The Backpacker (17 page)

‘OK, you go now,' the officer barked as Rick snatched the shirt, and pointed at the exit.

Counting down the nine people before Rick was awful; like waiting for a long-lost relative who never arrives. When the tenth person came out into the car park and it wasn't him I sank, staring vacantly down at my wrists and imaging the hand-cuffs on them. I looked back up and there he was, walking through the doorway, smiling like a Cheshire cat.

‘Your passport, sir,' he said, walking out into the Malaysian sunshine and holding out the little maroon book.

I stood up. ‘My God, what happened?'

‘Got chatting to that bird who checks the bags. Shall we go and have a cup of coffee? There's a tea stall over there.'

‘Coffee?' I snatched the passport from him. ‘Never mind fucking coffee! Let's get out of here.' I pointed across the car park. ‘Those buses go to Kuala Lumpur, I think.'

‘Think?'

Picking up my bag, I started to stride towards the buses, trying desperately to control my temper. ‘I don't care where they fucking go. I've been looking over my shoulder for a week now and I'm developing a stiff neck. As long as they go south we can end up in Timbuc-fucking-tu for all I care.'

The buses did go to Kuala Lumpur, and by early evening we were standing outside the main city bus terminus in the middle of a rush-hour river; a river of people going home from work. We were lost but happy; the anonymity afforded by the crowd swarming around us filling me with warmth.

Of all the lasting, snapshot images I have, I think the one of Rick and I standing in that busy main street is probably the most vivid. It seems strange to me that something as mundane as that can take precedence over much more significant events. How can one compare standing outside a bus station watching the pedestrian traffic to seeing a freshly severed human finger? Or allow it to take precedence in the mind over the sight of a beautiful Thai stripper in a Patpong bar?

The brain, however, is a funny thing, and I still have this image: Rick, dressed in tie-dye shirt and trousers and wearing sandals, with shoulder-length blond hair, standing next to me. I'm wearing shorts and a T-shirt, and my bag, containing what few valuables I have, is at my feet. Our skin is darker than any of the Malaysians who are walking past. Yuppies in suits, beautiful secretaries, grannies and school kids, all turn to stare at us.

Looking back at that crowd and nodding to each and every one of them was a tonic. The memories of recent events in Thailand seemed to float out of my head, as though washed in the river of people, and carried downstream. The longer we stood and stared, the less I remembered.

‘A change is as good as a rest' are words I now live by ever since that time we first arrived from Thailand. Life on Koh Pha-Ngan had become the norm and city life was something that we'd forgotten even existed. A change
is
as good as a rest providing it's a real change of lifestyle and not just location. There's no point going from Hat Rin to Phuket, because they're both beaches, and, likewise, it isn't a change if one spends six months in Phuket and then goes to a beach in Goa. I actually looked forward to breathing in the diesel fumes from the clapped-out buses and taxis that only city life has to offer. I wanted to be lost in the crowd and get pushed and shoved by people who were too busy to show any manners.

I remember feeling like Tarzan when he was brought out of the jungle and taken to the developed world. All the sounds and smells were different but vaguely familiar, having their origin somewhere in the natural world, and somehow refreshingly new. The people that walked past me looked refreshingly new too, like apes wearing clothes, as though it had taken a stark change of our lifestyle to become receptive enough to see it. It was like a short-sighted person being given a pair of specs for the first time in their life and suddenly everything coming into focus.

ONE

Although not expensive by Western standards, Malaysia was still a shock after Thailand and India, so we limited ourselves to a cheap guest house and only the essentials, such as beer drinking and the occasional disco. Our main task while in KL was twofold: to get Rick's stolen passport replaced and to get my camcorder repaired. I'd missed a lot of photo opportunities since it had packed in and didn't want to let any more once-in-a-lifetime experiences pass by my lens unrecorded.

Obtaining a passport turned out to be easy: Rick filled out a form, paid some money and a week later it was issued. Getting a camcorder repaired, on the other hand, was like asking them to build the space shuttle. Eventually, I resigned myself to missing out on any film-making opportunities that Malaysia had to offer, and convinced myself that memories of a cerebral kind were more meaningful and longer lasting then celluloid anyway.

A week into our stay in the Malaysian capital we came across a young traveller who'd also just left Thailand. He checked into our guest house one rainy afternoon and took the bunk-bed next to me, settling in without saying a word to anyone. His traveller clothing of khaki army shorts and baggy shirt gave him an air of experience that belied his youthful features, and upon first glance I took him to be in his early twenties. However, when I had a chance to study him closer I could see that he wasn't any older than twenty. He later revealed his age to be seventeen.

