Same same, but different: Singapore

“Same same.” It’s an expression we heard everywhere in Southeast Asia. T. even got a T-shirt that says “Same same” on the front and “But different” on the back. I’m still not sure what people mean by this, but it suits Singapore. It was the first place I ever went in Asia and people said it’s not that Asian, and now I know what they meant. It’s an island, and yet part of the Malay peninsula. It used to be part of Malaysia but its culture is different. It’s in Southeast Asia, but coming back here, I felt as far from the rest of the region as I’d felt since Hong Kong.

It’s embarrassing how I luxuriated in this most modern city-state. An industrial-sized roll of tissue, so generous that we could blow our noses and not have to go down to the reception desk for a refill. Drinking the tap water. To be sure, the water’s perfectly safe to drink in Malaysia as well. To me, this stands out most about the more vs. less developed countries in the world: Most people on earth can’t count on drinking their water. For those who can afford it, that means bottled water, which in turn adds exponentially to the pollution problem. Now that I can refill bottles again, I hope never to buy more plastic waste.

Malaysia’s population is majority Malay; Singapore’s is majority Chinese. That is how people refer to themselves, though they are born Singaporeans. Clearly Chinese (or Indian) is an ethnic term; it doesn’t necessarily mean someone was born in China or India. And the #1 official language of Singapore is English. The man and family who have dominated Singapore for fifty years were determined to build it into a First World center, and they have. You can fly from Singapore airport to every corner of the globe. The airport itself is a glory, knocking every North American airport I can think of into a proverbial cocked hat.

To be sure, there are tradeoffs. Harsh penalties for things like spitting out gum mean you simply don’t see it. Death for drug traffickers. Caning—beating with a stick—for lesser offenses. I’m sure the strongman of the Philippines, not to mention his sidekick across the Atlantic, would love it. But from the traveler’s point of view, it’s a nice place to visit, and you don’t have any problems.

Unless you accidentally run afoul of the law. We arrived at the border on a luxurious bus from Kuala Lumpur, seats reclining almost completely, the nicest transportation we’d had. The immigration official insisted on the number of the bus, which we didn’t have; and just as I, the last passenger, was finally going to get through, her computer went down. Another official yelled at me to come into a different line, the opposite of where the first one was indicating. Given that this was Singapore, what might have happened had I followed the wrong one?

We left our fellow passengers at customs where one of them had been detained. Our guess is that he’d failed to declare two packs of cigarettes. I hadn’t seen any signs requiring all cigarettes to be declared, but then I wasn’t looking for them. Read up before you cross any border—they all have different laws!

Singapore means wide streets, traffic lights, rules that drivers obey. I crossed the street and could hardly believe that a car would wait before turning, not just shoot across in front of me because it could. I hadn’t seen that in all our time in Asia. 

I thought of all the things I’d gotten used to in Asia that now, with the exception of a shower that shot all over the bathroom, we would no longer experience: Squat toilets. The Asian hose version of a bidet. Dodging motorbikes to cross the road. Having to buy a separate token for every trip on public transit, if there was public transit at all. The only thing I’d gotten used to that I might miss was the tuk-tuks, a version of which plies the roads of every other Southeast Asian country. After that, a metered taxi just seems so boringly modern.

Merlion (half fish half lion)--symbol of Singapore

We had a sunny day so we spent it on Sentosa Island. The last time we were in Singapore, we had brunch up on Mt. Faber with views of the South China Sea, and T. said the cable car we could see operating went over to the island, where the Merlion is.

This time we went to the island. It’s basically a big theme park, but there are beaches, and we saw people ziplining over one of them. This gave T. an idea.

I was happy to take pictures, as ziplining has never been on my “bucket list” (if I had such a thing). I just don’t like plummeting sensations, whether roller coasters or severe turbulence. Fortunately, I can usually avoid these.

Then we walked up one of the nature trails to Imbiah Lookout. It wasn’t much, but at least it wasn’t closed, like the trails on Penang Hill.

