In was a bright sunny morning in the city of Cochin and we had been summoned downstairs by the owner of Vasco Homestay, Santosh himself, asking that we kindly pay our bill. However, once we were in his office, the true purpose of the meeting made itself apparent: the man had read some of our correspondence online and was interested in learning more about AsiaWheeling, a request that we happily indulged. Furthermore, it seems he had a recommendation for the day’s wheel. Oh, and one last thing, we had to change our room over to the only other room at the Homestay.

This one proved equally sprawling with two giant living-room-sized chambers. One you might call a bedchamber, and the other an antechamber, which sported a gigantic six-foot by six-foot wooden door with a number of giant brass locks (only made slightly less impressive by the presence of a secondary entrance by which we could share our water sources with the maid), a makeshift (but quite comfortable) cubicle-bathroom erected from some seven-foot high pieces of faux wood plastic sheeting. At the end of this great endeavor, the bill still remained unpaid, but our relationship with Santhosh was solid. So we left his office thrilled at our good fortune, and itching for another visit to the spectacular dosa joint we had enjoyed the morning before.

This we did, and following Santhosh’s instructions, we dutifully wheeled to a new ferry terminal where we purchased tickets for about 20 cents each toward the northern island of Vypin.

We took our place among the other vehicles which were lining up and spilling out into the busy street prepared to board the boat.  When it arrived, we did our best to stake a place for ourselves in the mad dash that followed. Successful in that endeavor, we waited in choking anticipation for the vehicles around us to deactivate their engines, and then for the blue smoke to clear. Once the ferry was underway, it was quite enjoyable, and proved a very short ride. Aboard we ran into a fellow by the name of Sam, a Canadian who was on a vast journey of his own. We bid him farewell at the arrival terminal (really just a bit of concrete, a ticket taker, and a pile of garbage), and wheeled out onto the island. This place certainly had a different feel to it, compared with Ernakulam and Cochin. All the buildings were one story, and most of the shops and businesses seemed to be in constant battle with thick jungle foliage that struggled for supremacy. Perhaps not so strange in a community that, no doubt, relied on fishing for the majority of it’ earnings, half the businesses seemed to be ice factories, cranking out large chunks of the stuff to be used in the preservation of fish.

The roads were also very tough to ride on. The Speed TR is a trooper, but it has no shock absorbers, and we were getting incessantly rattled around by the pockmarked roadway. About half way across the island, we pulled a licht into an even more rural road, which as it turned out was actually less bumpy due to a large amount of sand, dirt, and rubbish that had blown in to fill the potholes. On this new road we made our way north until we finally came to our first waypoint. It was a giant container and tanker dock, still partially under construction and aimed at providing crude oil unloading and storage for the port of Cochin.

There was a large newly paved road that ran the length of the project, and we road it first one way until it petered out into construction, and then the other, all the while gawking at the pure immensity of what we were beholding. There we signs alerting us to strict rules against photography in the area, so any photos that you may see may be considered “found,” author-less photography.

At one point a fellow approached me on a cycle of his own. I can only assume he was one of the thousands of workers required for a project of this scale.  He challenged me to a race.  As Scott would be the first to point out, accepting challenges to race on AsiaWheeling is generally poor form, inviting dangerous competitive behavior. However, I figured the empty and brand new blacktop invited a little action, so off we went.

Cycling onward, we meandered into a Catholic church, observing what seemed to be one of the day’s many incredible sights. After thoroughly exploring Vypin island, we made our way across the bridge to yet another island with yet another, even more giant port construction project underway.

As Santosh had explained, it was a joint venture between the Indian government and Dubai Ports World, and it was not surprising that security was much higher. We stopped to get a look at it, and were shortly thereafter accosted by armed guards suggesting that we get on our way. Santosh had explained to us that this project would require a significant dredging of the surrounding bay that would, of course, cause untold levels of devastation to the aquatic ecosystem and those that relied on it.

The level of security at the site suggested that the builders also understood that what they were doing was controversial and would prefer not to have Adventure Capitalists and ReExplorers nosing around. Well, here at AsiaWheeling, the last thing we want to do is to stir up muck. So off we went.

Before we left that island, we made our way first north then south exploring the local neighborhoods, stopping to check out the smaller ferry terminals. It seems there are quite a few ferries in the greater Cochin area, many of them little more than over-sized rowboats with an outboard motor. At one point we found ourselves in need of another cup of coffee, and as though answering our prayers, a strange kind of golf club appeared on the horizon.

We made our way inside and drank two very sweet coffees at a rather post apocalyptic crumbling snack stand that obviously once served many foods, but had slowly declined to offering just coffee and some kind of microwaved shape which seemed very popular among the surprising number of people that had gathered to not golf in the surrounding area.

Refreshed and reinvigorated, we hit the road once more, bouncing and rattling our way over the cracked pavement onto yet another bridge bringing us back onto the mainland and into the city of Ernakulam.

We struck out into a new and even more boiling crowded part of the city. This one was filled with hyper-specialized shops focusing on everything from pipe fittings, to hydraulic fluids. We were forced to spend significantly more time waiting behind long lines of traffic. So densely packed was the traffic that even a cycle could not fit in between. But soon enough we had made it back onto manageable roads and were wheeling again down a new street when the allure of a place simply marked “coffee shop” drew us in.

Now, dear reader, AsiaWheeling considers itself a connoisseur of the Indian Thali, having had plenty of them, all over this fine country and even quite a few in the U.S., but let me tell you, this was the finest, most succulent thali in the entire history of AsiaWheeling.

The rice was a strange and wondrous new variety, with giant grains and some bits of the brown exterior still clinging to each morsel; the poppadoms were crispy, salty and warm to the touch; and each of the many little cups promised new and untold depths of flavor.

We were truly knocked off our feet. Reader, if you are ever in Ernakulam, please, please, get in touch with us and take the time to eat lunch at this place. You will most certainly not be disappointed.

Then we were back on the cycles, once again unable to stop singing “She’s a lady…” at the top of our lungs and wheeling through the stop and go, impossibly dense Ernakulam traffic. There was room enough that we could mostly noodle our way around the cars and auto rickshaws that were stuck idling in the heat, and the fact that we were a couple of crazy foreigners in Panama hats, singing Tom Jones tunes at the top of our lungs and ringing our bells in time had a kind of parting of the red seas effect. Before we knew it, we were wheeling back by the giant uncut lumber yard that we had seen the previous day, indicating that Cochin and our dear Vasco Homestay was near.

