More of Malaysia

Two days ago I returned to Kuala Lumpur from Melaka, which has the following story ascribed to its foundation:

The 14th C Indonesian Prince Parameswara left Java and for a while used Temasek as a base for his piratical exploits. An attack by the Siamese forced them on; they headed up the Malay peninsula to the town of Muar, but were soon driven away by a particularly fierce band of monitor lizards. After a second failed site, they arrived at the mouth of the Bertam river. While hunting there, Parameswara saw a white mouse-deer kick one of his hunting dogs in defence. The prince was so impressed by the valiant and courageous deer that he decided to build a new city on the spot. He asked one of his servants for the name of the tree standing nearby and took its name for the town.

What especially interests me about this tale is that Prince Parameswara claimed direct descent from Alexander the Great.

In Kuala Lumpur the weekend before, Tori and I visited Silverfish Books, a fantastic book shop with shelves of Malaysian-authored work in English, Singaporean work and other Asian-interest books, and coincidentally we stumbled in from the rain shortly before a talk by local author Tunku Halim. Among many interesting topics, such as how he wrote his children’s encyclopedia of Malaysian history and his opinion on more logical borders for Malaysia, he mentioned that Malaysian rulers used to trace their descent back to Alexander. Tunku suggested that anything’s possible in Alexander’s history. I’m inclined to agree with most historians that no child of Alexander’s survived to adulthood, interesting as the notion is. Rather, the influences of India and what became the Islamic world on Malaysia explain the transmission of Alexander’s story, as cultures in both remembered him long after he died. I never expected Alexander’s name to travel quite this far, though. Makes me want to re-read Richard Stoneman’s Alexander the Great: A Life in Legend in case it mentions this, and I just glossed over it on my first read. Another thing to do when I get back to the UK in September.

Melaka and Penang share similar histories of trade and interchange among the major Asian powers and, later, the Europeans; consequently, they are full of languages, temples, shops and people from many backgrounds. Kuala Lumpur is like this too, in places, spread out across a far bigger map. On my hostel’s street in Melaka, a mosque stood not far from Chinese temples and an Indian temple with closed doors. The call to prayer sang over Chinatown (with quiet moments where the muezzin cleared his throat between verses) as I returned to my room with a bag of hot “Melaka tarts” (a kind of custard tart, I think, and delicious).

In Penang I was initially a bit un-awed – I’d seen this variety of buildings before, in Singapore and KL and the Chinese assembly houses of Hue – but, to escape the afternoon rain, ducked into a gallery of gorgeous glass pieces by Wong Keng Fuan and photography of Penang by Howard Tan. The latter’s images of doorways in particular made me feel foolish for not paying more attention – looking around at the details of the old shophouses, in varying stages of repair, it’s a really quite attractive town. Melaka is likewise, especially on some Chinatown streets where shop owners advertise partly with beautiful exterior wall art.

In a cafe with parts of old statues on shelves along the walls, I discovered pai tee: crispy, hat-shaped… things… filled with turnip shavings and seasoned with sweet chili sauce. OM NOM. I went back a second time for more.

Another of Melaka’s local foods are rice balls, which satisfied me less. Kind of stodgy white balls of congealed-like rice, served with chicken. Not bad, but not pai tee. (Or Melaka tarts! I got those in the night market, which was very tourist-focused – with a few exceptions, like a stall of worship paraphernalia and amulets, food stalls, a minor hardware-items stall.)

Kota Bharu is a quite different place: visually un-exciting, no attractive old shop-fronts and few religious buildings, lots of modern concrete, and the dominance of Islam is a strong contrast to the other parts of Malaysia I saw. Very few women didn’t wear hijab.

My guidebook says that the people of Kota Bharu love birdsong so much (there’s an annual contest) that they play it on loudspeakers in parts of the town. As I walked to the Central Market, I saw loudspeakers and heard birdsong, and immediately associated the two. By the time I left, I wasn’t as sure. One time I heard birdsong and saw a big flock on the side of several buildings, but other times I saw nothing; but they could easily have hidden on roofs. I wanted it to be true, though. How awesome is the idea of a town playing birdsong through its streets? I suspect it’s only during the contest and I heard a lot of hidden birds.

Malaysian kites – the most common design is the wau bulan – appear across Malaysia, on its 50 sen coin, souvenir-sized in Kuala Lumpur’s Central Market and printed on the front of the city’s monorail trains, but their home is in Kota Bharu’s area. At the direction of my hostel’s owner, I set off across the town and down a side-street to an individually owned grocery store. In a little room off to one side of the entrance, a man (Kinim? shit, I forgot to note down his name) made wau bulan and let me watch for a while.

As far as I could tell, looking at him and the other kites and kite-parts hanging on the walls, he gets black kite-shaped paper with gold/silver designs already on them, then cuts out most of the gold/silver designs and glues coloured paper on the back, filling the gaps with green and orange and white and red. Two big expanses are cut out and filled with tissue paper. This is attached to a light wooden frame and decorated with paper tassles. I do wonder how this has developed over time – my guidebook talks of “sleepy fishing villages where silk kites are made by candlelight”, and I’d have liked to see that too – yet I’ve come to the conclusion that, for all historical/”traditional” ways of life are hugely interesting (I am a historian), it’s stupid to overlook how cultures are being brought into the modern world; these, too, are interesting, and I loved standing in that little side-shop watching Kinim(?) make his art and trade. If only the kites came in smaller sizes, I’d have bought one from him.

Both evenings in Kota Bharu, I went to its night market. Not the one selling clothes along a couple of roads, but the one selling food: stalls set up in a dusty, uneven lot behind some buildings, with meat-smelling smoke hanging in the air. On its edges, tables and chairs were set up next to stalls selling drinks and a few foods. Several had TVs; the one I sat near showed the terrible film Outlander, which I refuse to believe is not a B-movie. It’s bad. Hidden away in a pot under a tray of miscellaneous meat, blue rice was for sale. I ate it with chicken-on-a-stick from another stall, seasoned with a small pouch of chilli sauce. The rice tasted pretty plain, but the colour made it a fun novelty.

I did a bit more than the above, in the places I visited, but I left Malaysia wanting to see more of it – especially the countryside, which I only passed through in buses of varying comfort. (Some have chairs like armchairs, some not; some have aircon like industrial fridges. According to Janet Chui, who also told me that the blue rice is dyed with the bunga telang flower, some have personal entertainment sets. I tragically missed out on those.) But I’m in the Philippines now and heading back to Bangkok later in June to spend 2 weeks or so there with Tori & family, before they disappear on summer holiday. I’m sure I’ll have opportunities to see even more of Malaysia another time.