Of times passed

I just spent a pleasant 3 days in Penang, Malaysia.

I’ve been there only once before. Some time during the 1960’s the P&O passenger liner in which I was serving, called there. It might have been the ‘Strathmore’ around about the same time we visited (a very undeveloped) Bali.

I’m not sure how we made the contact but a few of us had been ashore to sample the local nightlife and met up with the Matron of the Military Hospital. This was a middle-aged British lady, a spinster, who had (it seemed to us) totally embraced an expatriate lifestyle with no intention of ever returning to Britain.

Three or four of us ended up in her house somewhere in the hills above the town (it wasn’t by any stretch of the imagination a city then).

We sat on her veranda and she plied us with Gin and Tonic in return for which we had to update her on all that was happening back home in the UK. Remember, there was no CNN, no BBC World, no TV period. A letter sent by airmail would take up to 3 weeks to be delivered. People in her position around the world were starved of information about what was happening back in Britain.

At some moment in the early hours of the morning, having sucked us dry of anything we could tell her about ‘home’, she threw us out because she had to be on duty at the hospital at some ungodly hour.

In nearly 50 years I have never forgotten that evening and as my Air Asia 737 dropped into Penang International Airport it all came back to me.

Sadly, Penang today is just another Asian city paying lip-service to the tourist trade. That trade is mainly back-packers – a concept totally alien to me when I trolled around the world in the 1960’s.

It didn’t matter. I was quite happy to submerge myself in memories just as I have done in recent years when re-visiting Singapore and Hong Kong, Bali and Brunei, the Philippines and Japan.

But I did spend some time wondering whose memories were the more meaningful – mine or the present-day backpacker.  The average back-packer sees only what the visiting country arranges for them to see.  In Singapore an antiseptic, air-conditioned Change Alley, In Sydney a cleaned up Kings Cross and Bangkok’s Kowsan Road is no different to Chulia Street in Penang.

I think I’ll stick with my 50 year old memories thank you.

Lucky man!

I have a friend who visits his daughter in Australia every couple of years or so. In the past that journey has been by air and with the least expensive ticket he could find. Inevitably that meant a three or four sector flight each way with no opportunity to break the journey en route and thereby make the experience more palatable.

He’s retired and increasingly he finds that the flights to and from Australia leave him ‘wrecked’ for several days when he steps off the plane at each end of the trip.

So, for his latest visit to Australia, he chose to go by sea. Not in an ocean liner (because there are none) but as one of 12 passengers on a container ship leaving Tilbury (London) and reaching Sydney 35 days later.

From the e-Mail I received after he arrived it seems he’s been blown away by the experience. The ship called at Hamburg, Rotterdam and La Spezia with time for brief visits ashore then the Suez Canal which, for a first timer, is an experience not to be missed. 12 days at sea to reach Fremantle after transiting Suez might seem a bit daunting but when you have the run of a large ship with a swimming pool, a comfortable cabin, sun, fresh air and three meals a day what’s to really complain about?

The sort of accommodation you get.

He’s arrived fit, relaxed, sun-tanned and ready to go – no jet-lag, no DVT, no aches and pains – just one very happy traveller.

I don’t know what it cost but he probably paid around 80 Euros a day or (in total) about the same as ‘premium’ economy class on an airline.

I accept that there are many for whom a journey time of 35 days is totally out of the question. It’s only retirees and those who do not have jobs to go back to who can afford the time.

But given the choice I know which I would choose!