Tag Archives: Malaysia

28th May picture of the day…

28 Friday May 2021

Posted by in Malaysia, Musings, Photography, Picture of the day, Travel

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Well, that’s it – We’re now both now ‘double-dosed’ – having received the second of my Covid jabs yesterday and Dawn today. Compared to the first dose this one hasn’t been too bad. I don’t feel any major side effects – apart from the fact my 5G reception’s amazing and I’ve developed a curious interest in ‘news’ programmes on Russia Today!

The same as last time I received my jab at Boots the chemist in Huddersfield, where part of the 1st floor’s been converted for the purpose. It was a slick operation but not as quick as last time because they had more people wanting the jab, which can only be a good thing. That said, most of the folks I overheard talking were like me and in for their second dose. I can only hope that the succesful rollout of the inoculation programme will allow us to return to normal, even if normal won’t be what it was. The big question now is how the rest of the world fares as I suspect it won’t be until next year that we’re finally out of the woods.

Dawn’s reaction to her second jab seems much like mine – feeling ‘Meh’, and with a few neck cramps, but that’s it. Infinately preferable to the alternative anyways! Neither of us had anything planned for today as we didn’t know how we’d react so we’ve had a quiet (if productive) day. Whilst I’ve spent the day scanning the last slides from my 1991-92 world trip Dawn’s been busy baking. The smells drifting up from the kitchen as a Victoria sponge cake’s cooking have been wonderful!

The pair of us are having a quiet night in so all that remains is for me to choose the picture of the day. I’ve a large backlog of slides scanned that need editing, so I thought I’d use the very last one I have from my trip before I flew back from Kuala Lumpur to London with Aeroflot. Reading through my old diaries there’s sooo many stories that I could relate – but they’ll be saved for when I have more time to spend writing.

My last day was ‘interesting’ as I only had 6 Malaysian Ringgitt left. I’d maxxed out my credit card on buying my flight back to the UK and that was the only cash I had left. I had enough to buy a bunch of Rambutans (a fruit similar to a Lychee) and the fare for the bus to the airport. Oh, and my camera was playing up too. The mirror kept locking up so I never knew if it would work or not. But, I managed to get this final shot on the 8th October 1992. I was people watching outside the Central market and spotted this blind musician busking along with his daughter/grand-daughter. I may have been on my uppers but nothing like this. Never forget, there’s always someone worse off than you…

Having spent the past few months looking back 30 years I’ve often wondered what happened to the people in my pictures? From the other travellers I met and spent time with to random street scenes like this. This young girl would probably be a middle-gaed mother by now, probably with Grandchildren of her own. I wonder what the stories of their lives were after I froze them as moments in time three decades ago? They’ll live forever like this in pictures, but what happened afterwards?

Hopefully I’ll have the rest of the old scans edied and added to this gallery in the next week or so. After that I move on to albums from the next phase of my life. Having returned from travelling in 1992 my life took a very different turn – and travelling became an even bigger part of it…

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30th April picture of the day…

30 Friday Apr 2021

Posted by in Malaysia, Musings, Picture of the day

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Wait? What? It’s the end of April already – where’s the year gone whilst we’ve all been sat on our backsides at home? I thought time was meant to drag during lockdown but the opposite seems to be the case. Either that or someone’s been sneakily stealing days off my calendar whilst I’ve not been looking. As we’re now allowed out will someone please give me some of those days back so that I can savour them in the style in which they should be enjoyed? Joking apart, the year does seem to be flying by but for the life of me I can’t work out why unless it’s the ‘Groundhog Day’ effect. I wouldn’t mind but I’ve got so much that I want to do this year I really don’t want to run out of time.

Today’s been a good day – apart from the weather which has been cold with momentary flurries of rain and hail. Mind you according to Facebook’s memory prompt a few years ago we were covered in snow at this time – so I shouldn’t really complain. I certainly had a valid excuse to hole up at home ‘type-swiping’ to get an article written and a few more archive pictures added to my Zenfolio website which makes it rather a productive day.

Those old slides supply me with the picture for today. My 1991-92 solo odyssey has moved on from Thailand (yesterdays picture) to Malaysia where I discovered what – 30 years later – is still what I regards as a ‘happy place’. I’m sure many of us have them. They’re somewhere you’ve discovered where you feel perfectly at ease and at home for a whole host of reasons. Georgetown in Penang island, Malaysia is one of mine. I’ve been going back there every few years ever since. The first time I arrived I fell in love with it and that feeling remains despite the fact it’s changed a lot since those early days. What hasn’t changed is the mix of cultures (Malay, Chinese and Indian) the fantastic food, the fascinating architecture or the laid back atmosphere. Like many backpackers I ended up staying on Lebuh Chulia. In may case it was at an old Chinese hotel called the Eng Aun. It’s still there today but it’s gone much more upmarket from when I took this picture on the 1st May 1992.

