Traveling

And I'm back from Australia and Malacca! Sorry, readers, for not updating this journal at any point on the trips. We were moving around too much in Australia, and anyway, it would have been prohibitively expensive to buy some time on the internet from a café. And the Malacca stay was too short, whereas I have a lot of things to say about both trips.

The result of this is that I've almost finished another sketchbook, surprising myself by actually managing to find enough time and content to almost fill up a brand new book in just under two weeks. There has certainly been no shortage of things to write; the hard part is to steal a few moments out of experiencing the present to record the past. And, considering the richness of the experience, it seemed for the most part a pity to sacrifice some time to sleep, let alone to write in my journal. Even the road trips were engaging in terms of conversations and the scenery that scrolled past our windows on a continuous enchanting loop. So, I found myself losing sleep almost every day, and writing only in the early mornings and the late evenings - but happily so.

A complete blow-by-blow account of what happened on the trips, though, won't be furnished here, I think. Don't have the patience to reproduce the entire sketchbook's contents here; and anyway, I didn't write those entries with the view of them being read by a wide audience. The photographs that we took on the trips will eventually be made available on the Lumière Project site, I expect, and I have vague plans to turn the sketchbook into some sort of sequel to Elsewhere, though how fast these plans are realised will depend on how much free time I have between now and Christmas.

That being said - some snapshots of the trip! First, the landscapes: the perfect beaches strung all across the Australian coastline, powdery-white sand welcoming lashings of sunlight and the playful pounding surf, beaches filled with people surfing, wading, suntanning, playing volleyball, hang-gliding, boating, picnicking, but still never crowded; tall-masted sailboats anchored in the harbour of a coastal town at night, swaying gently in the ebbing tide, their masts pointing serenely towards a blanket of stars overhead; the open road winding through the pristine countryside, at times diving into forests so clear of undergrowth and so friendly that they seemed to have been groomed, at times rising above the landscape on a ridgeline and affording us a view of rolling hills blanketed by a quiltwork of farms, with a gleaming blue swath of the sea and the sky forming the backdrop; the main streets of the small coastal towns we passed through, and wandering down them, we admired each window that was so well-composed that they could have been proud works of art; a late-afternoon cruise in a sparkling bay, cold wind and warm sun on the skin, the land all along the horizon like an embrace, and dolphins playing off the bow of the vessel; hot fish and chips still crackling from the fryer and exploding from the greaseproof paper like elation from a surprised heart; handsome brownstones in the big cities, bedecked with intricate awnings and draped with histories; Sydney's Royal Botanic Gardens, with us strolling through its grounds in search of monumental sights, and finding serenity, dignity, a line of ducklings following a mother duck, all against the industrious and powerful backdrop of the gleaming towers of downtown; watching a Kuroshawa film in the darkness of the Art Gallery of New South Wales among local movie buffs; the mist-shrouded towns of the Blue Mountains, harbouring boutique shops selling surprises and hope, inviting one to wander inside and to stay just a while longer; the wonderful Jenolan Caves, with rock formations so intricate and amazing that they struck me dumb with the miracle of beauty that emerges out of the mechanics of probability, that defied anyone to be stoically unmoved, that affirmed that there has to be a God who created all these wonders; and mountainside treks that took us to delicate cascades of spring-water, waters as cool as majesty and as pure as truth. Such were the encounters that we found on our Southward sojourn through Australia.

And, in Malacca, wandering the streets of the town in the way that demands adventurousness, courage and open-mindedness in the traveler, we found rows and rows of handsome shophouses, the riotously red Dutch Quarter, a hill of Chinese graves, and another street peppered with free art galleries showcasing the boldest of contemporary Malaccan art; standing at junctions devoid of traffic lights with only a map and hope, savouring the possibilities opening up before us in the form of the intersection; mornings starting lazily with a book, a journal entry, a greeting, and a big breakfast; conversations, real conversations, over chicken rice balls or a pot of after-dinner tea, rambling over space and time in the way that I find only old friends can have; and most precious of them all, the surprise and delight in finding enrichment from an unexpected meeting, a curator, a painter, a fashion designer who wanted to engage us beyond what was necessary to conclude a transaction.

In these trips, there was the real satisfaction of traveling, rather than just touring. In Australia, everything is visitor-friendly, from the easy-to-understand highway signs to the people you meet, and yet, Australia avoids being condescending towards visitors. You are undoubtedly welcome, but you are also expected to have some modicum of intelligence and ability to make choices. And in not prescribing activities or places to visit, Australia avoids presenting the type of façade to the visitor that Singapore does, the kind of face that may be totally safe and certain to please, but will become boring very, very fast. And needless to say, Malacca was nowhere as accessible as Australia, which meant that we had to put in much more effort to find things that we wanted to do, especially when the prescribed tourist experience ran out after the first day. In these two weeks, therefore, there was a continuous sense of being actively engaged by the destination, a sense of being offered some new experience, but also of being asked for some sincerity and openness in return.

However, what really gets me about these two weeks of traveling is the quality of social interactions that I came across. The locals were unexpectedly forthcoming with help and friendliness, from the Malaccan artist family who insisted we stayed for a chat and then recommended us a good restaurant for dinner, to the Sydneysider businessman who was raring to offer directions to the local Chinatown, to the people of Salamander in Port Stephens, Australia who all greeted me as I took my morning walk - every one without fail. Then there was my family, going on a trip that was of such an epic scale that it will likely not be repeated in the next five years. Animated chats with aunts, uncles and cousins who I normally would not cross paths with, everyone gathered around picnic meals bought out of the local takeaway or supermarket, nights spent playing Risk and Munchkins, and days spent wandering through the city centre, meandering into shops that we found by chance. And then there was Soph, who joined the trip in Sydney, and Kats, who joined us in Malacca. it was remarkably easy to slip back into the old mode of communication that we had from two years (an era) ago, and talking with these old friends in the novel context of a place that was not Singapore was fundamentally satisfying in some way, as if by affirming that our old friendships had survived the transition of two years' separation and had been successfully brought into a foreign environment, we had acknowledged a new level of maturity and strength in our relationship; the reunion had solidified a cherished friendship.

And what lies after this? It's the holiday season, and the time to meet up with the people who are back has come again. It's the time to touch base with as many people as I can, with the knowledge, this time, that the friendships that I want to hold are stronger than I'd previously thought. And then, after Christmas, another jump to East Malaysia, and in January, perhaps another sojourn with Joel to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Now is the time, then, to finally, finally bury the long wait in the shadows of the past. I am, of course, still waiting, but my impatience is now tempered with a hopeful and enjoyable present, and it is no longer such an imperative for August 2008 to come as fast as possible, since the intervening time doesn't seem to be such a drought of experience any more. This is a heady, hopeful time.