It was a quick ride across the bridge, and then we were back in the city of Cochin. Out last waypoint took us by the local fisher-people’s operations, where we found them using a hitherto unheard of system of giant cantilevered nets.

Perhaps I had better let the images speak for themselves on this one. Tired and in great spirits, we wheeled back to relax in the sprawling cheeky luxury of our room at the Vasco Homestay.

Our train to Cochin had been scheduled to arrive at 7:30 am. But in what seemed to us a completely uncharacteristic maneuver for the Indian Railway, it arrived nearly 45 minutes ahead of time, meaning that we were quietly snoozing in our bunks when the rest of the passengers detrained and wandered into the misty morning. It was the mechanic who finally came to wake us up, no doubt curious what had become of us (and his tip), what with the train completely empty and the bikes still locked near the rear lavatories.

We did our best to rouse ourselves and unload our luggage with all haste. I tipped the mechanic, and with all our worldly possessions thrown in one great pile on paan, spotted the hissing railway platform at Ernakulam, We began to take stock and form our strategy. It was just before sunrise, and the train station was a ghost town. As you no doubt already know, dear reader, Cochin is an island-like peninsula, whose sister city, Ernakulam, is separated from Cochin by a thin body of water, which we needed to traverse in order to arrive at our hotel.

The hotel, was a place by the name of Vasco Homestay, which Scott had booked last night on the train, named thus for the principle reason that it happens to cohabit the house in which the famous barbarian and Portuguese colonial explorer, Vasco de Gama, died.

It was for this very reason that we were attracted to the place, and, if you might indulge me dear reader, I would like to briefly diverge to the story of Vasco da Gama and how he came to die in Cochin.

Vasco was originally the son of a knight and governor back in Portugal and as such was trained to be a mariner. This was during a time of much speculation as to the existence of a oceanic trade routes around the tip of Africa and over to the Indian ocean. Vasco proved himself to be a ruthlessly effective commander, fighting with French privateers off the African gold coast, and when his father was given the task of proving or disproving the rumored trade route, Vasco lobbied for the job.

As luck would have it, he got it, and set off in 1497 with four ships and 170 men. They set forth working their way down the coast of Africa, seeking a wind pattern known as the South African westerlies, and when he finally caught them he was able to make his way around the southern Horn of Africa into waters which had hitherto been unexplored by Europeans. On his way through, since it was around Christmas, he named the coast of south Africa “Natal” which means Nativity. The name stuck, more or less, as that part of south Africa is currently called KwaZulu-Natal. Nice one Vasco.

In hopes of building good favor among the people of the Arab-controlled east coast of Africa, Vasco assembled a party of men, put them in costume, and face paint designed to impersonate that of Muslim traders, and in this getup, managed to book an audience with the Sultan of Mozambique. Unfortunately, the Sultan was unimpressed with Vasco’s unglamorous gifts, and the locals proved none too fond of black-face, eventually sending Vasco and his men running for their ship, pursued by a hostile mob. Vasco fled the port, firing his cannons into the city in frustration.

With the failure in Mozambique, poor morale began to reign on board. Vasco addressed this by beginning a policy of attacking and looting unarmed Arab trading ships. This improved morale significantly, while continuing to erode his reputation with the Arab traders, who denied him entry to the port of Mombasa. This proved to his advantage, however, when he arrived a little later at a port called Malindi, in modern day Kenya, a city that was in conflict with traders from Mombosa. The fellows in Malindi provided Vasco an expert pilot, whose knowledge of sailing in monsoon winds allowed him to cross the rest of the way to India in only 28 days.

Vasco landed first in a largish city called Calicut, Kerela, where things refused to go his way. The local authorities had close ties with Arab traders, who in turn were not fans of Mr. da Gama. Likely through a combination of assault and battery, Vasco was able to get an ambiguous letter referring to reservation of trading rights, but when the locals requested that he leave some goods behind as collateral, he became frustrated and left without any goodbyes, leaving a detachment of men behind, but taking all his trade goods with him. The men were told to build a trading post. Tough assignment.

Vasco set sail back to Portugal in August 1498, this time sailing against the monsoon winds. Consequently, the journey back across the Indian Ocean took about five times longer than first trip. So long, in fact, that half the crew died on this leg, and the rest were extra-scurvy by the time they reached Malindi. All in all, only one of the four ships and less than a third of the men made it back to Portugal. Vasco also brought no trade goods back with him. Sounds like a total failure, right?

Wrong.  Vasco was met back in Portugal with a hero’s welcome, and showered with riches. He was given the title, “Admiral of the Indian Seas,” and awarded a lordship, giving noble status to him and all his offspring forever more. So at the beginning of 1502, Vasco came to the royal family in Portugal to pitch a return mission, this time with a request for 20 warships, and all the fiery rhetoric of a good revenge flick. The king gave the mission his blessing, and Vasco was off. With all that fire-power, the urge to pillage and privateer was too great, and plenty occurred along the way. When he finally reached India, Vasco found that the detachment of men he had tasked with establishing a trading post in Calicut had been put to death shortly after his departure. Ouch. So he bombarded Calicut quite savagely, leveling much of the city, and split for the more southerly city of Cochin, a smaller place, more of a fishing village really, where word had spread of his destruction of Calicut, ensuring that he receive a warm welcome.

He traded a mixture of European goods (assault and battery) for some gold, spices and silk, and headed back to Portugal, leaving more men to begin to build a more intense Portuguese settlement in Cochin. On the way back he took a detour to hunt ships traveling to and from Mecca, laden with goods, and a fair number of famous and well-to-do Arab merchants. He would capture these ships, steal all they had, then lock all aboard below decks and order the ship burned. This kind of behavior proved quite effective in lubricating a treaty with the greater government of Kerala, ensuring the success of his trading colony.

As he sailed back, he engaged in plenty and even more heinous profiteering against Arab trading ships and demanding tribute from cities along the way, demanding signed letters from local leaders, agreeing to favorable trading relationships with cities along the coast of Africa. It is no surprise that he returned home to an even more intense hero’s welcome. He was showered with more riches, made an earl, and carried with him now a quite fearsome and Mr. Wolf-esque reputation as a “fixer.”

He returned back to India once and for all to take up his position as Viceroy over all local Portuguese possessions in the region. When he arrived he promptly died of malaria in his house in Cochin. And we had every intention of arriving at that very same place.