Hotels like this had a central hall with reception on the ground floor behind which was a central staircase to the first floor. Each floor had rooms off to each side. The thing I remember about the Aun was the smell. It had a really weird one and I never worked out what it was. It wasn’t Durian (the stinky SE Asian fruit banned from most public transport) but it did smell like something had died beneath the floorboards! After a couple of days you got used to it, but I’ll never forget it! I passed through a couple of times on that trip and met some great people staying there. Nowadays I stay just around the corner in a place I first discovered in 1997, but I’ll never forget this place as my first introduction to Malaysia after a long trip overland from Thailand.

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14th April picture of the day…

14 Wednesday Apr 2021

Posted by in Malaysia, Musings, Picture of the day

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In an effort to be positive, optimistic and get loads of stuff done I was up and scanning old pictures at 06:30 this morning but by day’s end I find myself in pensive mode for a whole range of reasons. Maybe I’m just feeling the weight of history on my shoulders when I look back at pictures I’ve not paid attention to for nearly 30 years and I realise just how much the world’s changed in that time – as have I.

It’s not that a lot of the day’s been a bad one as I’ve achieved quite a bit, but there’s still a niggling feeling that no matter how hard I run, time’s catching up with me…

The day dawned bright (if not particularly warm) here in West Yorkshire. It’s almost like the weather Gods are teasing us. They dangle Spring in our faces then slap us with frosts and freezing temperatures just to remind us how capricious and powerful they are! Despite the weather, Bluebells are beginning to stick their heads up in the local woods – the brave souls. Back at home the central heating’s still earning its keep especially early morning, although we’re hoping that can’t be for much longer. I’ve noticed the temperature more as I had a crap week on the exercise front compared to the previous so I’d been stuck more indoors but I’m determined to up the ante this one – so far with success, but the long round-trip walk through the woods can still be rather chilly although its wonderful to hear the bird chorus now it’s Spring. You certainly don’t feel alone when you’re walking as you’re followed by the sounds of all manner of feathered creatures – even if you can’t always see the buggers!

Back at home I managed to make a sizeable dent in my email inbox by wading through a four-figure sum of the traffic contained therein. Remember the old days when it was exciting to receive an email? I do – but a bit like my youth – those days are long gone!

I mention stuff like email because of the picture of the day which is from my 1991/92 travels when such things never even existed. Then ‘you got mail’ was a physical letter sent to a ‘poste restante’ address which was normally the main Post Office in a city on your route. It was all a bit hit and miss as many post offices would only hold mail for 30 days before returning to sender (and I lost a few that way) so you had to have a pretty good idea of where you’d be and when.

‘When’ or rather maybe ‘where’ is a question I’ve been asking myself about the location of today’s picture. I’ve loads more new scans to choose from but I’ve been trying to keep the trip linear, so today’s shot comes from the country I moved onto from the last pic in Thailand. I took this in Georgetown on Penang Island Malaysia on the 3rd May 1992. This was my first visit to Georgetown and I fell in love with it immediately. It’s one of my ‘happy places’ and I keep returning to it as a consequence. I really feel at home here. It’s laid-back, cosmopolitan, colourful and with a fascinating history. Oh, and the food is divine because of that melange of cultures.

Of course it was rather different 30 years ago as it was a lot more run-down, but maybe that’s one of the reasons I fell in love with it. It had the air of a place time had rather passed by – as this shot shows. I had to chuckle when (as an English speaker) I saw the name of the coffin shop…

Nowadays many of these of Chinese shop-houses have been converted into fancy homes or boutique hotels or eateries. It’s a double-edged sword. On one hand old businesses like this are forced out because of prices and the area becomes more gentrified and loses some of its history. But, on the other, it means more are restored to their former glory. My concern is that it could mean the place becomes another Singapore where the buildings are saved but the character of the place is lost.

You’ll be able to find more of my pictures from Malaysia in this gallery very soon…

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The fake environmentalists of Hs2Rebellion let their mask slip…

04 Thursday Feb 2021

Posted by in 'Green' madness, Air Travel, Hs2, HS2Rebellion, Malaysia, Politics, Travel

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I’ve always said that Extinction Rebellion and HS2Rebellion are anything but real environmentalists. Both organisations have jumped on the ‘green’ bandwagon to further a wider (anti-capitalist) agenda and nothing more – hence some of their mad tactics that do nothing to promote tackling climate change. Exactly the opposite in fact. One only has to look at the way XR have frequently disrupted public transport in the UK, even going as far as disrupting electric public transport by gluing themselves to trains on the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) or standing on the roofs of Underground trains!

