Saturday 27 September 2014

The Not So Super Supermarket






I am sure most of you have experienced the pleasures of shopping in a modern air-conditioned supermarket with everything you could possibly want on the well-stocked shelves. This is not a story about that. This, my dear friends, is about reality in the deep dark Palm oil jungle of Borneo. 
My local supermarket, I've been told, came into existence a mere 20 years ago, but to the uninitiated, it appears to be at least three score years plus ten. (older than me)

The owners haven't felt the need to modernise with a coat of paint or a dab of plaster since construction. The interior has the ambiance of a post nuclear apocalypse, cans and packets of food are strewn across the aisles as the highly motivated staff ( cough, cough)  unpack to stack the shelves during all of the opening hours. This would normally not be a problem, but the two-and-a-half-foot wide aisles don't cope well. Large sections of the supermarket are unreachable on any one visit, so this clever marketing ploy, coupled with the unavailability of most of the common produce on a given day ( tomatoes maybe on a Monday or if not Wednesday or if you're really unlucky the next week. Lettuce to go with your salad, on the other hand, never arrives the same day) makes you return again and again to enhance the shopping experience.

Yes, it's a total lottery; as a behavioural psychologist would put it - intermittent positive reinforcement. Nothing like it to make you salivate. 

Talking about fruit and veg, the produce, all of it is tightly wrapped multiple times in plastic film. You can look but not touch. This gives the appearance of conformity. The only way to recognise a bulk of it is by colour. Impossible to tell if it's fresh or not - plastic all smells the same. Needless to say, we do have some little surprises when we open up at home.  

The plastic thing reminds me of the time I found cheese with mould growing inside an unopened  plastic wrapper. Expiry date was ok. That's real skill you must admit.

May have something to do with the leaking freezers. The tiles or what's left of them next to the deep freeze bubble and burp with what I think is rising damp. The owners do their very best to ignore it by throwing broken down cardboard boxes over it. They, in turn get saturated and disintegrate. Word of warning here; never wear flip flops or sandals. Body weight will force the brown fluid over your toes. My wife says it smells like rats urine. I told her I didn't think so. Never seen more than a couple of rats at anyone time, the stench being so strong it would rot your socks off. You would need an army of rats to create that smell, but I must admit it's hard to identify. What does concrete cancer mixed with effluent smell like? 

Buying sliced bread is a bit of an art form. I used to, back home, feel the bread to see if it was soft and springy to the touch. Being warm was a bonus because it meant it was very fresh; doesn't work here though. It's always hot because it sits in the window with the tropical sun as company. 

You know what I think?


I have a sneaky suspicion the uncooked dough is placed into the plastic bags to bake by solar energy. How's that for efficiency!

Check out is well... slow to.... well you know. The cash registers are only a few feet from the first row of shelves and you thought traffic in Kuala Lumpur was bad! No useless modern conveniences like scanners here.
 The shoppers who don't like carrying too much tend to drop off their growing list of items onto the cashiers counter. So when you arrive to pay for your own groceries the counter is already full with others. Very messy indeed. Oh well I only need to do this 5 days in 7.........

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Kudat, Two Hotels And The Tip Of Borneo

School holidays, how sweet they are. Looking forward to escaping the clutches of Sandakan City for a few days, we decided to fly to Kudat. 

Kudat is the last major town before you reach the tip of Borneo - Tanjung Simpang Mengayau. It’s isolated and relatively small with a population of about 85,000.

It is a 7-hour drive from Sandakan, a little too much for the old car, so we decided to fly. My wife had never been to this part of Sabah and I had only briefly transited on a flight to Kota Kinabalu.
The mighty Twin Otter

To be honest, I was looking for any excuse to fly in the Twin Otter again.  It's real flying and reminds me of my own relatively short experience as a private pilot over 30 years ago in Adelaide. The noise of the engines, the smell of aviation fuel and the rather uncomfortable seats add to that exquisite feeling of the gentle floating sensation you don't get in a heavier jet aircraft. 

"Sit anywhere you like." I was told when we boarded - it's that sort of flight. You see the every movement of the pilots, observe most of the flight instruments and the monotony of the job ( for them) after the takeoff and before the landing. Nothing like watching the knees of these young men bouncing up and down like nervous school boys who are longing for the home time bell to ring. It instils a sense of confidence in the passengers, I can assure you!

The flight lasts a mere 50 minutes over low lying mangrove and palm oil plantations - not a lot of jungle left in this part of Sabah.  

