5 months in Thailand, Malaysia and the Philippines: part four

After the excursion to Kangsar, the other excursion was to visit KELLY's castle, the home of a wealthy Englishman who had got it into his head to build himself a sumptuous residence in the 1930s, but who then died before completing the work. You reach it by coach after a couple of hours on the road from Ipoh, but it's worth it, for the beautiful position on a hill along a river and the peace of the place. Among other things, nearby there's an Indian temple that houses, among its many gods, the statue of Kelly, who was very generous to his workers, who had been struck by a deadly epidemic. Having left Ipoh I arrived at the island of PANGKOR, where I stayed almost a week near KUALA NIPAH beach.

It isn't a town, but a series of little houses that are rented to tourists and modest but rather expensive resorts along the initial, rather narrow beach, but with a much more beautiful bay to the north. Everything beautiful and perfect until the early afternoon, when waves of rubbish arrive, tonnes of plastic and glass bottles, flip-flops and every kind of filth that the holidaymakers of the coast throw into the sea and that the currents then bring here, giving work to the street cleaners who every morning clean thoroughly and carry it all to the local incinerator. For the first few days I cleaned as much as I could, but then I got fed up, and in the end you couldn't go into the water unless you slalomed between the rubbish. An ugly and very sad thing, due to the rudeness of the Malaysians and the lack of adequate waste collection.

During my stay I met Giuseppe, a man my age from Milan, whom I met at the only decent restaurant in the place. It was a nice friendship; we also went around the island by bicycle, discovering lovely spots, the rather ugly capital and a beautiful Chinese temple, other bays and beaches, exclusive hotels that take over the beaches and don't allow non-guests in. Unfortunately at a certain point a spring of anger snapped in him towards me, over my political and financial opinions, and he blew up in an ugly way, leaving me dumbfounded, and so I preferred to spend time with other people, among them a very likeable couple made up of a woman from Trieste who works as a group leader with the agency "Avventure nel Mondo", with which I too have made various trips in the past, and her likeable partner, a former pilot from Rome.

In the end I reached the capital, that is, the former capital of Malaysia, Kuala Lumpur, because the new capital since 1995 is called PUTRAJAYA, which I visited one day on an excursion from KL. Putrajaya is a garden city, along a river and an artificial lake, with enormous condominiums of classic structure that are in no way out of place next to the truly impressive institutional buildings. There is an enormous and spectacular mosque with a gigantic square that symbolises the 13 provinces of the Malaysian federation, and then the parliament building, the Palace of the Prime Minister and of the President of the Republic, who rotates among the various sultans of the provinces. There are spectacular bridges that cross the various bends of the river, one of which is the copy of another historic bridge, if I remember rightly of Baghdad.

Kuala Lumpur, which I had already seen in broad outline, pleased me even more, also for the modern central part with fine shopping centres, pedestrian streets suspended in galleries for kilometres and kilometres, through which you can cross the city centre without having to cross roads and wait at traffic lights, because the car traffic runs on the floor below. KL has the metro and the skyline, that is, the monorail, and generally a transport system we in Italy can only dream of, as well as truly spectacular skyscrapers, much more beautiful than others seen around the world, but above all because they are surrounded by so much greenery and very tall, majestic trees.

This time I went by metro to visit the very tall BATU caves, which house an Indian temple with two enormous statues, one blue at the entrance to the complex and one yellow and very tall, located near the wide staircase that leads to the caves. There are monkeys everywhere, trying to get food from visitors or to steal people's belongings. I also visited the beautiful museum of Islamic art in the city park near the national mosque. I was left open-mouthed, not only by the beauty and elegance of the building that houses the museum, but also by the richness of its contents, which include ancient hand-painted manuscripts, precious costumes, carpets, tapestries, weapons, crystals and porcelain, and then I was struck by the enormous scale models of the main mosques of the planet, including those of Mecca and Medina.

Generally Malaysia is a beautiful country, richer than Thailand and the Philippines, only a little more expensive, apart from alcohol, which is prohibitive. There are three communities: Malay, Chinese, which is the richest and most educated, and Indian. Unfortunately, even though the language of instruction from secondary school onwards is English, there are quite a few problems of understanding and it is generally difficult to get information from Malaysians, while with the Chinese things go much better. One of the last flights, out of the 18 in total that I took, brought me from KL to Surat Thani, a Thai resort a short distance from the island of KO SAMUI. But I took the ferry for the island of KO PHANGAN, further on, because I wanted to take part in the "Full Moon Party", the big party on Had Rin beach that is repeated every month at full moon.

I spent wonderful days on Had Rin beach and the evenings in the bars and restaurants, meeting loads of people and dancing until late, after years in which I had given up this kind of fun. It felt like going back many years, and I threw myself into it too, also because until then I had led no so-called social life at all. In fact Thailand lends itself more than the other countries I visited earlier to lovely evenings of fun. After a few days and a few hours before the big party, I was joined by Winney, a likeable thirty-year-old German who lives near the Swiss border, close to Basel. I had met him on the coach from the airport to the ferry, then he had gone on to Ko Samui and so we had separated. In Ko Phangan I searched in vain for a room for him, as he had contacted me by email.

In the end, given the lack of availability, we shared the room in my hotel near the pier, while remaining very independent of each other. The night of the party was very beautiful; we painted ourselves with colours bought at a stall, or rather I was painted by Cassiano, a likeable Brazilian I had met on the beach and who was very good at this kind of drawing. I bought myself a colourful little hat, not noticing that the leaves painted on it were marijuana, oh well.... There were perhaps 15,000 people (in high season they sometimes reach double), above all tourists of every race, in particular many Israelis, young people at the end of the long two-and-a-half-year military service, spending the money they have earned travelling the world. Many French, Germans, Scandinavians, Australians and of course locals, all with a mad desire to dance and have fun, but also to drink a lot....

too much... with zombie scenes in the morning and people vomiting or unable to stand on their feet. I didn't see any drugs, but there probably were some too, though they seem confined to certain bars on the hill, because the local police are tolerant but if you get caught you're in big trouble, and it seems that sometimes the dealers themselves tip off the police and then split the high price that is asked to get out of the mess, provided you don't end up in a medieval jail for years and years. Careful.