Two for the Road, page 28
Giovanni, or Gianni to his friends, shows us around the area on his bike. Phuket is a picturesque area and we can understand why people come and stay here. The only problem for bikers is the slippery road surface. Gianni makes some interesting manoeuvres on the tight corners, where his back wheel takes on a life of its own.
He takes us to Nicky’s Handlebar (get it?) managed by a Malaysian biker who came to Phuket and stayed. Nicky runs Harley Davison tours for visitors and his bar is great and filled with biker memorabilia. Like all the other bikers, Nicky and Gianni go out of their way to show us a good time.
Brian: We’ve spent five good days here in Phuket, but now it’s time to move on. Mind you, Shirl is quite keen to spend another day here. I want to start moving south.
Heading out of Phuket, everything is lush through the verdant foothills leading into the mountains. The further south we go, the blacker the skies become. The road takes us up into the mountains and we work out why everything is so green. We experience our first tropical downpour; it’s like turning a shower on and off. It’s not cold, but the road becomes slippery, and several cars race past us right on the verge of aquaplaning.
We stay overnight at Hat Yai, 30 km from the Malaysian border. Tomorrow we will cross into Malaysia – another step closer to home.
FIFTEEN
MALAYSIA AND SINGAPORE
23 March – 4 April 2004
Shirley: The number-one highway in Malaysia is a perfect road and it’s beautiful. There are manicured lawns along the edge of the roadway. Gardens are planted at every exit and there are palm-tree plantations as far as the eye can see. You can tell they get plenty of rain, as everything is green, lush and clean. On every overpass, signs showing a bike and umbrella point to areas where motorcyclists can pull off the road and shelter from the torrential downpour.
We come to the bridge that connects the mainland and Penang Island. It’s believed this is the longest bridge in South-East Asia, and our odometer shows it’s 9 km! We are tracked across the bridge by a family – Mum, Dad and son – three-up on a motorcycle. What is unusual about this sight is that they are all wearing helmets. That doesn’t prevent us from seeing their huge smiles.
Georgetown is a city of one-way streets and that makes getting to our hotel a trick. We can see it, but we always seem to end up one street away from it. Just when the footpath seems the best option, Brian lucks onto a street that runs right past the front door. The one-way system is probably great if you know where you are going. Not so for us.
Brian: The first job here is to try to sort out some little niggles with the music system. It’s been very scratchy and intermittent lately. Checking the wiring, I’m sure some inquisitive fingers have been pulling at the wires leading into the top box and loosened the connections. I use the soldering iron and after two hours I finally get some semblance of sound out of it. Shirl (God bless her) comes down and offers to sit with me and listen to me swear at it for two hours. She soothes me by suggesting a beer at the Irish bar over the road. What a woman.
After a couple of beers and watching the barman practise his Tom Cruise impersonation with the cocktail shaker – not bad, either – we head into Chinatown for dinner. We find a nice little place with a few foreigners sitting outside and order Penang-style noodles and soup.
When we check our emails before heading back to the hotel, our motorcycle contact in Singapore tells us the freight company wants more than $500 Singaporean dollars just to build a crate! Considering that Nepal charged $55 and Melbourne nothing, I’m not happy. We will have to sort out with Qantas what they require – and quickly!
Shirley: Georgetown is an interesting mix of British Colonial architecture, modern glass and steel, and a strong Chinese influence. The Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion, Georgetown’s perfect example of a feng shui house, is striking, particularly in contrast with its surroundings. Its walls are a brilliant blue and the traditional Chinese architecture is so much more visually appealing than the bland box-like constructions of today. The house was built by Cheong Fatt Tze in the 1880s. His is a real rags-to-riches story: he left China to seek his fortune in Indonesia; working for a wealthy merchant as a ‘water carrier’, he did the sensible thing and married the boss’s daughter. This head start allowed him to build his own wealth and accumulate eight wives and countless offspring. His Georgetown home was built to the exacting requirements of feng shui, to bring good fortune to all who lived there.