The airport is really only an airstrip with a single green storey one-roomed building for arrivals and departures. The fire truck/van with its small water trailer has its attendant in an easy chair next to it, whiling away the time, waiting for the airports only daily flight.  What a life.

Originally we intended to use these few days to just veg out and relax, but I wanted to hire a vehicle for a day for a little exploring. The hotel we intended to stay in, the Ria, seemed very casual about obtaining any information other than my wife's name for the booking. They just said to call the morning of the departure to confirm. It's interesting how you get so used to pre booking online and instant confirmation. This was very refreshing.  

As it turned out, close friends of ours were spending the weekend in Kota Kinabalu and decided to come up the day of our arrival to take us to the tip of Borneo. They wanted to stay in the Kudat Golf and Marina Resort, consequently we agreed to stay there for our first night. After picking us up at the airport, we drove there to check in only to find the rooms were not ready. We decided to have a bite to eat at the hawker stalls near the town centre. The ambience and the odour weren't the best, but the food was superb - a comprehensive collection  of local seafood with rice and Chinese tea.


Fruit and Vegetables, cheap and good
Arriving back to the hotel we were informed that the rooms were ready; gathering our bags we trundled down the corridor when a strange thing occurred. From some 10 metres away, I noticed a man in his swimming gear leave a room that I thought was ours. Not being sure, I opened the door to find to my horror, the room was strewn with clothes on the bed and shoes in the entrance. How embarrassing! My friend's room was 2 doors down, so they entered using the electronic card provided. There just behind the door stood a man with an electronic card in hand. For a second or two, both men stared at each other speechless - a mini Mexican standoff.  The occupant in the room felt indignant that his private space was being invaded and my friend astonished that the hotel should have stuffed up so badly.

What I find interesting is the hotel staff feigned indifference. This only made me mad to the point that the rest of the stay in that hotel was tainted by it.          

Another 30 minutes  past before we managed to secure our this time empty rooms. I did knock on the door before entering to make sure!

The hotel is only average, full of youngish families that entertained their children in the pool. The rooms are nothing special, dated and small. The shower or should I say a fountain with a peeing Cherub which surged to 4 separate trickles between periods of inactivity. (think of 4 young boys relieving themselves into a puddle of water ) Not in many showers can you watch an individual water droplet travel down your body without interference, turn the shower on and wait; a 2-minute shower that took 10.  Marvellous! 
Map of Borneo at the tip
After freshening up, kind of, we piled into the car for the journey to the tip of Borneo some 23 kilometres away though it seemed further.  

Kudat was for a few years in the 1880's the capital of North Borneo and an arrival point for many immigrating Hakka from China to escape persecution ( Taiping rebellion) or for economic reasons. Many cleared the area for coconut plantations before becoming farmers themselves.
My wife's paternal ancestors arrived in this way before finally settling in Sandakan a number of years later.
Sunset at the Tip
The roads were of a similar standard to else where in Sabah - barely adequate; the reason most people here drive larger four wheel drives, especially if they travel outside  of the major towns.


Kudat is still growing a significant amount of coconut, a pleasant change from palm oil. This area is still famous for its coconut virgin oil. The small kampongs swarmed with small unkempt children, mange ridden dogs and traditional local  Rungus women weaving baskets on their wooden dilapidated thatched roofed verandas.

Just before the tip there is a long stretch of beach that is now the home to a few tacky tourist resorts of sorts. The beach would have been magnificent in years gone by, but like a lot of coastal regions in this part of the world is littered with mainly plastic objects. Nevertheless if you didn't look too closely, it was a pleasant enough scene.
The Tip of Borneo
There is a car park 300 metres south of the tip with a few nondescript shelters to sit and admire the view. Just before the tip is a large concrete model of the world showing Borneo in all its glory. A plague with a brief description of the site and mentioning of Ferdinand  Magellan's circumnavigation fleet stopping there in 1421 for repair. (He himself was actually killed in the Philippines before this.)

The land finally peters out into a narrow stretch of sandstone jutting into the ocean to divide the South China Sea with the Sulu.  

