Singapore has never been my favourite city, so it was a sweet feeling to cross the border back into Malaysia; almost like coming home. The cheapest, and therefore my way, was to ride a local bus across the border and over the bridge to Johor Bharu, from where there is a plentiful supply of cheap buses going north. I planned on heading back to Malacca for one final weekend in China Town with my new friends. I also had some serious thinking to do.
At this point, I have outstanding letters and emails with many shipping lines. From my research I know I have contacted just about all that operate on the Australasia routes. I have personally visited many offices, port masters and clubs. I have attached printed posters to any relevant surface I could find, and even have letters of appeal printed in the two national English language newspapers. If you read my last journal, you may remember I got exorcised, just in case, by a Chinese witch doctor. More recently, I was passing the oldest Hindu temple in Malacca when I got dragged off the street by a friendly Indian, who insisted I look around. While I was in there, I took the opportunity to pray to the various gods for my cause. My point here is, I am running out of options.
In addition, several friends I have made around Malacca are kindly pressing their contacts for urgent assistance – as here, like many parts of the world, it is who you know that really matters. I have automatically targeted Singapore based on the fact that it is among the busiest in the world. On the other hand, I have decided, the sheer size of the operation means it is also very impersonal and security is high. With that in mind, I have decided to shift my campaign to the two smaller ports – PTP in the south and Port Klang in the north.
I have used the internet extensively, with mixed results. Most of the ports have some sort of website. Many post live schedules, and I can always find out some information from one, but never all. For instance, in Singapore I can learn which ships are due in next three days, the service name, which port and dock number and where they have come from. Hell, I can almost find out what colour underpants the captain is wearing, but I can’t find out where they are going. On the various New Zealand sites, I can usually find out which ships are due and where from. You get the picture, and this is repeated across all ports. By cross-referencing the information, I have usually been able to work out what I need – by which time there is little time left to get to the port in question. I need such information so that I can target my efforts more efficiently, as a great deal of time has been wasted chasing companies that have nothing going my way.
In the meantime, a great opportunity has arisen for me, about which I will explain shortly. It involves making a difficult decision, and would influence my actions over the next few weeks.
From Malacca, I travelled north to Port Klang, near Kuala Lumpur. This is Malaysia’s largest export hub, growing in size every year but still much smaller than Singapore – thus I hoped perhaps easier to get around and more personal. Port Klang is a pretty rough place, but I quite liked it. There is no tourism infrastructure there, and no tourists. There are two hotels; the Ambassador (ironic, read on…), which was too pricey, and the ‘International Hotel’, also pricey but cheaper than the former. It is where ships crews stay when on a changeover and I hoped to make a useful contact or two. The old Chinese woman who took my money sat behind bars, so you get the idea what sort of an establishment this was.
I got busy with my well practised routine, first stop Port Authority. They sent me to another building, a half hour sweaty walk away, to meet the Port Master. With much gesticulation, I obtained a visitors pass and tracked him down in his office. He was short and much younger than expected. We drank tea and swapped life stories, but when it came down to the nitty-gritty, his face went blank. I tried again, and this time his face lit up. I got all excited for a moment, until he revealed that I should visit the old mariners club and sign on as crew. This is has been part of my problem; people just cannot understand what I am trying to do, or why I should want to do it. I have experienced this mostly with the girls who are generally on the front desk of all the big shipping lines. Like receptionists the world over, their prime task is to turn away anyone who is not likely to make the company any money. Crackpot foreigners trying to hitch a ride on a ship commonly fall into this category. At least, I had hoped, the men who have connections with the sea, who share my passion, such as Port Masters, would understand my venture. Oh well.
Luckily, an Indian security guard who was present when I signed in was going to the old mariners club. He offered a lift, which I accepted with relish. It was a little uncomfortable on the carrier of his bicycle and my feet dragged along the road – but a lift is a lift. He took me to see a temple – all very nice, but unlikely to get me on a ship.
The old mariners club, as the name might suggest, is the former place where crew and officers would hang out, and just the sort of establishment that could be my salvation. There is no longer a club in town. The guys at the crew registry office were very nice, but of course I could not actually register without any seaman qualifications.
I walked the streets a little longer, visited more offices and it was the final one that helped make up my mind. The manager of the agency was sincerely interested in my travels, spoke good English, and understood why I was doing this. He made some calls, and I really thought this could be it. Unfortunately, as an agency they do not own ships. He spoke to several of the lines that I had previously contacted, who suggested that I should visit them, as I have already done. He explained that with Chinese New Year looming, many offices will shut for a week. He confirmed what I had already learned – walking the ports hoping to speak with ship’s masters would be fruitless, and that all I could do was pester the lines more. It was a nice conversation with a friendly, intelligent man who understood the industry – and what is more, from this I knew that I had done all I could do.
