After five days as a beach bum, it was a welcome change to return to the very Malay east coast town of Kota Bharu, with its night food market, handicraft shops and trappings of modern civilisation.

I went with two just-met friends, Louise and Michelle, to a shadow puppet exhibition - in the darkness an old man rang out scary stories of heros and demons. Video footage here. Michelle had been living in Bali, and filled me with curiousity about the mysticism and friendliness of the place.
It was noticeable that night, how conscious Michelle and Louise were of being female travellers. At one point Michelle thought we were being followed by two stocky local men. We kept an eye on them, but fortunately, either they were just coincidentally going the same way for a while, or the aura of menace I give off persuaded them to change their minds.

The morning after, a strange development. I dropped in to Louise and Michelle's room, and they were shaken up, asking me if I'd heard a banging on the door the previous night. At eleven o'clock, them both in bed, someone had started drumming on their door. "Who is it?" brought no response. Eventually a voice shouted, "You haven't paid, your friends have paid, you need to pay now"! They asked who the demander was, he didn't respond. Quite concerned, not sure whether this was a geniune hotel employee or some scammer, they said they could pay tomorrow and it was quite rude to wake them up and demand payment. But the mystery man didn't go away, so they opened the door to speak to him. He started swearing at them for calling him rude - "Fuck you, fuck you"! They agreed with him, in the end, to pay the next day and closed the door.
I showed them a photo on the hotel wall of Ewan, the nice manager who had taken me and my friends to the English-Portugal match, and bought me breakfast afterwards. "That's him", said Michelle. How Ewan had turned evil I didn't know, perhaps he had been drinking, but the two of them had been really upset by the whole experience. It was for me a small insight into how the other half lives. Ewan was not around that morning to explain the events.
Incidentally, I was pretty sure I hadn't paid for the dorm bed (although... I check into hotels almost on autopilot nowadays), but figured if Ewan was going to use my paying as an example to shout at my friends, I would accept his version of events. So, later that day, I just waved goodbye at one of the staff when I checked myself out and walked to the bus station.

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A little further down the coast, Kuala Terengganu is, like Kota Bharu, one of the very few big towns in Pennisular Malaysia with a Malay ethnic majority. But its character feels very different -socially freer, far less shy and reserved. People look up and smile hellos as I walked the streets. Terengganu is situated as a great river joins the South China Sea, and the walkway facing the river sleeps until the evening, when open air restaurant stalls begin their business. Young and old people lean against the sea wall, backs to the river, sea and reddening sun, perhaps in the manner of people in coastal towns all over the world. I ate Nasik Lemak (coconut rice, red sauce over chicken, little fried fishes sprinkled) in one of the semi permanent diners facing the river. Slowly, more and more of the children hanging around the stall started talking to me. The largest kid, a quite chunky thirteen year old (the kind of boy that scares the other children until everyone else's growth spurt begins) periodically pushed the others around or tried to convince me they weren't Malay. It was amusingly simple stereotyping - darker skin made you Indian, lighter made you Chinese. The accused loudly denied the charges. After I had been typing for a while, three of the smaller boys ended up standing behind me and reading out each word as I entered it on the screen. After I finished a paragraph, I asked them if they understood what they'd been reading out. They shook their heads.

The moment of realising how different Terengganu was came as I left. I was trying to find the toilets in the bus station, saw a teenage girl in jeans, t-shirt and head scarf covered head, and asked her. She brightly responded, "I will show you"! As we walked off, someone who I guess was her boyfriend shouted something silly at her from his motorcycle (probably, "Where are you going with that foreigner"?). Her response as we walked away from them was to stick out her bum and wiggle it at him (ie: "Oh shut up"!).

Daniel 5 July 2004, Singapore