There is a suspension bridge that joins Sentosa Island to a southern islet. Since Sentosa and Singapore Islands are in turn joined by causeways, this islet is claimed to be part of, indeed the southernmost point of, Southeast Asia.

A wet view from the cable car

On our way there the heavens opened. We managed to stay out of the worst of the rains, but thought we’d better get back before they stopped running the cable car. Not a moment too soon! I’m not sure the cars ever stopped running, but they should have. By the time we reached Faber Peak and the restaurant we’d eaten at four years ago, such a terrific thunderstorm was under way as I’d never seen before in my life. We could hardly see for the rain, and yet lightning didn’t deter these people from anything, even continuing their dinner. T. said it was more exciting than ziplining.

After the rain--sunset from Faber Peak

Another must-do we remembered from visiting Singapore was the Raffles Hotel. It’s closed for renovation, though, so our taxi driver—“a bit cheeky”—suggested we try something more authentic for lunch. The place he took us was in Chinatown and called, in English, simply “Eating House.” They served Hainanese chicken rice with wonton soup. That was it, and it was delicious.

In between the rain that plagued the rest of our time in Singapore, we walked around the Padang, the colonial-era square flanked by St. Andrew’s Cathedral and the Victoria Concert Hall and Theatre.

Norman Foster’s new Supreme Court building looms like a flying saucer over the old Supreme Court and City Hall. Those two buildings have now been turned into the National Gallery of Singapore. It was the right kind of weather to spend some time in a museum.

National Gallery, with Marina Bay Sands in the background

 The government of Singapore exhorts its people constantly through posters, etc. It’s definitely a society with strong government guidance, but a casual observer can't discern whether this bothers Singaporeans or not. Similarly, it was hard to tell whether the average Vietnamese is bothered by lack of political freedom; getting more money is the name of the game in both places. I’m not saying that is right.

One of many subway signs telling Singaporeans to do the right thing

Singapore was our last stop before leaving for Australia, and because of our night flight, we had some time between checking out and spending the evening at the airport. So we spent the afternoon in that rarest of places, for us and for Southeast Asia: shopping malls. Orchard Road, once home to orchards, is full of them. We even bought things, because we could. And, having spent money, we were entitled to a free ride up to the 56th floor, where we finally got in that “rooftop bar” that had been evading us since we arrived in Bangkok. Dress codes, you know.

No one cares about shorts or sandals here.

Singapore was once known as a place for bargain shopping, but that isn’t the case now. It’s an affluent and expensive society compared with its neighbors. The one good deal, though, is the hawker centers—street food. Being Singapore, all the food vendors cluster in official and orderly places, but the food (and beer) are cheap, which is not true of anything else. I couldn’t get enough of char kway teow.

If you have to wait in an airport for some hours, Changi Airport is not a bad choice. It’s directly accessible by subway, and once you’re there, there’s nothing you can’t eat or drink or buy. It will cost you, of course, but you don't go through security till you actually get to the gate; so until then, you’d hardly know you were in an airport. I understand they even have a gym and swimming pool. We made it as far as the garden.

There were three monks hanging out in the garden taking selfies on their mobile phones. Then they pushed their luggage cart into a duty-free shop, where one of them whipped out his credit card. “What kind of monks are these?” T. wondered. Singaporean, of course.

And so, farewell to Continent #3. I know we only scratched the surface of a few countries, as in Africa; but I would happily go back. I enjoyed Asia more than I thought I would—it was a vast unknown quantity to me. Even Vietnam, which I probably wouldn’t visit again, is paying dividends in terms of understanding. Now that I’ve left and am reading more of the history of America’s involvement there, I appreciate more how different a place Southeast Asia is, and how devastating were the consequences of not having knowledge of that place. (It turns out that most of the decisions that led the U.S. into war in Vietnam, from the 1940s onward, were made without any Asia experts in the room.*)

See you in Australia. 