Tom, a gay Englishman who was also staying in the dorm, started the ball rolling. Jumping off the top bunk and holding out his hand, he introduced himself.

The boy looked up as the body went past. At first he didn't seem to realise he was being spoken to and immediately looked back down at his hands.

‘Where are you from?' Tom asked.

‘Holland,' the boy replied sheepishly.

Everyone in the room continued with what they had been doing but listened with pricked ears at the two soft voices.

‘Been here long? Malaysia I mean.'

‘Just arrived, from Thailand.' The boy lowered his eyes when he said the ‘land' of the word ‘Thailand'.

Tom, picking up on the body language, pretended to busy himself with something before continuing. ‘Been there myself. Didn't like it much, though, I had really expensive pair of designer jeans stolen from my washing-line on Koh Samui.' He paused, waiting for a reply, and said, ‘How about you?'

‘Terrible.' His reply was barely audible but was said with such heart-rending sadness that the other half-dozen of us in the room immediately stopped what we had been doing and turned to face him. He blinked hard as a tear formed in his eyes and nervously picked up a pen that had been lying on his bed. ‘Just terrible,' he repeated, fiddling with the cartridge. ‘I've lost all my money.'

‘What d'you mean, stolen?'

He nodded, looking down at the floor. ‘In Bangkok.'

Tom looked at each of us and tensed the veins in his neck.

I put down the dice I'd been playing backgammon with. ‘What happened?'

‘It was at the Palace in Bangkok, on my first day, last week.' He took a deep breath, fighting back the tears. ‘I was just taking a look around, and this man came up to me and asked if I needed a guide. I said... '

‘What, a Thai?'

‘Yes, he was Thai. And I said no, but he follows me.' He twiddled the pen between his fingers as though lost in the bad memory.

‘Go on.'

‘So I allow him to show me around. He did not want money, and I say to him, "Look, I will not pay you for this," and he agrees: no money, just friend. So, around one o'clock he asks me to go for lunch. He says that he knows Thai restaurants, and if I go with him he can get a good price for the food. So I think, OK, I am hungry, why not?'

Everyone in the room was now facing the boy, listening to the story.

‘Then we go to a cheap restaurant and have some nice food.' He looked at the floor and shook his head. ‘I don't know why I did it, I ask myself many times, "Joseph, why do you do this stupid thing?"'

‘Fooking hell, you only had something to eat.'

He looked up. ‘No, he put something in my food. I do not know what, but something bad. One hour later we are in my room and he tells me, "Get your passport and your traveller's cheques and come with me." So I do what he says and go to the bank with him and cash all of the cheques. I sign each one because he tells me to, I give him the cash because he tells me to, and I go back to the room because he tells me, "Go back to your room and say nothing".'

We were dumb-struck; eyes like saucers, mouths agape.

‘He even give me back the passport,' the boy continued. ‘The next day I wake up and remember everything. I go to the police but they can do nothing. I go to the bank but they tell me, "You come here yesterday and sign the cheques, so we issue cash."'

‘Shit, you remember doing all of these things?' I said, and leaned closer.

‘Everything.'

I turned to look at Rick who was watching the distant lightning through the window. ‘What kind of drug can do that Rick?'

He shrugged. ‘Nothing I've heard of. Except maybe that datera–' Rick caught himself saying rape and corrected the sentence, aware that the boy may have left out some less choice details of the tale, ‘that stuff they've got in America. I've heard that can be pretty weird.'

The boy looked embarrassed and took the pen apart with trembling hands. Tom tried to step in. ‘So,' he said breezily, ‘how long are you travelling for?'

‘Supposed to be three months. But now, after losing my money, I will be lucky if I can have three weeks.'

There was a deafening clap of thunder and the room was lit up by lightening. Tom walked over to the open door that led out to the roof and shut it, looking up at the brooding sky, his hands in his trouser pockets. ‘I was thinking of going out tonight as well. Does anyone want... ' He turned to face the room but stopped speaking when he saw the boy, tears rolling down his cheeks.

TWO

‘He's been raped.' Tom undid another button on his shirt as the three of us left the guest house and walked out into the wet humid night air. ‘No question about it. Either that or he's a good actor.'

We had decided to take up Tom's offer of a night on the town. The weather had improved, but more than that we wanted to be free of the atmosphere that had descended upon the guest house since the Dutch boy's arrival. Everyone in the room had done their best to cheer him up but it was a lost cause; he'd probably be better off if he went back to his family in Holland and forgot all about Asia.

