Kuala Lumpur
I dropped into Malaysia armed with F. Spencer Chapman’s anti-Japanese guerrilla war memoir The Jungle is Neutral and took his words to heart. ‘It is the attitude of mind that determines whether you go under or survive. There is nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.’ Chapman survived the jungle’s ‘green hell’ — of blackwater fever, leeches, beriberi, sores, the Nips and a starvation diet of tapioca and rat (which he says is better than chicken) — for more than three years.
I lasted less than three weeks.
It was my first time in Malaysia, but I knew I had been here before, because it looks just like everywhere else in the world today. Tesco, KFC, the golden arches, Indian curry, Chinese noodles, air-conditioning. I could have been in Phoenix, or Slough. As we got sucked endlessly down eight-lane highways I pressed my nose against the car window. Once I glimpsed a hornbill soaring above a dwindling patch of mighty trees about to be bulldozed to make way for another food hall. Another day, in the Cameron Highlands, I saw a Sakai aboriginal smoking a ciggy on the porch of his delightfully constructed bamboo kongsi-house.
Otherwise I knew we were in Asia only because the high-rises were covered in pinkish tiles — typical for the Far East — of the kind you see in public lavatories. What is singularly Malaysian, however (apart from the Petronas Towers and a liking for 1980s pop music), is that everywhere you see teams of men cutting the grass. Once they had blowpipes. Now they have strimmers. And shop manikins dressed in cultural garb and plastic orchids.
Why am I so aggrieved? I have been conned, that’s why. Back home in Kenya we are always told that, in 1960, the average African country’s GNP was exactly the same as Malaysia’s.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in