World Cups I have known and loved: 1994
June 1994. I land at Subang Airport in Kuala Lumpur to begin a year of study. I am carrying no guide book because my ex-boyfriend is coming to meet me at the airport, and so it has not crossed my mind that I may need one. He knows K.L. well, and promised me that he’d look after me when I arrived. I pick up my luggage and head towards the doors, looking out for him, expecting to see his face amid the throng, although there are so many people pressed against the glass, I wonder if I will see him.Â
The doors open and I am hit for the first time by the heat and the smells of Asia. Instantly, I am in love. Bewildered and jetlagged, I take in the scarlet-flowering hibiscus and the palms towering against the blue. I am breathing as if through a wet flannel, and sweat is trickling between my breasts already. The heavy smell of durians mixes with petrol and kretek cigarettes. I am spotted by a herd of taxi drivers, who gallop towards me, shouting, pushing, confusing. I tell them, smiling confidently, that no, I am waiting for someone. I do not need a taxi. Terima Kasih.
For two hours I sit in the airport, watching the women in bright baju kurang sashay past. I watch men in suits and kepis enter and leave the prayer room. The day wears on. I realize that he is not coming, but despite the fact that I know he is a total bastard, part of me refuses to believe that he would leave me here, half a world away from what is familiar.  Â
I’m a country girl; I am as green as the Welsh fields that I looked out on every morning as I grew up. The biggest town I’ve ever lived in is Hull, for god’s sake, and that’s a metropolis as far as I am concerned, and one that smells a bit of fish when the wind blows west. Now, here I am, hot and alone, with a bag of clothes, and a wilting orchid from the flight stuck in my stupid, impractical hat. I’m surrounded by strangeness and strangers, unable to figure out what to do next. I don’t know where to go. I don’t know who to trust. When I try to call my parents, the exchange inexplicably connects me to a family in Norway, who don’t appreciate being called at 2am by a tearful Englander.
I realize that I can either sit in the airport all day, and all night, and all week, waiting for someone to come and take care of me, or I can take care of myself. So, cursing my errant ex, and wishing upon him a plague of boils (which I’m sure he managed to contract all by himself, shacked up in carnal bliss with a ladyboy on Koh Samui, while I waited disconsolately for him at the airport), I pick myself up, and wend my way taxi-wards.
Once they have finished fighting over me, and decided who will be the lucky beneficiary of my obvious gaucherie, I am ensconced in the back of a car and sucked into the city. My taxi driver takes one look at my tear-stained face, and rips me off with aplomb. He also does me the biggest service that anyone will do for me that year, and deposits me in the centre of KL’s red light district, palming me off onto a Chinese couple who run a busy brothel next to the 7-11, and speak no English.Â
They instantly start to fuss over me, and install me in a cosy room, where I can smell frying noodles and storm drains. The gentle click of mahjong tiles drifts up from the street, all but drowned out by the stink and blare of the distant traffic. The tiny lift fits only one person, and smells perpetually of durians. The balconies are full of ‘kupu kupu malam’, drifting around in flimsy dressing gowns, waiting for customers.Â
Pathetically, I sit in my room and I cry. Only my sense of impatience at my own fear spurs me to action. I go next door, and buy some pak choi with garlic, some fried fish and a plate of rice, and am shouted at by the Cantonese waitress for speaking to her in Malay. On the way back a man from Senegal speaks to me in French, asking me how to use the public phone.  I am reassured that at least someone in this town is as confused and as lost as me.
But, by the time my friend arrives two days later, I have explored the city by myself. I eat on the street corner every morning, the rats and cockroaches running around my feet. I know how to handle the taxi-drivers. I have been pressed against sweating, groaning, groping humanity in the tiny pink busses that barrel around the city on endless circuits, canto-pop squawking from the speakers.  I have been horribly lost, but I have found my way home.
That night, both incandescent with excitement, we slip down to the 7-11 in our pajamas, to buy bottles of Anchor beer, which she opens with her teeth – a party trick that she has disappointingly since grown out of. Then we get wildly drunk watching the World Cup, and listening to the unceasing babble and clamour of our new home.
In all my travels since then, I have never been able to recapture that feeling of life just beginning, and adventures beckoning, and trust me, I have tried.
Incidentally, my ex turned up some weeks after we arrived, looking like a lobster, and asking for money. His friends all tried to warn me off him, knowing how he’d been employing his manhood while in Thailand. There was no need. He was, and remains, simply a festering piece of my life’s garbage, who, sadly, would continue to waft his foulness over my life for the rest of the year.  He’s a wretched and loathsome human being, for many, many reasons, but what he did went a long way to making me who I am, and so I suppose I could thank him. I won’t though.
Where were you in ’94?
June 15th, 2006 at 7:09 pm
Ah. Mah. Gahd.
I *love* that feeling, and you have captured perfectly how it is for me, too. Man. That feeling is one of the main reasons I am going back to Uni to get my nursing degree – so that I may find myself lost in completely foreign situations on a regular basis whilst working as a volunteer/travel nurse, and so that I may see of what stuff I am made. This post fans all the feelings about the reasons I have given up work in film and TV to fulfil this ambition.
You, Rachie (not that we’ve been properly introduced), are good.