HS2Rebellion are doing the same with High-Speed 2, opposing a green railway that is the only way we’ll have the rail capacity to get modal shift from road air to rail to cut our biggest source of Co2 emissions (transport) and meet our international obligations to tackle Climate Change.

Today, HS2Rebellion let the cat out of the bag by showing they either don’t understand the issues – or just don’t care. Their target was the news that Malaysia has cancelled the proposed High-Speed rail project between Kuala-Lumpur and Singapore and they used this (superficial) report on the BBC from a freelance journo based in Singapore. In the report it mentions that there are 30,000 local flights between Singapore and Kuala Lumpur per annum – as well as a 24 hour bus service. Here’s what XRebellion have to say on their Facebook page.

Yet again we have supposed ‘environmentalists’ playing along to the right-wing libertarian narrative about costs. This is bizarre. After all, aren’t they the ones who’re always telling us that there is no ‘Planet B’ and that the environment is priceless? Not if you’re intending to build High-Speed rail it seems (roads? No problem – carry on!).

What is it that these ‘environmentalists’ are deliberately ignoring? Simple, just how much carbon those different modes of transport generate. Take a look at this and compare domestic flights, buses and high-speed rail (mentioned as ‘Eurostar’ on this chart).

Here you have the blatant hypocrisy of XR and HS2Rebeliion exposed in black and white in one simple chart.

Over in the UK there’s a similar picture. The biggest market for domestic aviation is between Scotland and London’s airports. HS2 (like HS1 before it with flights to Brussels and Paris) will make severe inroads into that market by speeding up Anglo-Scottish services, as Chris Ogilvie often points out.

I have to declare an interest here. I know Malaysia (and Singapore) well. I’ve been travelling there since 1992 and maintain a keen interest in the areas political, economic and transport issues. In the past, I interviewed the then head of Malaysian Railways for the International Railway Journal and I maintain contacts inside both countries, which is why I know the BBC story isn’t the full story by any means. Even so, for ‘environmentalists’ to gloat over the failure to building a carbon-neutral alternative to 30,000 horribly polluting domestic flights a year (never mind all those 24 hour, 5 hour coach trips) is mad – but then, these people aren’t real environmentalists. What’s depressing is the number of genuine ‘green’ groups and people who’ve been taken in by them. We’ve now gone from saving the planet by any means to saving the planet – just as long as the price is right! This is why I’ve long maintained that the the UKs ‘green’ movement (or what passes for it) simply isn’t fit for purpose as they’ve become just another limb of the libertarian right. You have to ask, how (and why) did ‘greens’ suddenly start celebrating the failure of plans for high-speed rail networks whenever and wherever in the world they happen, and how on Earth can they still call themselves greens?

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Thank you!

20th November picture of the day…

20 Friday Nov 2020

Posted by in Malaysia, Photography, Picture of the day, Politics, Religion, Travel

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After the excitement of breaking free from the office on a sunny day yesterday, and the chance to get some interesting and historical pictures to boot – today’s been back to the usual pattern in more ways than one. The glorious sunshine was a flash in the pan and here for one day only. Today we reverted to heavy grey skies, rain and the light levels that would make a troglodyte feel at ease.

This has meant I’ve worked from home all day, juggling the mundanities of everyday life with editing and scanning pictures and arranging a couple of commissions, so my times been well spent – if a little frustrating at times as I watch the latest political shenanigans on the news. That the Home Secretary’s found to have been bullying her staff is (obviously) a resigning matter. Only it’s not the perma-smirking Priti Patel that resigns – it’s the Senior Civil Servant who conducted the investigation into the allegation and who was hung out to dry by Johnson! So, no change there then. The old film adage about “who do I have to f**k to get a part in this movie” has turned into “what do I have to f**k-up to get the sack around here”? Nothing, apparently – unless you count making up a derogatory nickname for the Prime Minister’s latest squeeze! Honestly, how this country ever managed to rule 1/3 of the planet is beyond me…

Still, I did manage to get out for a long walk in the drizzle and murk, which was good. After being in self-imposed isolation its lovely to be building up the exercise again. This weekend Dee’s on another ‘virtual retreat’ as part of an online group she really enjoys being part of – so it’s a good excuse to get out from underneath her feet and get a few more miles walking under my belt. Admittedly, I have other plans too as I’ve still loads of stuff to get onto eBay. Methinks this will be a productive weekend because of it. After all, it’s not like we’ve got much else to do during this lockdown – and I’d much rather feel the time was being spent doing something useful rather than sat on a sofa watching TV…