I reached a decision, something I have been wrestling with for weeks now. My options were already wide open; sailing from Indonesia was still possible, so long as I could wait until May to catch the new season. I could just manage that, but by then would have little funds left to actually cross Australia, before starting the whole lengthy process again to reach NZ. I could, on the other hand, wait around Malaysia another month or two – but I would be spending money just to be here, and still possibly not succeed. A new addition to the equation, Australian company worldnomads.com has offered me the chance to write and travel on the cheap for a month. I need to give them an answer any day, so I need to make a decision now. It will mean flying, which of course effectively ends this challenge.
Lately, I have been thinking about getting home a lot. It has been a long time since I have had anything like a normal life, and I have many challenges and exciting things ahead of me in NZ – things I am really keen to get on with. This sort of stuff is normal for any traveller, and I always believe it is important to not give in at the first opportunity. Weighing up the pros and cons has been a tough task for me. It has kept me awake on many nights, and some days my head spins with all the options. To keep things in perspective though, they are all good options! The reality is, getting on a ship is going to take a lot more time and I’ll need to make more contacts. There has to be a time limit on these things, and I have reached my personal one – I have done all I realistically can do, short of stowing away.
So what now? Well, I am very lucky to be doing this current trip in Australia for World Nomads. I have hooked up with an old friend to do this, we have a sweet little camper and all equipment provided. All we have to do is take off to wherever we choose and find something to write about – essentially what I have been doing the last two years anyway. It is a brave and pioneering two year project by them, putting normal folk like me on the road. For some who may be aspiring to a writing career, it could be a good opportunity. To me, it is a chance to see a mate, have some fun and finish this trip on a high rather than dragging my sorry arse home feeling like I failed!
I have a lot to say about the last two years, what I have seen and experienced, and how things have changed more than I could ever have imagined. But for now, this trip is not actually over, and so I am going to direct you to the WorldNomads.com site in the hope that you can stay tuned for one more month. The company is a renowned provider of travel insurance at very competitive rates. Having personally had policies with several different companies over the years, I can genuinely vouch for the personal and friendly service from Nomads. It is the only company I have found that really makes you feel like there is human at the other end – an important thing if you are laying on your death-bed in Zimbabwe. In addition, they run a free travel blogging service – space on the internet for travellers to keep basic journals and display pictures – and that is where my current adventures will be displayed. When I get home, time permitting, all that content will appear on this site, but just for now, the Wander Years is on holiday!
World What?
Well, firstly, you’ll be glad to hear that a blog is a concise kind of “Dear Diary” thing. Of course, I always rattle on too much, but this was my website and I preferred to write longer journals and update less often. We have to upload stories, images and film. The latter we have gone one step further and learned how to make mini movies, having a lot of fun in the process. Even if you have neither time nor inclination to read the blogs, at least check out the movies! Apart from a few loyalties to sponsors, essentially our travel blog is just like any other, and hopefully contains some interesting aspects of Australian life.
Our trip has taken us by road to the salt plains of Lake Eyre, through the rugged outback of South Australia. We have tried to find alternatives to the tired old Aussie clichés, and focused on the small backcountry areas that are often overlooked. As I write, we have turned east again, having covered nearly 6,000km already, headed for Queensland.
The World Nomads website is obviously very different to The Wander Years, so you will have to find your own way around. The project is called Ambassador, and clicking on any such link, or the brightly painted van will get you somewhere near. Our blog is called We didn’t PLANET, named so because some of our content is also for Lonely Planet guidebooks. Any blog entry with a You Tube logo alongside will contain a movie, and image links are on the right side of each individual blog. It may all sound a bit confusing, but stick with it. I’d really appreciate a visit from you, because this is still very much part of the trip and I think World Nomads really do deserve this thing to succeed.
Meantime, I’d like to thank you all for the great emails and messages of support, criticisms and general good wishes. I have worked hard to reply to many, and apologise if I was ever a bit slow at doing so. Running this site has actually been quite a bit of work, but it has, as intended, created a great little record for my own use, and will remain online for the time being. I will not be sending out any emails with regard to the blog, but I do plan to write one more journal when it is all well and truly over. So until then…..
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