Introduction

     On the week of March 12 thru March 18, 2016, I had the privilege of visiting the country of Malaysia on a business trip.  Prior to this journey, to me Malaysia was just some faraway place on the faraway continent of Asia, a continent where (to the best of my knowledge) no one in my immediate family had ever been.

Malaysia

      My first task, then, was to research the question:  where the heck is Malaysia?  I learned that it is located in far southeast Asia, and that there are two separate parts:  the western section, at the end of the Singapore peninsula, and the eastern section, on the island of Borneo.  The two sections are separated by 700 miles of open ocean.  The entire nation is within 5° north of the equator, which puts it squarely in the tropics.

       The western section, it seems, was more scenic and more often visited by tourists.  But I would be going to eastern Malaysia, to the city of Bintulu, in the state of Sarawak.  It is a big industrial center, with a population of a little over 100,000.  (Similar to Lake Charles, in many ways.)

Bintulu is a big shipping center. The port main building is designed to resemble a ship.

Getting there is half the fun

Aboard my first flight from Houston to Dubai

       Malaysia is a very long, long way from Houston.  In fact, one would be hard to find a location anywhere on the planet further away.  And it takes a long, long time to get there on an airplane.  My travel itinerary would consist of three legs:  Houston to Dubai, then to Kuala Lumpur in the western section (aka "KM", as the locals call it), and then on to Bintulu.  Total travel time, including layovers:  32 hours.  Yuck.

       I managed to secure window seats on most legs of my trip.  I was kinda excited about seeing Scandinavia, Germany, Austria, and southeast Europe from the air.  But it turned out to be a fruitless fantasy, as the entire region was terminally covered with thick clouds.  Major bummer.

       One thing I can say about both Emirates Airlines and Malaysia Airlines was:  they feed you very well.  It seems like, about every three hours or so, the attendants would bring out yet another meal.  It was, at times, more than I could possibly eat.  And I'm a pretty hearty eater.

       When we finally landed in Bintulu, I was pretty much a brain-dead zombie.  (I don't sleep well on airplanes, especially in leg-cramped Economy - even tho Emirates Economy class had a lot more leg room than on some American-based carriers.)  Then add onto that the fact that Malaysia is a whopping fourteen time zones from Houston. 

       According to correspondence with my business contacts, someone was to meet me at the Bintulu airport to provide ground transportation.  Hoping that all arrangements were in proper order, I nervously exited the baggage claim area in this strange airport in this strange land.  But a friendly, heavy-set young Asian man came up to me and addressed me by name.  He introduced himself as James, an employee of my client, and explained that he recognized me from my passport copy I'd sent.  That, and the fact that I was the ONLY Anglo in the whole airport, made it easy to identify me.

Me & James

      At his vehicle, I proceed to open the right front door, which is what I presumed was the passenger side.  O no, James corrected me, that's the driver's side.  Aack!  The vehicle is "backwards" - the right is the left and the left is the right!  Seems they drive on the left side of the road in this strange land.  Well it's a good thing they didn't plan on me RENTING a vehicle for this trip, as many decades of driving on the opposite side of the road is a hard habit to break.

My home for the next few days, the New World Hotel

Queenie (Philip's wife), me, & Philip

      So, did James just bring me straight to my hotel and drop me off for some much-needed rest and recuperation?  O no, no, no.  He explained that Phillip (his boss) and the others were waiting for us at a local restaurant with plenty of food and drink!  And so began the pattern that was to repeat for the next several days - food, drink, night life, and endless comradery and fellowship.  My exuberant, outgoing, party-animal hosts took gracious welcoming of their guest to a whole new level.

View outside my hotel room, looking right.

And looking left.

First full day

Devout Muslim woman

       My research into Malaysia culture had indicated that it was predominantly Muslim.  In my mind, I envisioned bearded men wearing turbans and long robes, and women with the full-body cover with just a slit for the eyes, all scowling menacingly at the American infidel.  Well, it was not like that at all.  Yeah, I saw a number people dressed like that at the airport, and a sizable portion of women everywhere wore head scarves and dressed modestly.  But for the most part, everybody dressed like, well, like Americans, including the girls in skimpy outfits and short shorts.  (Side note:  Malaysian girls are pretty!)  And everyone I came into contact with was warm, friendly, welcoming, smiling, and gracious.  The whole cultural attitude seemed to be very laid-back and casual.

Brightly-colored flowering shrubs along roadside.  Note the deep, concrete storm culverts.

More flowering shrubs

      Driving along the Malaysian roads, it was clear from the lush vegetation and brightly-colored flowering shrubs that one was definitely in the tropics.  The weather:  80° F every day (oops, make that 26° C), steady easterly wind, partly cloudy skies with rain showers most afternoons.  Every road had huge, deep, vertical-walled, concrete-lined storm culverts along its sides - yet another reminder that one was in the tropics, and torrential rainstorms do happen.

Typical street in Bintulu.  Every other storefront is a restaurant!

      The pleasant weather encouraged outdoor dining.  Your typical Malaysian restaurant was basically a dining patio with a kitchen in the back.  And boy-oh-boy were there a lot of restaurants!  It seemed that, in most of the buildings, every other establishment was yet another restaurant.  You could easily eat every meal at a different place every day, forever.  I think my ever-gracious hosts intended to do just that!

Another street scene.