Meanwhile, in 2010, Scott and I were pedaling the Speed TRs, fully loaded down with baggage through the gray and still sleeping streets of Ernakulam, toward the ferry terminal. We found our way there quite easily, and finding that the tickets were approximately four cents per person, plus another two cents per cycle, decided to board the rickety craft. We were, by this point, profusely sweating, badly in need of coffee, and nearing the edge of madness.  Luckily, scurvy had not yet set in.

Once we had unloaded our bikes from the boat, we were able to seek counsel  from some local fishermen, who were erecting their stalls in the local market place, as to the location of the Vasco Homestay.

And, thanks be to God, we soon we found ourselves wheeling up to the now quite humble and charmingly crumbling ex-residence of Mr. da Gama himself.

The owner, a charming and quite helpful fellow by the name of Santosh, showed us to our chambers. They were gigantic, and packed to the gills with curios and old furniture. We could just imagine the savage barbarian himself, stupendously fat, covered in a cold sweat and very near death, propped up with pillows in one of these very beds, in the act of dictating his final wishes, the joints of his hands cracking too painfully with gout to write himself, pausing for some time between each word, calling out weakly for water, and forcing himself out of the swimming delirium of fever to do this one last task. The extremes of experience indeed.

We threw down our baggage and attempted to breakfast at the restaurant connected with the Vasco Homestay, but found that the richness of the place seemingly ended before the coffee pot, so we unfolded the speed TRs and headed out into the city. We were stopped shortly into the ride by a fisherman who explained to us that he had a terrible disease,  the only cure for which was a ride, just a short one, around the square on the Speed TR. We indulged him, and he thanked us with the recommendation of good breakfast place.

The place proved so delicious that we would end up eating there for the majority of our remaining 12 meals in Cochin. It was a very unassuming South Indian coffee shop, run by a tall smiling man in a lungi with the voice of James Earl Jones, and a way with dosas, vadas, and coconut chutney that would make a grown man weep. He also expertly whipped up South Indian coffee served in the traditional two containers, one tall and thin and one short and fat. The coffee could them be poured between the two to attain the desired temperature and surface area to volume ratio. Brilliant.

Much refreshed, we climbed back on the cycles and wheeled into what they call Jew Town. A Jewish part of the city, one of the very few places in India where you might see Hebrew, directed at other than Israeli tourists. To be frank, the presence of a Jewish community at all was quite odd for India.

Christianity, though still a minority, has quite a presence in Cochin due to  the Portuguese influence. Cochin was certainly the most Christian town we had visited since we left the American Southwest.  In fact, we saw quite a few people sporting a cross on their heads, drawn between the eyes with bright colored powder, in much the same way we have seen Hindu Indians wearing a colored dot between the eyes. A fascinated meld of religious practices.

We then wheeled south and found ourselves on the busy main road, which took us across a bridge and into Ernakulam. At the entrance to Ernakulam we found a giant repository of cut wood, each piece bearing unique markings.

Any speculation as to the details of this system is welcome in the comments.

Ernakulam proved busy and boisterous, jam packed with all manner of motorized vehicles, all honking and revving their way around one another. By this point in the trip, though, we were becoming quite at home amidst the chaos. We were learning the vocabulary and the rhetoric of the road, giving way and taking way, signaling our intent, and ringing our bells relentlessly.

We called a waypoint at a Vodaphone shop, where I was to get a SIM card. We locked the bikes and I went inside while Scott was to take a stroll. The Vodaphone people we extremely friendly, and a fellow there by the name of Vinil helped me to gain and activate my SIM despite some complicated rules that would otherwise have necessitated a stay in Cochin of at minimum one week.

We were just getting to the final steps of the deal-making process when a security guard came in breathless, and informing me that our cycles were locked in an illegal spot. I came outside to find that Scott, lacking the key to unlock the cycles, had undone the latches and begun to actually fold the Speed TRs in such a way as to allow entry to the parking space that we had blocked, effectively wrapping the bikes around a railing, still leaving the rear wheels locked to a nearby pole.

This acrobatic, of course, attracted a large crowd, and he was now handling inquiries from a diversity of personnel — from passers by, to Vodaphone security, to the Vodaphone manager who had just managed to squeeze his car into its spot. All was made well, and a fair bit of head wobbling later, we were back on the road.

We ate lunch at a kind of point-and-eat restaurant that served food on large square trays, something like what one might find in a middle school cafeteria.

We spent the rest of the afternoon wheeling our way up and around Ernakulam, past the port and a sprawling but perpetually closed city park.

Back in Cochin, we retired to our chambers at the Vasco Homestay, giving our best regards to the owner, and settling in for a bit of well deserved relaxing.

Flipping through the newspaper and finding a particularly curious listing of commodity rates, we marveled at how trade had tamed since the days of the gruesome Vasco da Gama.  Settling down for the evening, we slumbered under the very roof in which he shuffled off this mortal coil.

We discovered a new and quite welcome philosophy prevailed at the Hotel Femina with regard to check out times. Here, the rule was that checkout occurred exactly 24 hours after check in. This worked perfectly for us, since we had an overnight train to Cochin that evening, but would be free to leave our things in the hotel room, and use it to clean up after the day’s wheel.

We breakfasted at a south Indian coffee shop, which we quickly found was a local institution. Its interior was well lit by skylights, and it was crowded with many, many people ripping into vadas, idilis, and dosas.

And well staffed by uniformed and quickly moving servers. The manager of the shop quickly noticed and greeted us, showing us to a table that had been vacated just seconds before. Our server, perhaps the only one in all of our travels in India who was a female, wiped our table down with water and an open hand.

We ordered a couple of idli and vada, a few dosas, and cup after cup of scrumptious South Indian coffee. Feeling refreshed, and quite content to be once again in a land of large portions, we hit the streets.

We wheeled north into the city, bouncing our way over crumbling concrete streets, which dissolved from time to time into gravel, dirt and sand. Our first waypoint would be a temple complex in the north of the city, but we were unsure of the exact route.

We knew that once we got close, we would be able to see the thing looming in the distance and chart from there, but first we needed to traverse the five or so kilometers of city, which lay in a tangled patchwork of poorly maintained streets between us and the northern outskirts.