A number of islands can be seen on the horizon, one with a lighthouse and interesting sandstone formations adds to the spectacle. The obligatory selfies were being taken by the 50 or so visitors there at the time which is always a distraction, but it's isolated enough to find some space away from the masses and go for a walk along the long sweeping beach. 
Interesting sandstone formations

Seafood again on the Kudat esplanade rounded off the day. Great meal, inexpensive, in a ramshackle timber restaurant that hangs over the water / plastic bottles. You can have too much of a good thing. By the time we left Kudat a few days later, I never wanted to see another prawn, fish or scallops during the rest of my life. ( feeling didn't last long of course) 
Ria Hotel
The following day our friends left to drive back to Sandakan while we moved  to the Ria hotel.  Compared with what we left, it was like chalk and cheese. A clean, smart and newly painted building in the centre of town. In fact it stood out because it was the best kept building in town. The staff were efficient and polite to deal with. The room was twice the size of the one in the Kudat Golf and Marina resort and a lot cleaner and in better repair.  The view out of the window was across some roof tops to the harbour, not perfect but pleasant enough. 

We ended up spending 2 more memorable  days being driven around to explore both sides of the peninsular.  The beaches on the South China Sea side had the least pollution. 
Boat in a sea of plastic
To top off the visit, a friend of my wife took us to a local business man who amongst other things produces bird nests for the local market, but that did not interest us. He is the owner of a collection of relics from an old  Chinese junk that had sunk only 400 metres form the tip of Borneo over 1000 years ago. He had obtained them off the fishermen that had found the wreck in 2003.

There is something magical to hold in your own hands pieces of pottery and bronze plaques of such age. Who made them? For Whom? Where were they going to?  Questions that have no answers; lost in the midst of time.

All goods things must come to an end, so after a seafood meal or two it was time to return via the twin otter.

So, would I go back again? Yes, for the seafood, the hotel and of course the twin otter.
Kudat






      


Thursday 4 September 2014

Death In The Morning




Tymooreart.com



It was a morning like every other morning. I crawled out of bed to the sound of the alarm, 5 am to prepare for my 35-kilometre journey to work. At the time, I was working in Bangkok and though I didn't start until 8:30, the traffic and the distance necessitated an early start.

After a quick shower I dressed and prepared to leave when I decided to check my email. 
And there it was as bold as brass. Title : Mum has died.

 It took a second or so to register. I wouldn't say disbelief, for it wasn't totally unexpected she was 86, but a surreal feeling of being momentarily detached. My mother was dead, full stop, end of a story.

I spent years wondering how I would react when one of my parents died. The moment had come and to be blunt it wasn't the way I expected. After the initial surprise ( my brother sent the email and is always direct and straight to the point) I gathered myself and went to work as usual.

Never being close to my mother, I had over the years minimal contact. When I lived in Adelaide I would go visit my parents maybe 3 to 4 times a year, for half an hour or so. Anything longer and we used to get on each other's nerves, never seeing eye to eye. Arguments broke out easily, the visits were literally short, sharp and shiny. We just never connected as adults, let alone mother and son.

Anyway, I found myself spending that day thinking about possibilities. What if  we had been close? Would my reaction be different, how different? What if she had died 30 years earlier? Does your own age dictate the way you react?  Lots to ponder and reflect on. 

More importantly, that day I thought about my own childhood, when I was young and my mother wasn’t an old lady. I remembered things I hadn’t thought about for years. Little things that don’t really matter, but reminded me of the tenuous link we shared as mother and son. She wasn’t a natural mother and in hind sight I think she struggled with her 4 children’s upbringing. Not to say she neglected us, we had more than adequate food, shelter and was looked after, but she lacked an emotional connection with us all - empathy. She was mechanical in the way she did things and that extended to the way she brought up her children. I assumed she loved us, but I never felt it. Nothing was ever said or done to demonstrate it or if there was; I just don’t remember.

The reflection only lasted a day and then life went back to normal for me.

As the old adage goes, we are a product of our upbringing. I look into a mirror these days and see my mother’s face as I get older. I notice the way I act at times is the way my mother did; the way I detested as a youth. We should all learn by our life’s mistakes, though fighting powerful inherent forces that lie within is not so easy. 

It’s interesting to talk to others about this. Some feel it's strange that I never grieved about her death, in fact I was and remain rather neutral in my feelings; somewhat empty. She occupies my thoughts only when something reminds me of my youth. Like all of us, unless we become famous we are only remembered through living memory; children and maybe grandchildren then forgotten for all eternity. In the grand scheme of life, individuals mean very little, the specious propagates unabated through numbers until itself is eventually replaced by something more adept to life.
And circle of life continues on.

And the seasons they go round and round
And the painted ponies go up and down
We’re captive on a carousel of time…

Joni Mitchell  1968