me, treat me like I'm you're boyfriend (Hmm, I still have issues, it seems).
Upon arrival at Japan's Narita Airport, I was accosted by Japanese immigration officials who wanted to know if I was from Iraq and whether I had any marijuana, as apparently they were all out. Yeah, I'm a stupid drug smuggler and I've got seven keys of Mary Jane hidden under the uzi in my backpack.
Still, it was good to be back home in Ohtawara,
Somewhere pining for the Hard Rock fjords of Singapore,
Andrew Joseph
PS: It did not rain at all during this trip. Drought-plagued countries are worried.
PPS: I took a couple hundred photos during this trip - all lost in the house fire a few years back. Sorry. But at least with the photo up above, you can see the lovely shirt and pants I had made there in Singapore.
PPPS: My pony-tail is just starting to come in - here, it's about 10 inches long.
PPPPS: Today's title is by the Go-Go's: It's not hard rock, but it's got girls. LISTEN