      The vast majority of the buildings were of the same exact architectural design:  three stories tall, the width of a city block, with a hodgepodge of storefronts at street level.  Businesses were a curious mix of everything imaginable, with no attempt to "organize" them at all; it was not at all unusual to see fan industrial supplier, a boutique, a grocery store, and a garage, all adjacent and sharing the same building.  Along with the ever-present patio restaurants, there were also a lot of massage parlors.  Up on the upper levels, air-conditioning compressors clung to the outsides, sometimes alongside laundry hung out on the rail.  Many of these building had huge advertising signs hung on the upper levels, which somewhat blurred the distinction between a "building" and a "billboard".

Many storefronts doubled as billboards.

A boutique adjacent to a garage (?!?)

  

There are four people on this motorcycle!

     Motorcycles were ubiquitous.  They were all compact, efficient, economic, quiet little machines, and as my hosts explained, are used here for commuting a lot.  No hulking, noisy Harley D's here (as one would find on the streets of Houston, where they are used, not for transportation, but for recreation).  


     I observed the motorcycle ferry, a rickety contraption if there ever was one, transporting bikes across the river.

Motorcycle ferry. 

       Now onto the hard part:  going into the fertilizer plant to get our system up and running.  Safety regulations therein required us to wear fire-resistant jumpsuits, hard hats, steel-toed shoes, and safety glasses.  Evidently, they were worried the plant might explode or something while we were there.  (I have reservations whether even all that stuff would really protect me from THAT.)  Well, the jumpsuit was hot as hell, and the workshop was poorly ventilated.  And we had to carry in the computer and the heavy electronics box which I had brought as luggage.  And my laptop and other accessories.  By the time we had lugged all that stuff to the sweltering workshop, we were all drenched with sweat.

       Well to make a long story short, we got everything all hooked up and the users trained, despite the terrible discomfort.  And at the end of the day, there was still ample time to eat, drink, be merry, and explore.

Pagotta at city park.  Fountain in the background.

Cultural differences abound

Budhist temple

     So despite the general laid-back, friendly atmosphere, there were definitely some cultural differences to remind me that I was far from home.  Like the fact that I never, ever saw another pale-faced Anglo like me anywhere in Bintulu.

Concrete frescoes on a wall at the city park. There were eight of these, four on each side, apparently telling the history of the region in pictures.

     Language was often a challenge.  Malaysia's principle language is Mandarin Chinese (which of course is Greek to me), and they also speak Malay.  But most of them speak English - to varying degrees.  One day I had to buy some decongestant tablets at a local pharmacy, but in order to communicate to the clerk what I needed, I had to pantomime a sneezy, stuffed-up nose.

     The food was mostly very good, but …  There were a few dishes put before me that were, so to speak, not my cup of tea.  Many were full of critter parts that we Americans would not exactly consider "edible". 

      Most every meal was eaten "family style" where they'd put the dishes on a lazy Susan and we all just helped ourselves.  And of course I was the only one who had to ask for a fork!  But omigosh the VOLUME of food was unbelievable.  It was all just a continuation of what I experienced on the airplane flight:  the waiters would just keep bringing more, and more, and more dishes.  At many points I thought, Ok, that must be the last dish - now we have a fighting chance to consume most of this.  But again and again I was wrong.

      But we did patronize one good ole' American standard once:  we had breakfast at a McDonalds. - the ONLY McDonalds in the entire city.

Clarion towers broadcast Muslim chants

      One aspect of every restaurant we visited that I found really perplexing was the lack of napkins.  Either they had none at all, or the ones they had were pitiful little things thinner than toilet paper.  And even then, you had to specifically ASK for some.  Even the McDonalds was awfully light in the napkin department.  Side note for anyone traveling to Malaysia:  bring a big pack of quality American napkins and stuff a handful in your pocket whenever you go out to eat.

      The residences where the people lived that were visible from the street ran the full gamut.  There were some splendid mansions.  And there were the ever-present shacks, apparently assembled from whatever discarded building material the resident could scrounge. 

       The Muslim influence was never far from mind.  These clarion towers around town would ring out with the sound of some dude chanting prayers at certain hours of the day.  The airport had special prayer rooms.  On my flights in and out of Dubai and Kuala Lumpur, there were many women wearing the solid-black full-body cover with just the eye-slit.  On one airplane flight, I saw a woman lay a prayer mat in the aisle by the exit door, and get down.

Typical public toilet

      And I can't leave out the toilets:  EVERY public toilet had this squirt-hose thingy attached to the plumbing.  I guess napkins and toilet paper fall under the same rules for the devout Muslim.

Some things are the same no matter where you go.

Fishing boats. Note the bright colors.

Home again

The whole gang out for a night of food, drink, and karaoke.

      Emirates Airlines kinda got on my bad side when they wouldn't let me check my luggage until four hours before departure.  So with a 10-plus hour layover in Kuala Lumpur, I was a bit handicapped having to lug around my big bag, and thus it was impractical to leave the airport and explore the city.

Outdoor produce market

 

One more street scene (couldn't resist).  Note the laundry hanging on the rail.

     But it was definitely a learning experience, and worth the hellacious plane ride to get there and back.  I often felt like Mr. High Tech Jet Set, breezing around airports in exotic locations with laptop computer and smart-phone in hand, hooking up to free WiFi wherever I could find it. 

Guide sign in the Dubai Airport. The place was a huge shopping mall.

  
    Now let's see where fate and business takes me next!