The Long Way Home
On the long way home from the other side of the world to find my former addresses and the meaning of ‘home’ my path wrenched me from the loving arms of Ireland and pitched me into the steaming cauldron of tropical Malaysia.
Six weeks at Annaghmakerrig, County Monaghan, had dulled my edge.
My last two addresses were in Ipoh, north of Kuala Lumpur, and I was dreading the journey.
I tried to chicken out of the whole thing and head straight home but I couldn’t afford to changes horses in mid-stream.
No concrete plans, no idea of how I was going to get to where I needed to go. I had a hotel booked on arrival in Singapore and the same hotel booked on the eve of my departure. How I would manage what happened in between was a mystery.
I had a vague idea you could get to Ipoh by train. I had an even vaguer idea that this journey would take between 7 and 8 hours.
I was freaking out.
What if the train broke down and there was no air-con ?
I would die in the heat.
I don’t do heat well.
I’m a take me to Tasmania/ let’s do the Antarctic kind of girl.
I was SCARED.
It was so hot on arrival in Singapore at 7 p.m. I was even more scared.
My hotel room, by contrast, was freezing.
It was like sleeping in the frozen food aisle at Safeway. Waves of frosty air fanning out over the thin blankets.
By the morning I had a cold.
I was up at 5.30 a.m. because the train to Ipoh left at 7.40 a.m. and the story was, the journey would take TEN HOURS.
I nicked a bacon and egg sarnie from my complimentary breakfast – no idea whether there would be food on this trip. Wore as thin clothing as possible, with a light wrap, just in case.
First class was comfortable and I was seated opposite an Aussie couple from Perth.
Everything was going to be all right.
Their mobile phone, unlike mine, was working.
Then the air-con came on and it was delicious and cool.
Quite cool, in fact.
Cold.
Frosty.
It was feckin’ freezing !
The morning’s rivers of sweat snap froze on my skin.
I shivered for TEN HOURS stopping-all-stations.
The only relief was to go to the buffet car, which was sweltering, suffocating, my worst nightmare.
I spent the ten hours alternately freezing, frying, freezing, frying.
The worst part was knowing that I would have to do the whole thing all over again twenty-four hours later on the return trip.
Well, they wouldn’t get me this time.
At the night-market in Ipoh I bought a jacket from a second-hand store for 10 ringgit.
It was as gold as a reclining Buddha, and just as fat.
Sorted.
For some reason, the return trip took ELEVEN HOURS.
I missed out on 1st class, so, steerage it was.
Travelling backwards, sharing a seat with the world’s fattest man.
Could things get any worse ?
Well, yes, as it happens, they could.
Suddenly the video screen springs to life and begins showing, first, a Robin Williams film – sending me screaming for my i-pod – then, wait for it, for my very many sins, they start showing
GLADIATOR !!!!!
Am I not suffering enough ?
Do they have to send in Rusty Crowe in all his twitching, wooden puppet glory to torment me with his tight-lipped Oscar-bamboozling style ?
The air-con in steerage wasn’t as bad as in 1st. Or maybe the friction between my corpulent neighbour’s huge arse and my thigh was counteracting the frost. In any case I had to get away from Rusty and mini-Brando Phoenix fast.
Across the clanking steel plates connecting the carriages, where the wind blows hot and foul, I blundered, on my way towards the hell’s kitchen of the buffet car.
Since 7 a.m. that morning I had eaten a one-egg omelette, a fairy cake and a stale Danish. It was now 7 p.m. and I had another 4 hours on the train.
The cans of ‘Kickapoo Joy Juice’ looked tempting enough to risk.
When Campbell MacComas and I used to perform Loveletters my character used to confess to having had too much of ‘the old kickapoo joy juice’ and I thought she was just using a euphemism for booze. Turns out it’s a product.
Well, maybe it was a saying which they turned into a product.
I buy rice.
Can’t go wrong with rice.
So many palm trees out the window.
Eleven hours of palm trees.
Someone in the buffet car asks what time we get in to Singapore.
‘8.15’ says a smartly dressed woman.