After his death in 1914, at the age of 76, his will stipulated that none of his vast fortune, by this time including gold, tin and copper mines, rubber plantations and properties, could be broken up until the death of his youngest son, who was just two years old when his father died.
Over the years, running the house got more and more expensive and all available space was rented out to families. They lived and cooked in the corridors. How the house survived at all is a miracle. A consortium of businessmen bought the wreck and oversaw its award-winning restoration.
The house is fitted out with magnificent pearl-inlaid furniture of the period and much of the gold leaf on the carved panels has been uncovered or restored. It was protected by the layers of dirt that built up over the years of neglect. There is a lot to be said for poor housekeeping – the dirt also protected the imported English floor tiles. There was no expense spared in the construction of the house – hand-carved wooden blinds keep the sunlight out and fresh air inside. Channels carry water through the internal courtyard, which keeps the house cool and is good feng shui.
The air in the streets of Chinatown is permeated by the aroma of incense. It’s easy to understand, when you see the size of the joss sticks burning outside the temples – they are more than a metre tall and as thick as small tree trunks. And the Chinese brought their snakes with them, too. The Snake Temple makes my skin creep, with death adders draped across the trees inside it. This is obviously a popular spot for some, if the signs are anything to go by: ‘Mediums are forbidden to fall into a trance in the Snake Temple or its precincts to avoid causing inconvenience to worshippers and visitors.’ And another: ‘All snakes are live snakes, but visitors are requested not to prod or harm the snakes in the temple as they may be injured.’ We can’t work out if they are concerned for the welfare of the snakes or the visitors.
After all those creepy snakes we need a good dose of serenity, so we head to the Ten Thousand Buddhas Pagoda, a Buddhist temple which is the largest in Malaysia on a hill-top above the city. The Goddess of Mercy is here towering above the temple, with an incredible collection of Buddha images guarded by massive, ferocious gilded warriors. And there is the soothing smell of incense coming from normal-sized joss sticks.
We wake in the middle of the night to the sounds bikers dread: thunder and pouring rain. The lightning illuminates our room even though the drapes are drawn. We hope it rains itself out overnight. At 7.30 a.m. it’s done just that – the rain has stopped and the clouds have cleared.
On the highway to Malacca, there are more palm plantations and gardens of lush, flowering shrubs. And instead of trucks belching out putrid black smoke, we are riding alongside Mercedes Benzs and other luxury cars.
We skirt Kuala Lumpur on the highway – it doesn’t intrigue us; it’s just another huge city – and get a glimpse of the twin towers. At 88 stories with a spire, they are the world’s highest buildings. Now we’ve seen the city’s main tourist attraction.
The hotel we choose in Malacca is a converted Chinese mansion built by a businessman in 1822. It is like a smaller version of the feng shui mansion in Georgetown, with mother-of-pearl inlaid furniture in an open courtyard, marble floors and English floor tiles. It is luxurious. In a small room off the reception area, tiny swallows nest on the walls. The owner of the hotel uses the nests in traditional Chinese medicine. Unfazed by the constant disappearance of their nests, the swallows build new ones. There must be about 50 of the small birds snuggled down for the night.
What a difference 600 km makes. We are that much closer to the equator than we were yesterday and it is hotter and more humid. The locals have worked out some ingenious ways to make the heat and humidity bearable. Our hotel restaurant has a waterfall and all the tables are set under huge frangipani trees, which creates a cooler haven, but it is still hot and steamy. It’s the cafes in town that have the best idea. Above the doorways and outdoor tables, small watering systems have been installed, that spray water in fine streams from an overhead sprinkler. Sitting under the fine mist, we feel cool and don’t want to leave in a hurry. That has got to be good for business. The only minor problem I have is that it fogs up my glasses when I try to read the menus. Still, that is a small price to pay for the comfort and respite from the heat.