*David Halberstam’s The Best and the Brightest (1972) details the various reasons for this, and for many other fateful occurrences that, together, led the U.S.A. into calamity and folly.

Malaysia: George Town to Kuala Lumpur

On the bus to our plane leaving Bangkok, I noticed a group of women wearing colorfully patterned headscarves. Since we were bound for a Muslim country, this was not surprising. What I didn’t expect was for one of them to be wearing a T-shirt that said “Harley-Davidson, Krabi, Thailand.” My imagination has since created a whole story for her: that she rented a motorbike and rode all around Southeast Asia, as people her age and younger are wont to do…

We almost didn’t make our flight to Malaysia. We had to change planes in Hat Yai, Thailand, which involved collecting our bags and re-checking them on a different airline. The helpful woman there (we were the only passengers in line) explained that we’d have to backtrack to where we’d just collected our bags and get them cleared with security stickers. At this point, my handy little recharging device, which I’ve used twice in eight months, became a “charger” which was banned in checked bags, something that has never been an issue anywhere else—including the flight we had just been on! I had to unpack my backpack completely before finding what the problem was. Again, fortunately, the security woman was nice, and didn’t make me throw it away or anything, but at this point we were under a bit of time pressure. Not my favorite.

We headed upstairs to exit Thai immigration and then had to go through security again, ourselves. As we hadn’t anticipated this many steps, we were relieved to find that once again, no one was in front of us in line. Only when we reached the gate did we realize that was because everyone else had already boarded the plane! The gate agent raced us down to the plane which, almost as soon as we were seated, took off. Took off early. I’ve seen a lot of things in my travels but I have never, ever, heard of a flight leaving ahead of schedule. Only in Asia!

It was perhaps the first time I’ve felt stressed on these travels, about the trip itself. It didn’t help that I hadn’t slept much. The night before, after all, had been New Year’s Eve, and (having gone to bed early because of our early morning flight) I awoke to some banging and booming outside. I couldn’t see many fireworks from our sixth-floor window, but registered that it was midnight. Happy New Year.

When we arrived on Penang island in Malaysia, things felt instantly different. This was, after all, our first taste of the former British Empire since Hong Kong. The taxi radio played Dolly Parton singing “9 to 5,” followed by Anne Murray. It was as if the Malaysians were trying to welcome a Tennessee-born Canadian on purpose. At least the English was refreshing.

Our luck continued to hold when we walked around George Town the next day. We were trying to get train tickets on to Kuala Lumpur, the capital, without having to go to the Butterworth station, which is on the mainland part of Penang. After a lot of unnecessary walking around in the heat, we finally located the office and went in. As we did so, a worker started pulling down the blinds, and we realized the office must shut at 4:00, which it then was. Incredibly, the woman at the desk went on to serve us politely, rather than throwing us out and telling us the office was closed. No such luck for the couple of backpackers after us who were a moment later and shut outside for the day!

We also succeeded in finding a post office. From time to time, I’ve mailed things “home” from the road, either items that would make my backpack too full, or small gifts for other people. Postal services vary widely, though, and I’m never quite certain if it’s going to work. I had to try a few different offices in Italy just to get service, while the Laotian post was slow, but effective. Never have I experienced anything like Malaysia. A woman came right over to me and asked if she could help, got me a number, then came back over after realizing she had given me the wrong number and I was up next! I got helpful service immediately, and it only cost 10 ringgit. These are the kinds of things that endear a country to me.