‘He should write if off as a bad dream,' I said, stepping over a black bin-liner full of rubbish that floated past in the street. A minibus went down the road, the spray from its wheels fanning out in four shimmering arcs of gold under the glow of the yellow street lights. ‘Jesus, what happened to the road?'

The street outside the guest house was now a river that ran shopfront to shopfront, a foot deep, the wave created by each passing vehicle lapping against the doors and window panes before being sent back like an echo. There were black bin-bags floating everywhere like mines, menacing, ready to go off when struck by an unwary moped.

I rolled up my jeans and took off my trainers. ‘It's now or never.'

‘Never,' said Rick, and did the same. ‘You coming or not, Tom?'

Tom looked out from the safety of the entrance step, left-right, left-right. ‘Can't let you boys have all the fun now can I? Besides,' he said, taking off his Gucci shoes, ‘I'm the only one who knows where the Bongo disco is.'

Earlier in the day, and in fact twice previously, Tom had invited us to go out on the town with him and we had refused each time, concocting poor excuses why we had to stay in, only to go out the minute he had left the guest house. The reason was simple: he was gay.

When Tom had first arrived at the guest house two days after us, I had been out eating some noodles, and on the way back passed a Danish guy who'd been sharing our dorm. He was carrying his backpack. ‘Where are you going?' I'd asked, knowing that he'd only arrived the day before us and had said that he intended to stay in KL for a week.

‘To find another place, then I can sleep at night,' he replied gruffly. ‘You will see. Goodbye to you, John.' He shook my hand hurriedly and walked off. Mmm, strange behaviour.

Back at the guest house, however, everything became clear the moment I entered the dorm. All of the men, Rick included, were huddled in one corner, while the new arrival, Tom, stood in the other, unpacking his silk travellers' bed sheet.

Typically, the girls fell in love with him instantly, buzzing around him and checking out his designer bits and pieces as though they were antiques, holding them with kid gloves and cooing longingly. Tom went through his essentials for their benefit, on a sort of guided tour of the stuff that he considered absolutely necessary for a successful world tour. He laid out immaculately folded silk socks and underwear, all monogrammed, crocodile skin diary with his name embossed on the front in gold leaf, gold fountain pen, lap-top and palm-top computers, and a baffling array of personal products, from anti-wrinkle eye cream to gold-plated shaving brush and matching traveller's toothbrush. He even carried a solid silver knife and fork. ‘Don't want to get caught eating with my fingers,' he proclaimed, holding them up for us to see.

Rick, who'd been occupying the bottom bunk beneath Tom, immediately moved his gear to the other side of the room under the pretext of wanting to be closer to the window for fresh air; I think if he could have put a bed on the roof he would have slept outside. Tom brushed the snub aside with congeniality born out of familiarity. He unpacked his gear, and after a brief conversation with us, got ready to sample the best of the nightlife that KL had to offer, using the gay man's equivalent of
Lonely Planet
as his guide. ‘Anyone like to join me?' he'd asked as he slipped into a pair of Versace jeans. His reply was four vigorously shaking heads from people who looked like they'd been asked to witness an autopsy.

Two sisters who were also staying in the dorm went along with Tom that night, and rolled up drunk in the early hours of the next morning while the rest of us were just waking. ‘Fantastic,' they both said, ‘the best party I've ever been to.' They also said that the places they had been to were not excessively gay, though there were gay people in them, the same as in any straight place. Twice more the following week they went out together, and both times came back with the same glowing reports. ‘John,' said my backgammon partner, ‘the women in these places are stunning, just stunning. Go with him. You'll love it.'

The three of us tiptoed down the street, ankle-deep in warm brown water, and turned alongside an embankment of the so-called river that runs through the city. I say ‘so-called' because it's really just a concrete storm drain no more than thirty feet across.

‘It's shown as a river on the maps to make KL look more impressive,' Tom said in answer to my query. ‘Nobody's going to write
KL storm drain
on a tourist map are they?' Rick and I walked on in silence and Tom continued. ‘I mean, here they are trying to bring KL into what they think is the twenty-first century by cutting down all the trees and pouring concrete over everything, while the developed world is moving forward by doing exactly the opposite! Building roads through jungles, and concreting over the banks of a river isn't going to convince anyone outside of Malaysia that they're forward-thinking is it?' He swept a hand through the air. ‘Look at it; one rainstorm and the place comes to a standstill. It's just politicians and their developer friends playing their little games, that's all.'