We called a waypoint to consult a local street coffee vendor and sample his wares. Before we could even order coffee, we had a attracted a large crowd, all of whom were men dressed in a kind of man skirt called a lungi, most of whom where silently scrutinizing the speed TRs with hands crossed behind their backs.

One emerged from the crowd, explaining to us that he was the manager of a painting operation, which was at work next door slathering the interior of a shop with electric orange enamel. He asked us to survey his men’s work, and insisted on buying us coffee (which we nervously drank from a couple of sticky communal glasses).

He then commenced a long chain of introductions, first introducing us to  his team of laborers, followed by most of his extended family, who, for one reason or another, all seemed to be walking by at that time.

All the while, the crowd of people standing around us was growing larger and larger. They were ringing the bells on the Speed TRs and clicking the shifters. When we finally had gotten through the pleasantries and began asking directions to the temple, we hit a roadblock in communications, culminating with the painting manager insisting that he would travel with us on his motor bike to the temple. We did our very best to decline this offer graciously, tried to pay for our coffee, thanked the giant crowd for their kind attention, and remounted the cycles.

Through a system of extemporaneous field commands, we were able to make our way out of the city and into the farmland that encircles Trichy. Strangely enough, the roads actually seemed to improve out here, and as we rode, we waved and helloed with everyone we passed, young and old, even if they were in the distance, operating a piece of farm machinery. Speaking of the distance, there, in it, was the temple. Looming tall and ornate in the hazy pollution. We were certainly heading in the wrong direction, but we now knew where it was, and that was an important step.

We briefly entertained the idea of cycling along the outskirts of the city in order to reach the temple, but as it turned out, all roads lead into Trichy,  so we had to ride back into the city, in order to get out of it on the northeast side rather than the northwest. By now, we were beginning to know our way around, and made short work of the crumbling streets, sending up our own clouds of the red sandy soil of Tamil Nadu.

Suddenly a man ran out into the street, eyes wild, and waving his hands in the air at us as if to say “Stop the show! Hold everything!” We dutifully brought the speed TRs to a halt next to him, where he began to scream to us. “A great man! Only one great Man!” He then violently pulled up the sleeve of his shirt to show us a tattoo on his arm.

“Only one great man! M.G. Ramachandaran.” The tattoo was of a somewhat blurred male head with sunglasses. “One!” he screamed again, holding up one finger, “Only one Great Man!”

“We non-verbally agreed with him, and repeated the name, M.G. Ramachandaran. Upon hearing this he most vigorously shook both of our hands and we were off wheeling again. The extremes of experience indeed.

Here, dear reader, you might be interested to learn: MG Ramachandaran, or MGR as he is more colloquially known in Tamil Nadu was an actor, film producer, and politician. From 1977 until 1987 he was the Minister of Tamil Nadu. For more info, I highly recommend the wikipedia article on this fellow. We found it quite engrossing when we devoured it on the wikireader.

Back on the road, we found our way onto what seemed more like the correct route, marked by much more intense traffic, and a great number of tour buses. Like tributaries into some great river, we channeled from road to road, until we finally found ourselves joining a boiling mass of all types of traffic to cross a great bridge over a large dried out lake.

So intense was it that on the other side, we decided to stop for another cup of delightful South Indian coffee, and some small chocolate flavored shapes, designed no doubt by some chemist to remain unmelted even in the boiling south Indian heat.

Refreshed by our coffee break, we bid farewell to the small crowd which had once again formed around the Speed TRs, and pedaled toward the temple, which loomed larger and larger in the distance.

When we gained on it, we found the place to be much more of an elaborate conglomeration of structures than anticipated, with many ornate gates and sub-complexes.  I’ll let the photos below speak for themselves.

Wheeling around the complex proved to be laden with obstacles and activity.

Back on the road, it was nearing time to call it quits, lest the exertion and the intensity of the sun induce the kind of fatigue that brings with it imprecise and dangerous wheeling habits.  We looped back, passing schools and byzantine village paths.

To return to the city though, we needed to wrangle once again with some 5km of tangled, crowded, and crumbling roads.

At first, we found ourselves stuck in a massive traffic jam, sandwiched between giant buses, cargo trucks, and auto rickshaws in a great cluster of gridlock, but with our more nimble steeds, we were able to slowly make progress where others could not, and soon we had found our way to a great flyover, which allowed us to soar over the city on well paved, elevated, startlingly empty highway.

Why were the other hoards of traffic not taking this route as well? We may never know. But it allowed us to make very short work of the return. Taking us directly to the train station: an important waypoint for later that evening.

And from there, it was a short 5 minute wheel back to the hotel.

We enjoyed the last bits of our 24-hour stay at the Hotel Femina, lounging and working or correspondence.  The battery backup power supply provided ample current to support the blogging session.

As the sun set, and once again, the street vendors lit up their hissing gasoline lanterns, we climbed on our cycles, fully loaded down with gear, and made our way to the station. Our train to Cochin was easy to find, and in stark contrast to our experiences of India on the pilot study, essentially on time.

As the engines started up, and the giant iron snake began to hiss and squeal its imminent departure, we hurried to purchase some Lays Magic Masalla flavored chips (very highly recommended), some Indian spicy fried lentil snacks called Bhel Puri, and a few packets of Good Day Cashew biscuits.

Now, dear reader, I must note, we had no plan for how to deposit all our luggage onto the train. And as we struggled to enter the 3rd class A/C compartment fully loaded with packs and cycles, we made quite a spectacle of ourselves. Bubbling spurts of Tamil and Malayalam punctuated with the word “cycle” followed us everywhere we went. When we found our seats, there was certainly no place to store the cycles and almost too little space for our packs. Luckily, our fellow bunk-mates were quite friendly, assuring us that we would figure it out, and inviting us to sit down. The two fellows were traveling together to Kerala, and were just finishing a vast meal that had been packed by one of their wives. Seeing our sorry stash of Magic Masala chips and Good Day Biscuits, they began to quite vehemently offer us some of their food.

We, of course declined, though it looked very good. They countered with even more vehement offerings, and assurances that they were quite full (which I believe they actually were… it was a huge meal) and began to refer to a newspaper wrapped, twine-tied packet of “surplus chapati.” Well, I’ve never been one to look a surplus chapati in the mouth, so we accepted, found them to be warm, slightly crisp and some of the best chapati of our lives, and began to relax into conversation with these two fine blokes.

