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visiting family on mother's side, 29km into malaysia

by comrade commissar | Thomas | @ Monday, January 30, 2006, 2:11:00 AM

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We reached Woodlands Customs somewhere 3pm+ in the afternoon. I'll try to let the pictures the story of how we eventually reached my uncle's place at Kulai, Johore.

Half way across the causeway and the familiar comforting sight of HDB high-rise flats are already shrinking..

The customs over the other side. We moved forward at the pace of snails and waited forever. Latent feelings of misanthropy were revived.

Johor Bahru proper at last.

We stopped at a random coffee shop for lunch.

Got on a bus going to our destination afterwards.

Because I can.

We reached the main road of the town and got off. We had to get a cab to reach our uncle's place.

There's this thing about Malaysia where companies would undertake huge construction projects for some mega shopping centre and along the way either the company goes bust before construction works are completed or business at the new venue just went plain flipside. Either way, the ending result would be that these vast monstrosities of concrete pillars and steel rods would sit ugly at road sides, silent but jarringly visible and standing out as landscape eyesores.

And it seems like no one does anything about these abandoned sites - Some of these "buildings" remain there every year I go back. Its like as if land's so plentiful that "Hey, who cares about this site? Let's just move on to another plot and build another megalocomplex."

We finally arrived. 2 hours since we started.

The place lacked any real central planning, walls are chipped with paint peeling off or covered with greenish lichens.

The neighbourhood seemed to be a pocket carved out of the surrounding forest with palm tree plantations and vast fields of graves stretching as far as the eye can see. The planks on the see-saw have rotted away to nothing and one of the swings laid permanently condemned.

I love it here.

Uncle and family keep a dog to guard against robbery, which actually happens fairly often.

"Does he bite?" I asked. "Yeah, it has teeth." They replied.

So for quite a while I was misled into thinking that it kept making whining noises to act innocent and lure me in for some ankle-biting human meat feasting.

He's quite harmless actually. In fact I found out that he has quite a mild personality.

I'm not really a dog lover but this is one of those times where I'll make an exception. Nice doggy.

My aunty seemed incredulous. "You're telling me you dragged me out into my yard to look at the rooster sitting high on the tree?"

"Yeah." I said, "And there are actually 3 there!"

"Are you telling me you've never seen chicken running about freely upclose?"

"Of course I have! I've seen chicken in farms and- actually I haven't."

Once upon a time I ran about our now late grandparents' place, hide & seek at hard to reach places, playing catching and other childhood favourites. Today I'm seated on a sofa quietly sipping on a packet drink while my relatives chatter. Nearby, Anthony and my cousin Tom are working on how to get past a stage in Need For Speed Underground.

Times have changed.

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