Today’s picture of the day is one of the latest batch of slide scans. I’m slowly working my way through an album of pictures from Malaysia and Indonesia. 95% of them have never made it onto my picture websites before, so it’s great to finally bring them to a wider audience. Today’s image was taken in the Batu Caves outside Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia in the first week of July 1998. The caves are an important site for Malaysia’s Hindu community and well worth a visit, both to enjoy the caves themselves but also some of the shrines to Gods in the Hindu pantheon.

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Thank you!

18th November picture of the day…

18 Wednesday Nov 2020

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Today’s been another wild and windy one here in the Pennines, so I’ve spent most of the day cooped up at home scanning old slides from Malaysia whilst catching up on emails, eBay and sending off pictures to magazine. Work’s picking up, which is good, and tomorrow the weather’s meant to be rather good, so I’m having a day out to record more changes to our railways – you’ll be able to see what I’m up to in a rare opportunity for a rolling blog!

As it’s late I’ll now go straight to the picture of the day which is one of the batch I scanned earlier. Taken in Melaka, Malaysia at the end of June 1998 it shows a sigh at a Chinese temple which caused me to do a double-take!

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17th November picture of the day…

17 Tuesday Nov 2020

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All in all it’s not been a bad day – if one ignores the world falling apart around one that is! But from a personal perspective it’s been rather productive. Having been cooped-up for the past couple of weeks I was happy to escape the confines of the house for long enough to meet my exercise targets for the first time since we had to self-isolate. The weather may not have been great as we’ve had gloomy, gloomy skies and threats of rain all day, but even a stroll down into Sowerby Bridge was enjoyable – even if there was nothing to do there other than pick up some shopping! Simple pleasures…

Admittedly, the walk back along the canal was lovely. There’s something special about being able to walk alongside water and the stillness of the canal where the only interruptions are Ducks is very therapeutic. The exercise was a lovely break from staring at screens – although I’m back to that now as I trawl through emails whilst scanning old slides. Mind you, some emails are welcome, such as the one I received earlier telling me that a commission regarding some new train conversions is back on. I’ll be blogging about that another time but it’s a welcome return to a semblance of normalcy. As well as dealing with the present I’ve still been scanning old slides from the past – which has provided me with the picture of the day – which is very much a moment in time.

I took this on the 10th June 1998 in the Perhentian Islands, Malaysia. This is people of all nationalities (including a solitary Scot!) gathered around a TV in a restaurant to watch the opening match of the 1998 World Cup which was between Scotland and Brazil. Neither Lynn nor I were great football fans, but what struck me about this night was how international it was. There were people from dozens of countries who’d pitched up in the Perhentians who just wanted to watch the footy! There’s another twist too. These two islands are mostly ‘dry’. Alcohol’s hard to come by (or expensive when you can get it) so it was probably one of the most sober group of football supporters I’ve ever seen – hence the absence of beer bottles on the tables. Even so, looking back at this picture I remember it as a cracking night in a place I’ll always remember.

I’m gradually scanning the rest of the pictures from this trip, so expect more from some off-the beat locations to feature over the next week or two…

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Thank you!

16th November picture of the day…

16 Monday Nov 2020

Posted by in Malaysia, Photography, Picture of the day, Travel

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Apologies for the break in the daily picture. It wasn’t because I didn’t have any – exactly the opposite. I’ve had a very busy couple of days scanning old slides. So much so that I’ve finally finished the last album of old UK railway images which has left me elated as its taken donkey’s years! At least it’s a positive legacy from 2020 and Covid, as without lockdown 1 and 2 I’d never have found the time and I’d still be ploughing my way through them. Of course, it’s not quite the end of the story. I still have a couple of albums of foreign railway pictures which total several hundred pictures. Then there’s the thousands of old travel pictures – but I’ve already made a start on those today. The good thing about the travel shots is they’re simpler to caption and there’s an awful lot of duplicates in the later albums, so scanning them won’t take anywhere near as long (says he, optimistically).

I’ve added all the rail shots to various galleries on my Zenfolio website which you can find by following this link. The current batch of travel shots all be added to a single gallery as they’re from the ’round the world’ trip that Lynn and I embarked on between 1997-99. You can find that one here. I’ve set it up so that the most recent additions will appear at the front of the gallery and the oldest last – although I’ll change that when it’s complete.