Hmm…’94…hmmm…I daresay I was working as a P.A. at a teeny godawful film production company in Santa Monica. Good times. Hurl.
June 15th, 2006 at 8:15 pm
What an excellent bit of writing! Love the way the story evolves from previously. Really liked it. Hmm, sweat trickling between your breasts. Is this an attempt to turn this into a porn-blog, or can we be middle-class and call it erotica? Who was the bottle opener (theres a link somewhere there to that twat in Thailand, or perhaps simply Patpong)? Phil? I do wonder what game you were watching. perhaps several bottles of anchors make Russians look Japanese …
June 15th, 2006 at 8:27 pm
oh rach, you really must consider writing a novel – this is amazing stuff, and must strike a chord with anyone who’s had that moment of panic and awe in a new country. jakarta airport. 1999. sticky, humid, and no vso programme office to meet me as promised. wrong phone number, no rupiah, and enough parcels for volunteers to merit a small donkey… 1994? squarely revising for my finals in sunny cambridge, chain-smoking, strong coffee and a diet of ready salted crisps with mayonnaise. it passed me by i’m afraid.. mx parcel in post – fingers crossed it gets to you safely
June 15th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
nearly forgot, 94 – in malaysia, having been met at the airport by you. What a year, what a balti-faced twat. I never did like Anchor.
June 16th, 2006 at 8:45 am
Zenta – thanks! The nursing degree sounds like a great idea – good luck with it. Doing that overseas would be doubly exciting.
Balti-face, you old dog. Glad you like it – I also think it an improvement. The bottle-opener was indeed Phil – her teeth hurt like hell the next morning. I think that’s when she decided to give it up.
Mel – thanks for sending the parcel – I didn’t know VSO left you stranded in Jakarta! Bloody hell, they’re a bit crap. Glad you like the writing! XX
June 16th, 2006 at 8:51 am
Great stuff Rachel. Reminds me of the feeling of arriving in the chaos of delhi train station in 1993. But in 1994, I was starting to go slightly insane – after a fantastic 6 months travelling around India, I came back home to work in a call centre and live with my parents.
June 16th, 2006 at 9:56 am
Hhhhmmmm, 1994. This makes me feel like a kid but I was actually in year 10 at school, being pumped full of useful facts relating to GCSE exams. Other than that I had a crap summer job, being paid £1 an hour to shred documents at an accountants – very dodgy don’t you think! I wasn’t being paid enough to think so I couldn’t tell you what I was shredding but I’m sure they wouldn’t be allowed to get away with such things now given Enron escapades.
Your trip sounds just like a couple of my recent trips. Firstly, West Africa then Japan.
I’d booked on an overland trip in West Africa and was meant to be met in Acrra airport. I’d booked a flight from London to Amsterdam and onward to Accra. Fog prevented us taking off from London on time so I arrived at Amsterdam having missed my connection. They decided to divert me via Beirut (!!) so I flew London-Amsterdam-Beirut-Kano-Accra. It took about 30 hours and I hadn’t slept for about 48 hours for fear I’d get abandoned somewhere along the way. I arrived in Accra at 8am, dazed, tired and sweaty. I changed about 20 euros in the arrivals lounge and received a 4″ think wadge of cedis which I then tried to distribute about my person – I ended up looking pretty fat. I left arrivals and was immediately grabbed by a mass of sweaty, black men trying to get me to take their cab. I picked a random individual, taking a 1 hour drive to the hotel meeting point. If you’ve ever been to Ghana you’ll knw there are no road signs, markings or indeed traffic rules so I just had to pray I wasn’t being taken off for some voodoo ritual. Tankfully all was OK and I arrived 1/2 hour before the group were meant to leave for the first leg of the trip. Any later and I’ve have been stranded in Accra, alone for 4 days until they returned – not a good thought.
Japan was another story. My flight was fine and I arrived in Tokyo airport fine and dandy BUT annoyingly my luggage had been left behind. Being an inexperienced traveller at this point I’d chosen to wear my walking boots (needed for Fugi climb) to travel in as I couldn’t figure how to pack them and I was also wearing trousers. However, this was Japan in August and it was baking. I had no other clothes with me and so I was forced to go shopping. Unfortunately I am about size 16 and well over 5ft 9″ so you can imagine how easy finding clothes for me in Tokyo was, even underpants were unavailable. It didn’t help that I couldn’t read the labels in characters. In the end I picked the biggest T-shirt and pants I could find in Uniqlo and just suffered with my inappropriate shoes. My luggage arrived 2 days later but I learnt alot.
Both experiences have shaped my life in so many ways!
June 17th, 2006 at 4:55 pm
Mmmm … durian … like eating strawberry blancmange on the toilet.
June 17th, 2006 at 6:46 pm
I’d love to tell you about my trip to Kazahstan on Aeroflot in 1990, yest that was the time when they’ve realised that they didn’t actually know how many airplanes they own and which ones are currently flying… However it’ll have to be over a beer: I couldn’t possibly write like you. Brilliant!
June 26th, 2006 at 3:32 pm
Ria – exactly. Yuk.
Maciek – I look forward to hearing about that! Given my fear of flying, I think I’ll need a beer to stomach it!