Soon a fellow introducing himself as the compartment mechanic, came over, followed by another who after some misunderstandings we confirmed to be describing himself as the Ticketeer. The mechanic offered us a solution to the cycle storage problem. For a small tip, he would allow us to store the cycles in a pile by the rest rooms at the very end of the train where, there being no further cars, the rear door was replaced by a the kind of roll-down security door used to close down shops in Greenwich Village at night.

This seemed like a good solution, so we did so and returned to find the Ticketeer still waiting, harboring little interest in our tickets, but much in our story. We chatted with him about AsiaWheeling and about his previous life as a field hockey champ until he was called away by the arrival of more passengers, namely two young water filter moguls, who demanded masala dosas and chatted with us late into the night about the Indian water filter business. Let me assure you, dear reader, the Indian water filter market is doing just fine.

As the train rattled on into the night, our bunk mates began to call their families to wish them goodnight. They then dutifully passed the phones to us, where on the other end I found myself chatting with the very small and adorable voice of Indian school-girls, who explained to me in English that she liked to sing, and that she was 10 years old. Finally, when we had all said goodnight — our bunkmates, their families, the Ticketeer, the water filter guys, the mechanic, and the drunk fellow who was seen frequently walking back and forth between the bathroom and his seat, we removed our shoes and set up the bunks. It was time to sleep.

And as the train rattled on into the night out of Tamil Nadu and into Kerala we slept the sleep of those who, more foolish, might think the deck was full of aces.

Our last morning in Malaysia began with a visit to the restaurant that had produced the delightful Nasi Lamak and coconut rice pancakes that Smita had brought back for us the previous morning.

The place turned out to be a splendid little roadside stall, a few plastic table s with an outdoor kitchen, a crack squad of fellows, yelling at each other, and some very serious dedication to the speedy delivery of Indian-Malay grub. It was Chinese New Years Day, and the city was pretty deserted.

Most of the clientele there seemed to have a celebratory Sunday out with the family feel. The coffee was incredible. The food was as good or better than we had remembered it. Ah, KL.

So splendid was the place, in fact, that we were tempted to linger there for some time longer than scheduled. Long enough, in fact, that we were rushing to purchase a few snacks at a local wholesale grocer, and wheel back in time to pack our things up for the cab ride to the airport.

We collapsed the speed TRs in the parking garage at Smita’s residence, taking longer than usual, as we were for the first time, using a set of foam protectors which Tan from My Bike Shop had provided us . Meanwhile, Smita sprung to action arranging and negotiating with the cab company. We were sad to be saying goodbye to Malaysia and KL in particular. Kuala Lumpur had earned a firmly applied asiawheeling stamp of approval. But the open road and the wonders of India beckoned, so we bid Smita a fond farewell, and off we went.

Our AirAsia flight departed from the Low Cost Carrier Terminal, which was some distance from the airport proper. The entire terminal, it seemed, was there primarily for AirAsia flights, and we struggled some time to find, in rather low light and among what must have been nearly a hundred AirAsia counters (some for check in, some for baggage, some merely staffed for the sake of staffing) the appropriate counter for our flight to Trichy. We were finally able to find our counter, which was behind another seemingly random security checkpoint, and made all the more obvious by the large line of Indians, sporting lungis and saris, which poured out from a small counter, that may have at one point proclaimed check-in for the flight to Trichy, but now just displayed a 404 Firefox error message.

Most of the line turned out to not be a line, just people standing around chatting, so we were able to work our way quickly to the front, where, in an act of great kindness, redeeming them from all sour feelings over miscommunicated departure times, minute portions, and confusing service personnel, AirAsia waved the “sports equipment fee” for our speed TRs, marking them as merely fragile luggage and sending us, smiling, over to the luggage loading booth, where we patiently waited for a group of young children to climb off the baggage conveyor belt, where they had been most violently enjoying themselves.  Where were their mothers at a time like this?

Luggage dispatched, we headed into the terminal and joined another large group of Indians masquerading as a queue, but were in reality, just chatting and passing the time.

After eating a few shapes, we perused the airport bookstore, which was chock full of business-guru books for middle managers like “25 Sales Habits of Highly Effective Salespeople,” as well as a selection of unsettling magazines.

After shuffling around in the waiting hall looking for power and discussing the feasibility of a high-design beverage business, we boarded the flight and were soon airborne.

As an American, one assumes international flights should be long.  So we were quite surprised when only a couple hours later we arrived in India.

Indian customs proved to be a painless and quick affair, consisting mostly of head wobbling, and then we were set free into the baggage area, where we were to spend the next couple hours, tortured by thirst, and waiting as a poorly designed, bent, and crumbling luggage conveyor suffered through many,  many bags.

The machine seemed to have been designed for maximum impact, taking the luggage and first hoisting it up a long ramp, only to send it tumbling down a steep but grippy conveyor which would halt from time to time, sending the luggage on it tumbling under its own momentum, end over end, crashing down to ground level again.

We watched with bated breath, hoping that the cycles could handle the descent. Our bags slowly arrived, tumbling harmlessly down the spout, but the cycles were nowhere to be found. We paced and waited out the agonizingly slow process. Finally we saw our cycles begin to climb the conveyor, then the system stopped. It seems part of the cycle must have been caught in the machinery, or perhaps would not fit through some bottleneck in the interior of the system. Whatever it was, it was in our great favor, as the attendants finally, got up from where they had been sitting observing the goings on, and climbed into the interior of the machine to retrieve the Speed TRs, laying them at our feet, safe and sound.

The airport was tiny, sporting only a short strip outside for both pick-up and dr0p-off. After changing our Ringgit into Rupees at a truly predatory rate, we found chartering a ride into Trichy reasonably easy.  Drivers were plentiful, and, of course, the Ambassador was spacious.

As we drove, Scott selected a hotel from the list in the Lonely Planet, and our driver made short work of the journey.  With all the swerving and honking, we were reminded that we were definitely back in India.

At first the Hotel Femina seemed reticent about showing us the room before we paid. This was, of course, unacceptable, but after some hemming and hawing outside, and consultation with the locals about other options for lodging in Trichy, they relented and showed us a roomy unit with its own private balcony and a serviceable bathroom. “Oh good, a shower and a little sit in the Condor’s Nest,” we thought, thinking back to the many fine hours we had spent on balconies and porches in Indonesia. So we pulled the trigger.