Bicycles and rickshaw outside the "Blue Mansion" (Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion)

It helps that Penang, and George Town in particular, is beautiful. We took a local bus for about 2 ringgit along the coast of the island. While there, a couple asked us for information about the bus (people always seem to ask me for directions or help when I walk or use public transportation, even if it’s the first time I’ve ever been in a place). It turned out he was from South Carolina and she was from Ohio, but they had been teaching in Myanmar for five years. They noticed the Burmese patch on my daypack, so I had to confess that we’d only been  in Myanmar for an hour or so. They had their baby daughter with them and were talking about moving back to the U.S.; eventually, it transpired that they’d looked at houses in Bristol and Elizabethton, Tennessee. They wanted to know “the dirt” on those places, since I went to school in Elizabethton! I told them it was a great place to grow up but as far as their questions about homelessness and opioid addiction, I hadn’t lived there for twenty-eight years…

Back in George Town, we walked along Weld Quay (the combination of Malay and English place names is fascinating) and the Clan Jetties. These jetties are unique Chinese settlements, each community originating as a particular clan of immigrants from China. The clans built their houses and other buildings on stilts, and today you can still walk down the jetty and see homes and temples that have been preserved as part of George Town’s UNESCO World Heritage site. 

At Chew Jetty T. took a picture for some more Americans. Two of them teach in an international school and the rest were their relatives visiting. There are a lot of international schools in Penang.

In Siem Reap, I had heard music from the pool bar late into the night; in George Town I heard the Muslim call to prayer. The last time I remember hearing the siren song of the mosque was probably in Moshi, Tanzania. Malaysia is a Muslim country both in the sense of being majority Muslim, and in that Islam is the state religion; the cultural implications are many. While beer is freely available, there are no local brands, and the taxes make it very expensive. At least compared with Cambodia!

The Cathedral of the Assumption, list of priests. The new plaque shows a shift from European to native priests (though all with Christian first names!)

Masjid Kapitan Keling, built by Indian Muslims

Church of the Assumption

While Malaysia is officially Muslim, freedom of religion is guaranteed. I am not saying there are no problems with that. Personally, I am opposed to any establishment of religion, whether mosque or church. But what it means on the street is that churches, Hindu and Chinese temples, and mosques are practically (and sometimes literally) next door to one another. While the Malay ethnic majority is almost all Muslim, nearly a quarter of the population is Chinese, and there is a significant Indian minority as well as many Westerners. All of these groups, as well as aboriginal Malaysians, include many Christians, along with practitioners of their ancestors’ faiths.

Sri Maha Mariamman Temple 

Teo Chew Association 

In addition to its many houses of worship, George Town is famous for its colonial architecture, and its street art.

City Hall

The most popular street art is by Ernest Zacharevic, who is from Lithuania. He incorporates an actual bicycle and motorcycle in his work.

There are said to be great sunset views from Penang Hill. We didn't see those, as it rained late every afternoon we were in Penang, but we did get the funicular up to the top (even we were daunted by the prospect of climbing it!) Given the cloudy weather, we didn’t have the exhilaration of the 360-degree view in Nong Khiaw, Laos, but we did enjoy another fabulous street dish—chickpea masala. 

View from Penang Hill of George Town and the 13-km bridge to Butterworth on the mainland 

As I mentioned, this was my first Muslim country, and it was interesting to see how Islam permeates people’s everyday lives. For example, in every hotel room there is an arrow indicating the direction of Mecca, so Muslims know where to kneel when it is time to pray.

I’ve thought before about how Islam requires its adherents to be visible. Not so much in clothing terms, because depending on their culture, Muslim women (or men) may or may not wear certain items. I mean praying five times a day, which is one of the pillars of Islam. That’s a lot of praying, but it’s also visible: you have to find a place to do it, and you have to kneel in the right direction. 

Christians can pray without anyone knowing it, unless we say grace in a restaurant. According to the Sermon on the Mount, that is how we’re supposed to behave. Almost any Christian practice, even celebrating Christmas, can pass unnoticed in the general culture. But if I had to pray five times a day, I think it would be hard not to keep my devotion to God foremost in my mind. And sometimes I wonder, as an old youth group sign said: “If you were arrested as a Christian would there be enough evidence to convict you?”