We stopped at a roadside stall to put our shoes and socks back on and, much to the proprietor's disappointment, left without eating, only using his toilet paper to dry our feet.

‘Food here's terrible anyway,' Rick said as we walked on. ‘Wait till we get to Singapore; none of that fish-head curry crap down there, you'll see, John.'

‘Are we going to Singapore?' I said. ‘That's the first I've heard.'

Rick shoved his hands into the pockets of his new marbled jeans and shrugged. ‘Might as well keep going south.'

While we walked through the shiny, wet, concrete streets to the disco, past shopfront after bland shopfront, Rick told us how his father, an engineer in the RAF, had taken him to a Singapore nightclub at the tender age of eleven and shown him what real men get up to at night. According to Rick's memory there were more strip joints in Singapore than there were people to fill them, and you literally had to fight the girls off. We reminded him that the memory of an eleven-year-old, combined with the dramatic changes that had swept through Asia over the past decade might mean that Singapore wasn't the place it used to be.

‘Bollocks,' he retorted, ‘nothing changes out here. Least not deep down anyway.'

We crossed a busy main road, got lost, crossed the same road twice more, perspiring heavily as we walked down the humid streets, and eventually entered the Bongo disco. The club was a pretty standard affair, typical of all KL's discos; serving as a pub for the business clientele at lunchtime and early evening, before the city's young and trendy, either from work or home, descended and got the place moving at night.

‘You two ought to go to Australia if you're running out of money,' Tom shouted over the bass-line, putting the drinks on the table. ‘At least then you can earn enough to move on.'

‘Have you been there?' I asked, taking my beer.

‘Loads of times, I love it.' He offered a small cigar and I took it. ‘Sydney anyway,' he continued. ‘The rest of the country's OK; Gold Coast, Byron and what have you, but Sydney's the only city.'

Rick took a cigar. ‘What about the other cities, what are they like?'

‘There are no other cities in Australia. Not as you'd imagine a city anyway. You're from London, right, John?'

I nodded.

‘Then all the other places Melbourne, Adelaide, Brisbane, they'd be like villages to you. Christ, Adelaide isn't even a village!' He leaned over the table and lit us all up. ‘No, your best bet, if you're low on dough, is to get to Sydney and find a job. At least you won't have to go home. All you've got to do is make it as far east in Indo as you can and then hop over.

‘Where?' I said moving closer, unsure of the last part of his sentence.

‘Indonesia,' Rick clarified. ‘From where?'

‘I usually go from Bali, but then I'm not short of cash. If you haven't got enough money just keep going east.' He took a sip of his martini. ‘Remember, the further east you go the nearer you'll be to Australia, and the cheaper the fare'll be. Don't let anyone tell you it's cheaper to fly from Bali because it's not.'

I looked at Rick again. We hadn't really discussed any plans other than saying, ‘when the money stops, we'll stop'. He shrugged back at me, indicating that he had about as much idea of where to go as I had. I looked back at Tom and said, ‘What about boats? Can't we get from Indo to Oz by boat and save on the airfare?'

‘Dunno. There's a rumour, but I haven't done it, and I don't know anyone who has. Timor's within spitting distance of Australia's northern coast, and Indo's a sea-faring nation, so it seems likely.' He waited and watched our expressions. ‘Surely you two have got the money for the airfare, it's only a couple of hundred bucks.'

I gulped down the beer he'd bought. ‘Buy us another.'

‘Christ, are you really that strapped for cash?'

‘I reckon we've got enough to get through Indo,' I said, ‘but that's about it. We couldn't afford a flight, no way. Remember, we've been on the road for over a year.'

He seemed taken aback. ‘Haven't you worked in all that time?'

‘Nope.' Rick and I grinned proudly and puffed on our cigars.

Tom hadn't been the first person to suggest Australia as a possible goal. The two sisters at the dorm had also just come from there and, like many of the people we'd met in Thailand who were going in the opposite direction to us, said that they'd had a great time. Nobody had a bad word to say about the country; travellers from Britain to Israel gave it ten out of ten on all counts.

In fact the only people I'd heard giving Australia a bad press were the Australians themselves, who were either indifferent about the place or said that it was boring. One Aussie we'd met in Hat Rin had remarked that the country was OK but, ‘Mate, the women are dogs.' When I queried his statement, suggesting that the ones I'd seen so far didn't seem too bad, he just nodded wisely and said, ‘You haven't been to Australia!'

I was going to ask Tom about the female situation but thought better of it, instead raising my glass and saying, ‘Cheers!'