With lodging out of the way, we unfolded the speed TRs and took to the street, finally getting some much needed water, locating a much needed Automatic Teller Machine, and indulging in some incredibly affordable and much needed Indian food. All the while, as we wheeled from waypoint to waypoint, I found myself startled at the degree to which India was. Everywhere I looked there were people, transacting, yelling, sounding horns, working, chatting, spitting, urinating, littering, or just sitting and passing time.  At every corner, Tamil men would question us about the bicycles and interact in all manners of communication.

The traffic was much slower than any we had yet experienced, consisting of mostly auto rickshaws and large noisy buses. Trichy, it seemed, was a transit city, and as night fell, it did not let up one bit. Street lights flickered on, and street vendors lit up hissing gas lanterns, and the city just kept churning.

And it was loud. Rickshaws, buses, bikes, and people, everyone was honking, screaming, and clanging bits of metal together. The traffic whipped up a dust that clung my sweaty skin, and the smoke from engines burning oil, the spicy scent of street vendors stirring great pots of boiling liquid, and the sickening sweet smell of the open sewers all blended together into an invigorating potpourri.

Ah, India. The extremes of Experience at last.

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When Scott and Woody asked if I would write an entry on Kuala Lumpur (KL to its residents) for this blog, I said yes enthusiastically. After a weekend of wheeling with the two, I had a renewed appreciation for the city I call home, a sense I wanted to communicate to AsiaWheeling’s readers. And like every local, I knew inspiration was to be found at our hawker stalls.

Malaysians are gluttons, and we can well afford to be. Fantastically delicious and affordable, local street and “coffeeshop” fare reflect the tasty possibilities of plural societies. KL, one of the most diverse cities in Asia, is composed of about 40% Malays (a mix of Javanese, Siamese, Indian, Arab, and Polynesian descent), 40% ethnic Chinese, 10% ethnic Indians, and 10% other and mixed heritage. Local hawker stalls are also the site of a rare egalitarianism: corporate tycoons, high court judges, fast-food servers, and cab drivers all frequent the same stall by the side of the road with questionable standards of safety and hygiene but with the best bak kut teh or nasi lemak in the neighbourhood. Various dietary restrictions are well accommodated. KL does food well, although it seems not much else.

Indeed, Malaysia’s capital has been making the news for all the wrong reasons. Much of this news, especially in the foreign press, covers events related to the federal government’s moral policing and its opportunistic adoption of an Islamic posture in more recent times. Every new constitutional amendment, political speech, and errant Syariah court decision signals the erosion of a democratic, secular political culture that reflects the significant percentage of non-Muslim citizens (at least 40% of the population) and that was the heritage of this former British colony.
The federal government, having never taken well to criticism, questions, or alternative opinions, suffers from a bankruptcy of ideas. It runs on patronage, empty rhetoric, draconian laws, and an unassailable belief that national resources can ride the country through financial crises, vast mismanagement of resources, and widespread corruption in the civil service. The KL City Hall fares no better, in its evident confusion of systematic urban planning for rezoning land to allow even more commercial development, leaving residents to handle KL’s famous traffic jams, urban slums, flash floods, haze, and a host of associated problems.

But the city itself is young (in both population and institutional age) and has promise. Founded as a tin mine only a century and half ago and with the resources of the entire nation channelled towards its development, this once sleepy backwater at the confluence of two rivers (from which the city derives its name, literally “muddy estuary”) has become a veritable city of dreams where, with apologies to Italo Calvino, everything imaginable can be realised (it helps to know the right people).

It follows that KL is also known to its residents as “Boleh Land” (trans., Can-do Land). Although this epithet is used to poke fun at official rhetoric and the latest local attempt at breaking a meaningless world record (biggest flag, longest sandwich, greatest waste of money, etc.), the description fits. KL exudes pumped-up, “Malaysia Boleh!” (trans., Malaysia Can!) exuberance and an anything-goes mentality. The latter keeps us more liberal and edgy than neighbouring nanny state Singapore. As long as you’re not a beer-drinking Muslim woman or a refugee or queer or a member of the political opposition or a non-Muslim with a penchant for using Allah’s name or intending to participate in a public protest (unless you are protesting the opposition or anyone who offends Islam) or anyone who disturbs the status quo and its Victorian-Islamic-Asian Values-bumiputeraist moral sensibilities, the authorities are pretty willing to tolerate difference. (Thankfully, citizens are upping their expectations. There’s been talk of universal human rights….)

In the meantime, the authoritarianism of the state, the politics of patronage and corruption that riddle the system, and the heavy moral policing of more vulnerable subjects—all at their most concentrated in KL—are infrequently confronted and mostly just add a bit of edge to middle-class urban lives otherwise spent waiting out traffic or tucking into some of the best street food to be found in any city in the world.

And glancing at some picturesque architecture. Quite a spectacle are KL’s steel-and-glass skyscrapers, the most famous of which are the twin towers named for national oil company PETRONAS. Lit up after dusk, the KL Tower dazzles with its clean, elegant beauty. The Dayabumi building is a beautiful example of modern Islamic architecture, and its polished white exterior exudes a certain calmness in the midst of all the colour and bustle of this little city that could. The mosques and temples are just magnificent. But it is the colonial-era buildings that truly delight me. Charming is the sight of unassuming, simply adorned shop-houses that contain Indian garments businesses and Chinese sundry shops along the bustling TAR, a main road downtown named for Malaysia’s first prime minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman. And the kampungs not 15 minutes from the city centre, and the colourful street markets that defy common wisdom that roads are for cars alone.

Then there are the old symbols of the city, like the Mughal- and British neoclassical-inspired Sultan Abdul Samad building that faces Merdeka Square, the site where many erroneously suppose Tunku declared Malaya’s independence from the British Empire in 1957 (Malaysia itself wasn’t formed till 1963). The actual location of that historic moment is the Merdeka Stadium, a ten-minute wheel away. The stadium is currently under renovation to return it to the splendour befitting a national heritage. However, but by the luck of a financial crisis that prevented nefarious development plans from turning Merdeka Stadium into Merdeka Plaza, a square containing—what else?—office buildings, a shopping mall, and a condo, the stadium built for the very purpose of announcing the birth of this independent nation would have been no more but a chilling reminder of a government’s willingness to destroy the material landmarks of a history that binds nation and city together in a bid to attract much-coveted foreign direct investment.