My volunteer at the Kuala Lumpur mosque said, “When we are in the marketplace we are not worshipping God.” He was talking about the need to regularly practice religion, but in the KL market, it seemed to me Malays were still practicing their faith. It’s just that they wore it somewhat lightly. The women, for instance, seldom appeared wearing black headscarves or covering their faces. Instead they wore an array of colors, along with jeans or whatever else they chose to wear, and the headscarf seemed to be an accessory to express themselves personally as well.

Shopping for headscarves, night market

Not willing to take the oft-maligned Lonely Planet guidebook at face value, I had done some research about the quick, modern, user-friendly KL public transit I’d read about. Someone on TripAdvisor assured me that the hop-on, hop-off bus was a waste of time, because KL traffic is terrible and it is so much easier to get around on the monorail or trains. We did not find this to be the case, as merely getting to a station was only the start; from the train to the monorail system, for example, there was no straightforward way to walk and almost no signage. We keep getting directed to different entrances and exits but only in the vaguest way; had to pay simply to enter the subway for the purpose of crossing under a road; and, best of all, had no decent map (this is the first city I’ve ever been in where a hotel didn’t have any). So after spending at least an hour after the National Mosque walking around trying to go one stop, from the old Kuala Lumpur train station to KL Sentral, we found the Malaysian tourism office.

Kuala Lumpur Station with KL Tower in the background

These women were wonderful. We had failed to find their office on our first day despite numerous people “helping” us, but now we had good maps, plus advice on the hop-on, hop-off bus. It turned out to be excellent value on our third day. It took us to all the places we wanted to go and, as it was a Sunday, the traffic posed no significant delay at all. It cost less than half of what such a bus ticket would cost in London.

St. John's Cathedral (Catholic). Photo by Wikipedia

We would never have gotten to some of the outlying sights trying to use the public transit, such as the National Monument. This monument commemorates Malaysia’s struggle, first against Japanese occupation during World War II and then against a communist insurgency until 1960. It is said, on a sign nearby, also to represent "the triumph of the forces of democracy over the forces of evil."

If this monument looks familiar to U.S. readers, it’s for a couple of reasons. First, the Malaysian flag has seven red and six white stripes; and second, the sculptor was American (born in Austria) Felix de Weldon, best known for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima) in Washington, D.C. I got so used to seeing the red and white stripes that when I actually saw an American flag flying over what must have been the U.S. Embassy, I almost didn't recognize it! 

T. wanted to go to the Bird Park, which was pretty cool too. It’s the largest free-flying aviary in the world, though not all sections are as enlightened. They had lots of birds, monkeys and, perhaps best of all, char kway teow, my favorite Malaysian dish. These stir-fried noodles certainly beat the cold vegetables and chicken full of bones that we’d been eating off banana leaves lately. Plus, none of those outdoor restaurants serve beer!

Peacock and me

After lunch we went to Dataran Merdeka or Independence Square. Here, an enormous Malaysian flag flies over what once was the cricket pitch, in colonial times. Around the square are several heritage buildings. Two, strikingly different, are both credited to British architect A.C. Norman: the Sultan Abdul Samad Building (originally Government Offices) and St. Mary’s Anglican Cathedral, a structure whose modesty, in its own way, impressed me equally. I later read that whereas the first building was largely designed by others, St. Mary's Church was by Norman's own hand. 

Sultan Abdul Samad Building, 1897

St. Mary's Cathedral (Anglican), 1894

No trip to Kuala Lumpur would be complete without going up a tall building. Its Petronas Towers were once the tallest in the world (knocking Chicago’s Sears Tower off its perch in 1998), but as in Chicago, the better view is from a slightly less tall building, KL Tower.

Petronas Towers viewed from the KL Tower

If you visit during the day, you can follow a canopy walk through a forest reserve; the walk leads directly up to the KL Tower. What’s remarkable about this forest reserve is that it’s a patch of original jungle, right in the middle of the modern city. Someone way back in 1906 had the forethought to keep this preserved. It was hot walking there, but not as hot as out in Merdeka Square!