With lockdown part 2 here and work sparse and sporadic, I should have time to get through quite a few old slides before the country starts reopening next month. In the meantime, here’s today’s picture. I took this in May 1998 at the indoor market in Kota Baru on the East Coast of Malaysia. I find Asian markets fascinating places because they’re so vibrant and colourful – stocked with an amazing array of produce and people. Kota market had the advantage of a circular balcony which made a great vantage point for photography – as you can see. It allowed me to get this candid shot as the two women were unaware of my being there.

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Thank you!

6th October picture of the day…

06 Tuesday Oct 2020

Posted by in Malaysia, Picture of the day, Travel

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Today’s been another day spent working from home and grappling with the capricious nature of technologies such as the internet. I’d a Community Rail Awards Zoom meeting arranged for 10am, so that my fellow judge (Mark Barker) and I could talk to a station friends group. So, of course, my internet connection decides to play hard to get: Literally! I spent a good half hour rebooting stuff or tinkering with settings before the damn thing decided to behave again. Meanwhile I was trying to transfer hundreds of pictures from my round Britain trip to RAIL magazine, which had to be paused whilst I was having the meeting – just in case both got screwed up.

On the bright side (?) we’ve had a miserable day weather-wise, so being stuck at home was hardly a hardship and everything worked out in the end. Although it does feel slightly surreal to be talking to old friends who only live down the road on Zoom rather then just popping in to see them – such is the mad world we all currently inhabit, and one that doesn’t look like sanity will return to for quite some time – and I’ve not even touched on politics…

I’m taking a break from that form of madness and keeping my spleen unvented until the pressure becomes too much. I’m too busy trying to keep on top of my writing jobs and decluttering the house – hence more and more railway items ending up on my eBay account. Hopefully, once I’ve got this series of RAIL articles in the bag I’ll have the time to add some of the larger items of railway memorabilia as I’ve mostly been focusing on pictures as they’re easy and the P&P is simple.

OK, It’s time to cut the rambling and move on to the picture of the day, which is more about the harder side of life than the scenic side of travel. I took this picture in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 23rd February 2012. A homeless man is using water from a storm drain on the side of the Gombak River (which is enclosed in concrete at this point) to wash the only clothes he has, surrounded by the buildings of the cities banking and business district…

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Thank you!

22nd September picture of the day…

22 Tuesday Sep 2020

Posted by in Food and drink, Malaysia, Musings, Picture of the day, Travel

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The day started so well…

This morning the sun was shining and all seemed well with the word. OK, let’s qualify that – as well as can be expected in this mad time, despite all the crap and uncertainties facing us all right now. My mood was bouyant and I was looking forward to grabbing a short break away from the office to sit in the sun and do some reading. Then, in short order, it all fell apart for a variety of reasons – including the weather. Low cloud rolled into the valley, the sun disappered, the light became murky and the temperature dropped, taking my mood with it. The latest pronouncements from the Government on Covid were just another nail in the coffin.

So, today’s picture is of a happier place and a happier time. This was taken in Chinatown in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the 5th January 2012. I was touring through Asia at the time and ended up in KL (which I’ve visited many times) to have a look at their changing railway system and also to get a camera lens repaired as it had packed up a few days earlier. There was a Nikon dealership in KL so I thought it would be straightforward. There was only one problem. The spares for my lens were sourced from Nikon factories in Bangkok – and Thailand had only recently suffered the worst floods for decades so my couple of weeks turned into nearly two months! This was no problem as I was trying to secure an interview with the head of Malaysian railways at the time, and that wasn’t a quick process either – so I got to know KL very well. Many of my evenings would be spent sitting outside a particular Chinese cafe on Jalan Sultan which was a great place to enjoy a beer, a meal, and people watch for an hour or two. On the opposite side of the street were a couple of stalls, one of which was fascinating to watch as they sold Chicken and rice cooked in a claypot.

When all this crap is over I really need to do this again – although the cafe where I used to sit has closed now. It was shut as some businesses were needed to close for construction of the underground section of the new Klang Valley metro system, which I found out when I went back in 2017 – although the Clay Pot stall was still there. I’ll be curious to see how things look now…

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If you enjoy reading this blog, please click on an advert or two. You don’t have to buy anything you don’t want to of course (although if you did find something that tickled your fancy would be fab!), but the revenue from them helps to cover some of the cost of maintaining this site – and right now (because of Covid), us freelances need all the help that we can get. Remember, 99% of the pictures used in my blogs can be purchased as prints from my other website –  https://paulbigland.zenfolio.com/

Thank you!