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Malaysia - Terengannu Time Travel
It is a little surreal after traveling 35 hours to find out today is actually tomorrow.
It gets stranger still to enter Kuala Lumpur's fabulous Shangri-La hotel to hear Diana Krall crooning "Peel me a Grape".
Malaysia bills itself as "Truly Asia." The Colours of Malaysia celebration running from May to June is a nation-wide spectacle of rainbow-hued costumes, loud music and fireworks celebrating the country's embrace of their multi-cultural heritage. To be fair, seeing 6500 dancers, dignitaries and explosions under the roof of the Bukit Jalil Stadium is spectacular, but it is in the muggy city streets that the nation reveals itself.
Fat-bellied Hindus in saffron loin cloths, foreheads daubed with crimson paint, worship at the feet of gods garlanded with perfumed jasmine buds. This particular open-sided temple is constructed beside a sacred banyan tree, tucked into the back of a huge mega-mall of Wrangler's, Starbucks and Roxy stores. The tree's demise was imminent with the development of the mall but the crew met with accidents, broken shovels and malfunctioning equipment until they refused to touch it. What else could a developer do but jog the back walls of the mall to tuck in a temple as an appeasement to the deities in the holy tree?
Terengannu is known as the fundamentalist state in this Islamic nation. It is there at the Berjaya Resort, that fully draped women serve alcohol libations to bikini-clad tourists lolling in the 39 degree heat on the shell-white sands of the South China Sea. The servers headscarves, pinned tightly under their chins, are always a perfect fashion complement to their long dresses.
In the historic trading city of Malacca in the Southern state of the same name, palm readers work next to sellers of fried yam cakes. The mournful call to prayer from the mosque's minaret drifts down through the humid haze. Buddhist temple-supply stores sell crates of incense sticks the size of chopsticks.
Dutch flat-front architecture crumbles beside tin-roofed huts along the banks of the sluggish river where monitor lizards the size of Labrador dogs laze on the mud banks. Yuppie art galleries with koi pond entrances sit next to Portuguese restaurants.
Lemon-grass and curries mingle with the decay and sweet sewage smell familiar to tropical cities.
And in the midnight middle of one of these narrow streets, Van Morrison is singing about a Moondance while bar patrons pour icy Tiger beer down their throats. Mists from the cooling machines pour into the equatorial night, rolling swirling fog in waves, obscuring and then revealing the indigo walls of the bar with its ruby red shrine tucked to the left of its door.
It is for moments like these, watching Chinese brides in crimson dresses, Moslem men in fezzes and monkeys snatching food from children, that losing a day and traveling forever is all worthwhile…even if you later find yourself in yet another hotel lobby listening to a muzak rendition of "Feelings".
Catch the heat: www.tourism.gov.my |