Malaysia is an interesting example of how there is more than one way to be a Muslim nation. In fact, although we hear a lot about the strictest and most repressive way, far more of the world’s Muslims live in Asia than in the Middle East. That doesn’t mean I would want to live there. There are ethnic tensions in Malaysia that have at times turned deadly—not unheard of where a minority group (in this case ethnic Chinese) is seen to have disproportionate economic power. Then there’s the establishment of an official religion. I’m against all blurring of church and state, particularly when it means gay sex is outlawed (as it still is in Singapore as well). Sometimes The Discreet Traveler feels the advantage of the fact that lesbians are less visible than gay men virtually everywhere. We book whatever rooms we feel like and no one bats an eye. We are only women; what harm can we do?

Having said all that, I enjoyed our time in Malaysia. It’s a thriving nation, noticeably so after most of the other places in Asia we had visited. The mix of cultures was as refreshing as the obedience to traffic rules. In Chinatown, where even beer was relatively cheap, it felt like we were watching all the world go by.

He says what we're thinking

Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated fifty years ago. I can’t believe that I’m writing this on what would have been his 89th birthday, but recent lows in the U.S.A. compel me to note two problems. The first is more an explanation for my non-American readers, of a problem I have no solution for. I don’t have a solution for the second either, but if anyone has a helpful suggestion, I would love to hear it.

Lilies, Bird Park, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Right now the U.S. is a dysfunctional democracy. It does not function democratically because a minority rules the majority. I am not just referring to the Republican president being the loser of the popular vote, as that was true from 2001-04 as well. I am talking about being ruled in all branches of government by a party that does not have majority support. This party just passed a tax bill opposed by 64% of polled voters, including 70% of independents.  And poll after poll has shown 80 to 90% majorities in favor of background checks for gun owners, yet the party controlling government as consistently refuses to do anything at all about gun violence.

We need to stop thinking that the problem in America is one man who somehow bamboozled the Republican Party and is doing the damage all by himself. He is an embarrassment and more, but he is also a symptom. What he is a symptom of is made most clear in the statement heard time and again from Americans who supported him, before the election and since: “He says what we’re thinking.” 

The underlying diagnosis is that there are still people in our country who think these things, who say these things, and who are happy to hear the president say them. Why are we still shocked that everybody isn’t embarrassed, that he still has a large fan base no matter what he says or does? This is the man who told us, during his campaign, “I could shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose any voters.” 

I don’t know how many of the tens of millions who voted for this man still believe he can do no wrong. I hope it’s not that big a number, and I hope it’s shrinking. But what he has revealed—what he yanks the scab off of each and every day—is an America with a big problem. Not just a “divided” America but a culture war, a partisanship so bitter that we cannot cross over it. And we can’t cross it because there are lines that should not be crossed. There is racism and it is unacceptable. During the civil rights movement, some people were simply wrong. It may not have been popular—or safe—to call them wrong at the time, but they were, and everybody knows that now.

When did it become worse to be called a racist than to be racist? I don’t mean we should call people names and wipe our hands of each other. I mean calling out racism, or any other hatred, for what it is and wherever we see it, even within our own soul.

America has a soul problem. That is certainly not new. I am not sure how to solve either problem but if we don’t work on this second one, we aren’t going to get anywhere with the first, either. 

What do you think? I hear a lot of helplessness out there, so what can we actually do? It is so tempting either to get defensive, or to blame others. I see a lot of that whether from Democrats, Republicans, Americans, non-Americans; but it is not helpful. What would you actually do, in this new year, to make the country you live in better?

Dressing the part: Thailand to Malaysia

As it's Twelfth Night, the end of Christmas and the beginning of Epiphany, I have a few odds and ends to clear up. In my last post, I may inadvertently have given the impression that the sandman on the beach was "mine." In fact I didn’t build him, much as I’d have liked to. We don’t know who did!