‘8.15 !’ I splutter. ‘You mean we get to the border at 8.15.’
‘Yes,’ she says. ‘Then Singapore at 8.45.’
‘Are you including the hour we have to spend at the border check-point ?’ I ask.
She smiles at me politely.
On the way up, it took an hour to travel from Singapore station to Woodlands checkpoint, on the border with Malaysia – everyone drives very slowly and carefully in Singapore, everyone is very law-abiding.
At the border check-point we were told to take just our passports and leave everything else on the train. We queued for immigration and pressed our thumbs on the infra-red thumb I.D. check to see if we were wanted criminals.
Then we waited for about forty minutes while the border police went through the train - and everything we had left behind, presumably - with a fine tooth comb. Then, these boys in navy-blue with their guns on their hips and wise-cracking smiles on their dials waited until they were good and ready to let us back on board.
To kill time I went to use the proper toilet.
They have both male and female toilets on the train but everyone uses the Ladies.
‘Hey ! Buddy ! The sign on the door shows a guy in a dress ! Oh. Right. You are a guy in a dress. My mistake.’
In the platform toilet there was a poster on the wall with a cartoon asking people not to ‘squat on the sitting toilets’. The last frame showed a woman (well, of course, it would be) with her leg stuck in the bowl and she’s hopping mad.
I took a photo of this poster to show the folks back home and then I saw another sign. A warning not to use unauthorised cameras or videos anywhere in this building.
There was another sign on the platform with a cartoon of a man being shot at close range but I wasn’t quite sure why, as the sign was in Malay.
Taking no chances, I stowed my camera, got back in the queue and kept my immodest, sexy-as-all-get-out, sweaty-haired, uncovered head down.
On the return journey there were two checks: one at Jahor Baru – leaving Malaysia – and one, again, at Woodlands – entering Singapore.
I was prepared for this stop.
I was taking everthing with me this time. There would be no sneaky rifling through my luggage on the train. If they wanted to check it they could do it in front of me.
Oh, yes, smart me.
So, I’m walking across the platform towards security, pulling my hand luggage and bags, when I remember.
The Buddha-gold jacket.
Oh. My. God.
The one I bought last night at the second hand store in the night market in Ipoh.
Oh. My. God.
What if the previous owner was a druggie – user or dealer ?
What if the dogs smell something ?
What was the name of that bloody woman ? Simone Corby ? Sherelle Corby ? Shebeen ? Anyway, her. What if that happens to me ?
All this time worrying about stuff being planted in my luggage and whether I should shrink wrap my case or not, and I blithely bring a risky item of clothing in with me MYSELF !
The dogs will sniff it out and then it will be
‘Drop the jacket ! Drop the jacket ! Step away from the jacket ! Assume the position !’
And there will be a circle of guns pointed at my head…..
My heart is pounding.
They’ll know.
I’ve got guilty written all over my forehead.
I stand behind the yellow line and await my fate.
‘Beware the flipper’ says the sign on the plastic gate.
Oh, I’m bewary all right.
It flips and I’m through to the nice lady with the Brahmin caste mark on her forehead.
‘You are only staying one day ?’ she asks, incredulous and suspicious.
‘Y-yes,’ I stammer. ‘I fly back home tomorrow.’
She looks at me, looks at the passport, looks at me, flicks through the passport, holds the passport up to compare me to the photo, me, passport, me, passport.
Okay !!! I’ve looked better ! I’ve just been watching Gladiator ! You try that on an empty stomach after ten and half hours of train travel.
She brings the stamp down on the page and I’m through.
To the x-ray belt.
Everything out of the case.
Gold jacket looming.
If they check my camera and see the shot of the toilet-squatting poster I’m in more trouble than the woman with her leg stuck in the shit.
But I’m not.
When we disembark at Singapore I leave the Buddha jacket in the luggage rack and scuttle towards the exit before the cleaners notice and try to force it on me.
Safely back at the Frozen Food Aisle hotel, I get an up-grade to a ritzy suite on the 17th floor where I order a burger and a Guinness and say goodbye to the last three months.
Time to go home.