Unfortunately, many other heritage buildings have not been so lucky. On the brighter side of things, I have seven more shopping malls from which to get an ice-blended coffee drink or monogrammed satchel. Vive le capitalisme!

BBut let’s return to KL’s gastronomic offerings. Of which there are many. From fragrant nasi kunyit topped with curry or rendang bursting with flavour and spice and ooomph to hot, soupy pan mee, my most favourite noodle dish in the world, to the sinfully ghee-rich roti canai, a local version of the paratha which locals like to eat for breakfast or a mid-afternoon snack, there are Malaysian dishes to cater to every time, taste, mood, and budget.
Lunch fares are particularly brilliant: all variations on the theme of a plate/leaf of rice and a variety of curries and dishes to add as one fancies. Buddhist vegetarian versions of Chinese zhap fan (otherwise, and aptly, called “economy rice”) and the Indian banana leaf rice are my favourites, and both are vegan-friendly. The meat and spice lover might try mamak nasi kandar. Nutritious and filling, under USD1.50 and zero waiting time, and finger-licking good: you will never want to return to hoagies for lunch after. An essential KLite experience is hunting down the vendor or restaurant that makes the best this and my foodie uncle’s favourite that, and the reader is always welcome to join me for such a culinary adventure.

The city also abounds with restaurants that offer foreign and fusion delicacies to homesick expatriates and local gluttons. Japanese, Lebanese, Italian, Korean, Thai, and various versions of Chinese and “Western” fare are especially popular. Someone should open up a good Mexican restaurant in town and find a way to make cheaper margaritas. (Alcohol in this country is expensive, thanks to a steep excise duty imposed to address alcohol abuse and drunk driving issues.)
Ah, KL. So much good food, so many problems that keep cropping up. As perhaps is to be expected from any multiphrenic Asian city still in the process of determining its identity and values. Would be nice if the government could get their priorities straight though. A few more libraries, better public transportation, a sin tax on households with more than one car, an actual bicycle path, a focus on attaining first-world city status by working to improve the city’s liveability, sustainability, and social justice quotients. But perhaps first that local council elections. KL could use a new mayor.

Then this city can lead the way as the country starts to realise its potential and fulfil its promise to be a just, inclusive, and prosperous home to all its residents. And “Boleh Land” can become a term of celebration, not cynicism.

Human Rights

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It seems our most valued adviser, Ms Smita Sharma, had been awake for some while by the time AsiaWheeling dragged itself from bed. Having already breakfasted herself, and to our great excitement, Smita presented us with a couple of thin rice pancakes, soaked in a kind of of sweet coconut milk.

We were just digging into these, when she presented yet another most welcome surprise: two cups of homemade mellow Malaysian coffee, a variation on the fried in butter type we had found in Penang and Malacca. So delighted were we with this breakfast, and so excitedly were we looking at two slightly greasy looking goodies (known as Nasi Lemak) wrapped in brown paper (which seemed also to be part of our meal), that we were almost oblivious to the fact that as we ate, the apartment was becoming increasingly full of Tamil workmen wearing large gas masks over their bushy mustaches. Some of the workers were carrying large cans, from which they began to spray a foul and acrid liquid into the corners and along the base-boards of the room.

The arrival of the exterminator had also created the perfect excuse for Smita and her sister, a newly barred local lawyer, with an excuse to visit that great mecca of the budget conscious but mildly design oriented homemaker: Ikea. So, as the fumes began to fill the room, we grabbed our brown paper shapes, and made a mad dash for the cycles, swearing to Smita that we would meet again some day. As Smita and her sister faded into the poison mist, Scott and I made a silent prayer for their safe passage, and climbed onto the bikes. Nasi Lamak safely strapped to the rear rack, next to our waters and bike locks, we whipped down the street, passing buses, and scooters, screaming out the field commands and singing “She’s a Lady” in two part harmony above the din of the traffic.

Let me tell you, dear reader, we were feeling great. KL is an excellent city for wheeling, as long as you can maintain the high voltage. And that morning we could. In fact, we didn’t want to stop.

So when we spotted a coffee joint, we called a waypoint to re-amp and dig into the Nasi Lemak. The Nasi Lemak was one of the tastiest things I’ve eaten for breakfast in my entire life. As I write now, I find myself salivating over its sticky rice interior, dampened with fishy red sauce and roasted peanuts. Oh my.

Ready for anything, we poured back onto the streets, noodling through the downtown, allowing ourselves to be siphoned this way and that by the plethora of one-way streets. Before long, we had taken one siphon too many, and found ourselves on a raging highway. Malaysian traffic was whipping by us, and though they gave us plenty of space, we were still periodically given a good case of the willies by the giant signs that advertised blatantly that cycling on the freeway was prohibited. Though we swore to take the next exit, it proved to be only an entrance onto another raging highway. Finally, we called a waypoint to address the situation.

In the distance, on the opposite side of the highway, I could just barely make out what looked like a cross between an exit and the kind of steep gravelly uphill that one sees not so uncommonly in the American Rockies as a last resort for runaway trucks. This, it seemed, was our best chance at escaping the current predicament, so after a unanimous vote and closing of the meeting, we began the painstaking process of waiting for a break in the torrent of traffic that was doing its best to escape KL before the next day (Chinese New Year). After what seemed like an eternity, a break came, and we were able to make it across. Clling a very earnest “highway speeds!” we took off toward the exit.

Thankfully, it did prove to be an exit of sorts, dumping us off into a very lushly vegetated and expensively developed neighborhood of mansions. We caught sight of a sign directing us toward a side road if we wanted to “re-enter the rumah”. We thought anything must be better than attempting to re-enter the raging highway, so in we went. The road wound down the side of the mountain for some time; overhead we could hear monkeys scurrying about and from time to time we were forced to dodge little bits of debris sent earthward by the primates. At the bottom of the road, we found a small settlement of brightly colored houses, with inspirational mottoes such as “This is your test,” and “There is truth in the light and light in the truth.” Middle aged men were sitting in the shade at a number of pucick tables playing cards, and all immediately looked up at us inquisitively. We pulled an uber-rauchenberg and began to climb back up the hill in search of some way back into the city without using the highway.

It was only later that evening that we solved the mystery of the rumah. Rumah Pengasih is a Non-Goverment Organisation that provides treatment to rehabilitate drug addicts by using a “Therapeutic Community” approach. So it was a kind of halfway house community that we had wheeled into. An interesting waypoint to be sure.