We also received a picture from our tenants, of their Christmas tree. Our tenants are fabulous people, and we wouldn’t be on these travels without them. They are happy to live in our house as long as we’re happy to be away from it. Still, it was nice to see our old living room decorated for the holidays. 

Siem Reap to Bangkok was a long day's bus journey. The only thing that broke the monotony was getting out of the bus for about three hours at the border. That was how long it took to exit Cambodia (in a hot, semi-outdoors room with a fan), enter Thailand (they broke out the air conditioning), and get some water and lunch.

I often find that when I've traveled to a less familiar place, the more familiar place suddenly feels like "home," even though it's far from Canada or America. This is what happened in Thailand. When we first arrived in Bangkok in October, it seemed so exotic, the traffic so confusing; a whole new continent of Asia. By comparison with where we've been traveling, though, it felt like Chicago. Actual freeways. That switch back to the left-hand side of the road corresponded with the first real speed (over 50 km/h) we'd had for months. 

New Year's Eve dinner, Canton House, Chinatown

We were transiting back through Bangkok for our journey down the Malay peninsula. While we were sorting out flights to Penang, we had a couple of days. The highlight of being back in Bangkok was its culinary greatest hits, specifically those in Chinatown. We went back to Pork Satay Woman, still butch in her camouflage shorts, and Banana Pancake Man. When we first tried his heavenly concoction of crust spun like a pizza, egg, banana, and a drizzle of condensed milk, we thought we'd be eating this all along the "Banana Pancake Trail." But we never found its like again.

And so, to the subject of dressing the part. When we were last in Bangkok, Thais were getting ready for the last king’s funeral, so the city was more crowded. Also, many sites were closed including Bangkok’s most visited, Wat Phra Kaeo and the Grand Palace. This enclosure contains the former royal residence as well as the temple. We made a note to visit it when we came back and it was open.

This did not go quite as planned. Every time we visit a temple, we take two sarongs (that T. bought in Mauritius) in our day packs, in case we are showing shoulders or knees. Covering knees and shoulders, along with removing shoes, is required for a Buddhist house of worship. Normally T. wraps one sarong around her shoulders and I tie one around my waist like a skirt. 

This has been perfectly acceptable throughout our Asia travels, but for some reason, the guardswomen at Wat Phra Kaeo didn't like it, and insisted on T. wearing both the sarongs, which of course left me with none. I don't know if they wanted me to buy one of theirs but they were shouting pretty rudely, which took us aback, because we’ve always found Thai people to be friendly and welcoming. My responses kept getting talked over so I’m not sure to whom one of the women eventually said, "Come back tomorrow. Not good enough." 

Well, of course, we weren't going to come back tomorrow! So we went to get in the exit line (it was very crowded), whereupon the other woman, the especially rude one, kept yelling at me to leave. I said to her, "I am trying to get in the exit line like you said. Would you like me to jump the barrier?" Or that is what I tried to say, but she was talking over me: "I speak English!" T. said we should have asked her, "Can you speak it politely?" 

Reclining Buddha's feet, Wat Pho

In any case, we went next door to Wat Pho, which some say is their favorite of the big sites in Bangkok (and which we'd also missed first time around). It was a lovely and less crowded temple complex. Our normal sarong getup was perfectly acceptable there. We must not have been meant to visit the first place, because if we weren’t prepared to adhere to the requirements of a house of worship, we wouldn’t go in!

I take religion seriously, so if I’m going to visit a religious building, I’m happy to remove my shoes, or cover my knees and shoulders, or my head, for that matter. Which brings me to the National Mosque of Malaysia. 

Crenellated roof, Masjid Negara, Kuala Lumpur

This is the first Muslim country I've visited, and I'm not sure how but I'd never been inside a mosque before. Certainly I've seen plenty of mosques. I've visited cathedrals, conservative synagogues, Buddhist and Hindu temples, an African-American church in Harlem on Good Friday. And I know better than to walk in on someone’s prayer service and start taking pictures, any more than I would have done that during the Good Friday service. 