To get a different view of Malacca, one day we opt to take a rickshaw. Our rickshaw driver is late and arrives very puffed and hot – he’s had a flat tyre. He’s expecting a trouncing, but we sympathise with him. Flat tyres are something we understand.
In Chinatown, he takes us to the cobbler who makes shoes for women with bound feet. This ancient art is just about lost now as there are no longer women with the absurdly small feet that resulted from binding. This company was the last to continue the art of tiny-shoe making. The miniature silk shoes look as if they are made for a doll, not a woman. It was such a cruel fashion. The women’s feet were actually broken and their flesh rotted under the metres of cloth used to bind them. Strangely, some men, it is said, found the rotting flesh quite exciting!
From here we go to the oldest Chinese temple in Malacca, Cheng Hoon Teng. It is a few doors down from the Kampung Kling Mosque and just a couple of doors away from the Sri Poyatha Venayagar Moorthi Temple. Across the Sungai Melaka river is the Christian British Church. This was once known as Harmony Street, a true sign of the melting pot that is Malacca. It’s a pity these religions and nationalities can’t live in harmony in the world today.
After yet another dinner under a cooling mist, we take a walk through Chinatown. The community halls are being used for various activities. At the first there is a group of people of all ages line dancing to such great classics as ‘Hands Up (Give Me Your Love)’. I am very surprised that Brian has never heard the song. What a sheltered life he must lead … At the second hall there is an orchestra and choir performing more classical fare.
There is just one piece of advice we have for anyone who wants to take a motorcycle or car into Singapore: don’t. Our carnet has been enough paperwork to get the bike into every country we have entered and some countries haven’t even bothered with it. That is not the case for Singapore and we don’t discover it until we actually get to the border.
It’s Sunday and the border is quiet. We get our passports stamped and no-one bothers about the bike, so we ride over the bridge to the Singapore border. Our entry visas are issued and stamped into our passports and a young woman comes out of an office and takes the carnet. She takes us into another office, where we have to pay a permit fee to bring the bike into the country. Then we are asked about our ‘International Circulation Permit’ and we don’t have one. We didn’t know we needed this, as we’ve never even heard of it.
We are happy to buy one. They don’t sell them at the border. We have to go to the Automobile Association in Singapore for this. It’s Sunday and the Automobile Association is closed. And we can’t take the bike there anyway, because we don’t have an International Circulation Permit.
For the next two hours, we sit and discuss the need for this permit, the fact that we don’t have one, and that no-one, especially on a Sunday, is going to help. It is a nightmare. No-one knows why we need the permit. No-one knows why they don’t sell them at the border and no-one cares. They can actually let us into Singapore, but they won’t let us leave the bike at the border. The only advice they give us is to go to the Woodland Border Crossing, because we can leave the bike there, and get a bus into Singapore – tomorrow. Oh great!
We ride to Johor Bahru and discover the town is right on the border or the border is right in the town. The people at the hotel are far more helpful than the officials we dealt with earlier. We can get a taxi to the centre of Singapore for 50 ringgit (AUD$20), and that includes crossing the border. From there we can get a local taxi to the Automobile Association and then back to the bus station in the centre of Singapore, from where we can get a Malaysian taxi back to the border. And there is no problem leaving the bike and our luggage at the hotel. This is the first good thing to happen to us for hours!
The next morning, after breakfast, Brian rings the Automobile Association and reaches a woman named Alice Fan. She says there is no problem, we can just come over. The cabbie taking us to Singapore has immigration forms for us to fill in, checks our passports and makes sure they are in order – far more efficiently than many border guards we have dealt with. He deals with the stamping of passports and we are in Singapore. He drops us at the Ban San Street bus and taxi station and we jump into a local taxi to the Automobile Association.