But outside of prayer times, everyone is welcome at the Masjid Negara, even to take pictures. Perhaps because everyone else was busy taking pictures of each other, one of the volunteers latched on to me. He told me that the mosque (which is inspired by Mecca's Grand Mosque) can accommodate 15,000 worshippers, praying side by side with each man's elbow touching his neighbor's, etc. This is because in Islam, there are not supposed to be any classes; everyone is equal. He also told me the mosque was built in 1965.

I told him I knew that, because my aunt had visited when the mosque was new. I didn't tell him she was photographed here wearing a miniskirt! These days, they just lend everybody robes.

Not sure lavender is my color

He talked, without my asking, about how wrong it is for anyone to take it upon himself to kill others, whether Muslim or non-Muslim. Not even God could forgive terrorist murderers, he said, because Islam states that it is as if such killers had taken the lives of the whole world. (The same teaching is in the Talmud.)

He was preaching to the choir, of course. I'm frequently appalled by things my co-religionists have done in the name of Christianity. And he told me that Islam holds that God could not have a son, in human terms, but I've heard that argument, not least from Judaism. He seemed happy to talk to me all day, about the Quran that I've read (interpreted), but he wasn't going to convert me, any more than I was about to convert him. It was about sharing his faith, in which I had shown interest. By the time he started to tell me why Islam doesn't represent God with any images in its art, he had a wry expression on his face. "The Second Commandment to Moses. You know."

I could not have been made more welcome. It helped that visiting the mosque, as well as borrowing a robe, is free. 

I think some people forget that they are visiting holy places and in many cases, active houses of worship. When we were at Wat Pho, there was a big holdup after the entrance, and those of us towards the back couldn’t see who was holding us back. As I soon learned from T., someone was doing crowd control while worshippers prayed at a shrine; then he would let another group of visitors through. There were tourists behind me (sounded American) who kept saying, more and more loudly, “What’s going on? They’re praying?!” Maybe these people were claustrophobic and panicking, which I could understand. But they could see that people were praying, and they knew they were in a temple. Couldn’t they respect that, and at least be quiet?

No one asks visitors to participate in the same rituals as believers. We are only asked to approach a place respectfully, because it is holy to others. That has less to do with religion than with being thoughtful towards other people.

Interior of prayer hall, Masjid Negara

That has recurred to me again and again throughout these travels. I've long believed, in the abstract, that what matters first and foremost is how people treat each other, not the categories we can put them into. But being on the road in so many different countries makes that real life. Day by day, we meet people who are friendly, who want to help us or just make us feel welcome, in their place of business or their house of worship or their country. This has been true of people in every country, whether or not it was our favorite place to visit. 

Some of the people are delightful, like the Malaysian woman who started chatting to us while we waited for our train to Kuala Lumpur. She lives in Penang, where we were, but was going to visit her son in KL. Like most Malay women, she had a colorful headscarf, to which she added a radiant, laughing smile. She didn’t want help with her bags or anything. She just wanted to talk to us before we boarded the same train.

Sometimes the people are a little odd, like the guy in Penang who stopped us on the street with a polite “Excuse me.” I thought he was going to ask us directions, which happens sometimes if you’re a pedestrian, even if it’s your first day in a city. But no—he wanted a photo with us! T. reckons either a blond or a redhead is fairly unusual on the streets of Malaysia; both of us together must have blown his mind. It’s a little weird that we’re in this guy’s selfie somewhere, but he was very appreciative, and wished us a good morning. This happened in Vietnam too.

The fact that most people, most of the time, no matter where I am, are nice and trying to get along makes it harder for me to understand the ones who aren’t. You might think being a world traveler would make me cynical about human beings, but instead, I find it an even greater mystery why some people inflict misery on others. Some intentionally, others by doing without thinking. I just think, The woman next to us at the train station is radiating humanity. Why can’t everybody do it?

It’s not something unique to her because of her nationality or religion. It’s just that she recognized us as being on the same journey.