The staff are very friendly and two women named Rosie and Alice look after us. All is going swimmingly until they want proof that we are taking the bike out of Singapore. We, of course, don’t have anything in writing, so they ring Qantas to speak to the person we’ve been emailing there. Now it gets expensive. The International Circulation Permit is free; we just have to pay $10.50 Singapore dollars for the administra-tion fee. And insurance is $105 for a week. On top of this there is the autopass, which gives us permission to ride on the roads. This costs $4 per day. And there are toll roads in Singapore and we are told we must have a reader for the toll roads at a hire fee of about $100. They have got to be kidding. The upshot is that if we avoid the toll roads we don’t need the reader, but if we get caught on one without a reader the fine is $70.
Alice gets notification from Qantas and wants something in writing from our freight agent. Now, here’s a problem: we don’t have a freight agent. Finally, after many smiles and a minor threat of tears, Alice says she will issue the permit as long as we get back to her as soon as we have a freight agent, so she can issue the permit for us to take the bike out of the country. This really is a load of bullshit.
Alice has some final advice for us as we leave: ‘You know, if I was doing what you are doing I’d ship the motorbike from Kuala Lumpur and just come to Singapore as a tourist by bus, to enjoy the sights.’
Thanks, Alice. We’ll remember that next time.
En route to the bus station, the cab driver gives us directions to get from the border to our hotel and our hotel to the airport without using a toll road. I mark the roads on our map of Singapore. There is no way I can let us get lost here.
The cab driver taking us back to Malaysia has more immigration forms for us to fill in and checks our passports to make sure they are in order. These cabbies are very efficient. At last we can load up the bike and head back across the border, filling in even more forms and getting another set of exit and entry permits stamped into our passports.
In Singapore we get our passports stamped again and head into the customs area. The people behind the counter don’t seem to know what to do with us. Finally, a customs official tells Brian we should have come through the articulated vehicle entrance – these people expect visitors to absorb everything by osmosis! Brian heads off to get the carnet processed. While he’s away I put on my best smiley face and deal with paying for the autopass. We have to pay 6 Singapore dollars for the card and then $4 toll per day. I offer to pay the $30 now, but they don’t want that. It would be too easy. Instead, I pay $10 and then we can add another $20 to the card at any 7-Eleven convenience store. And then, when we have proof we are actually leaving the country, we have to go to the Land Transport Authority office to cancel the card and pay any monies owing. This country really is a red tape horror.
Finally with the carnet signed off and autopass in Brian’s wallet, we head out of the border control and end up in a long line of little bikes going through the ‘nothing to declare’ line. The customs officials are getting everyone to open their top boxes. We expect a thorough search, but don’t get one – just a big smile and a wave. About bloody time!
At the hotel Brian hits the phone running to get the bike organised. This is going to be hell. Rajendran at Qantas Freight is Brian’s first call. We’ve been emailing him for weeks. He gives us a contact who can get us the Dangerous Goods Certificate we need to put the bike on the plane. Through this contact, Brian gets the name of a shipping agent who can help us. Qantas also suggests we contact their handling agent.
We have all bases covered now and while too many people are duplicating the process, at least everything is getting done. The only problem is that all these people want payment and our costs are mounting.
In Turkey, we met Max Ng, a biker heading west. We meet up with him again through contacts in Singapore from the Chiang Mai bikers. He’s back home. He introduces us to Phuah, and a few more bikers who wine and dine us in Singapore. The only thing we don’t do is ride the bike! All our time is taken up with making phone calls about it. The more calls we make, the more confusing things become. Finally, we get everyone helping with the freight to agree to meet us at the airport on Friday afternoon so we can lodge the bike and finalise the paperwork.
Singapore is pristine. There isn’t a piece of rubbish on the street. Chewing gum is banned, but they have recently relaxed that ruling if you are in need of nicotine chewing gum to help you stop smoking. When heading back to the hotel after a trip to the shops we jaywalk and immediately become paranoid we will be booked!