From there, we were still badly in need of an avenue by which to regain the city that would not put us on the wrong side of the law. Eventually, we found one.

A great sewage canal bisects the city of Kuala Lumpur, and as we were noodling through what was now becoming a significantly less wealthy neighborhood, we came upon two men doing some kind of maintenance on the many layers of piping that help to empty the offal of the city into this canal.

Along the edge of the canal was a mostly paved service path, which seemed to lead for as far as we could see in the very direction we wanted to go. Thinking to ourselves, this could only be a step in the right direction, we hoisted the bikes over a section of rubble and pointy bits of metal, paused to chat a little with the municipal sewer workers, who seemed quite chagrined at the entire idea, and then hit the road -  or as it might better be put – the service path.

Finally after riding for some time, past fellows fishing in the canal, fellows swimming in the canal, and even some ladies that appeared to be doing laundry (the darks) in the canal, we came to a large metal bridge.  Across the water, garbage burned.

It was then only another minor portage over some sewage pipes, and back onto the road. It was then that I realized my rear wheel was about to fall off. It seemed that all the jostling of the last few days of journey had helped to bring the rear bolts to near the point of falling out of their sockets. Thankfully, the problem was quickly rectified by dashing into a local motorbike repair shop, where they were more than happy to lend me a wrench for a quick repair. During the repair, Scott ran to purchase waters and documented a large outdoor on-store advertisement for a Taiwanese bridal boutique.  Subtlety has its place, but clearly not here.

We were getting back to the main city, just in the nick of time, when the hunger pangs began.  We wheeled to safety back in Lot 10 Hutong.

We began with an immediate and emergency Egg Tart.

And moved onto Honkee porridge and other delicacies.

Smita called us and informed  us that after the meal she would like to meet in an Indian part of town called Brickfields.

It turned out to be another highway intensive wheel, for try as we might, we seemed completely unable to get to that part of town without at least spending some time on highways.

These, at least, were not emblazoned with anti-bicycling signage, and after a few false positives, we found ourselves surrounded by the tell-tale Tamil signage, increased levels of smoke, garbage, and Bollywood, which heralded our entrance to Indiatown. The day’s wheel had been very intense, and Scott especially was quite frazzled by our hair-raising highway rides. It was high time for a coconut. And luckily one of the roadside Halal Indian joints was ready to provide. The establishment used a curious system for cooling the interior. The entire seating area was outside and sheltered from the blistering sun by a large patchwork of lacquered canvas awnings. The management had piped water up into the awning so that it gurgled and trickled down, dripping like rain onto the pavement around the place. Inside, the seating area was covered by strategically placed panning and misting fans, the same kind we had seen so many times in Penang.

The coconut water proved delightful, and once again slightly fermented. We relaxed and allowed our bodies to absorb some of the moisture and energy from the coconut, while I read the wikipedia article on coconuts.

Of particular interest was the fact that coconut water is sterile and can be (often is in Sri Lanka and parts of Southeast Asia) used as an intravenous solution in a pinch. Scott and I briefly entertained the notion of contracting some terrible dysentery in the middle of the Laotian jungle, losing consciousness outside a pit toilet and discovering through a haze of dehydration and malnutrition that we were in a hospital built from bamboo and grass, where a fellow in a loincloth was sterilizing a needle with a lighter and attempting to attach us to a coconut.  No doubt the other fellow would be standing by with a camera.

Then we remembered the steadfast support of Surgical Associates of Grinnell, and thanked goodness that we carry antibiotics, and that we are careful about what we eat, and that the sun was shining and we were healthy and safe, and that the phone was ringing and Smita was done with her business at Ikea and wanted to go wheeling some more. So back on the cycles we climbed, and deeper into Tamil town we wheeled, where we found Smita, on her folding cycle ready to give us a tour.

We wheeled through Brickfields and up into Smita’s old neighborhood, a rather posh expat and nightclub area called Bangsar Village, where we stopped to drink a little more coffee at a local institution.

From there we continued our wheel on foot though block after block of nice restaurants, malls, and little boutiques, all set on this little hill overlooking the greater city of Kuala Lumpur. Once again, AsiaWheeling was forced to take a moment to consider how very well this city was doing, and how truly cosmopolitan it felt.  We did so while enjoying a delicious and hitherto unknown fruit of incredible taste.

We dined that night at another local institution, where we enjoyed a scrumptious Malay-Indian hybrid feast.

It came complete with Tandoori Chicken, some Malay curries, an interesting pressed rice dish, a towering dosa, and a strawberry hookah for desert.

We dined like royalty, allowing the meal to stretch into the night as we debated the finer points of Barak Obama’s implementation of his presidency, and Malaysian Feminism.  Feeling as though we had determined a suite of adequate solutions to most of the world’s problems, we climbed back on the bikes, with the goal of folding them up and hopping a train back to Smita’s neighborhood. Unfortunately, the skies had another idea altogether, and began to pour on us so heavily, that fearing our Panama hats might dissolve completely, we took refuge in a parking garage.

With no sign of the rain letting up, we negotiated permission to leave the cycles in the garage, and use a kind of underground passage that would allow us to enter a nearby mall with only about 10 meters of travel in the rain. In the passage, we found a very, very tattered and ancient cat, which nearly brought me to tears, and in the mall we found a very interesting store selling beauty products, which exhibited one of the most distinctive and well executed examples of branding of the entire trip.

When we left the mall, the rain was done, and we were feeling energetic enough to just wheel all the way back to Smita’s.

The wheel proved quite wonderful, with the entire city lit up with lights, and preparing for the Chinese New Year, which was the next day. It was hard to believe, when we arrived safely back at Smita’s most luxurious abode, that we would be boarding a flight for Tiruchirappalli (Trichy), India, the next day. Malaysia had proved comfortable, welcoming, and quite wheel-able. But was it too easy? India held untold extremes of experience, new problems to solve, and the sage advice of our India Bureau Chief, Nikhil Kulkarni. It was time for the next chapter, but we could not help feeling a little sadness, as we looked out over the city through the floor to ceiling windows of Smita’s apartment, while fireworks went off all around us. It was New Year’s Eve for the Malaysian Chinese, and they were showing their excitement and hope for prosperity in the Year of the Tiger in a most incendiary way. We decided there was no better way to consecrate the occasion than to crack open a couple of the local beers by the same name, and toast our brief re-exploration of Malaysia.

Singapore is famous for its capitalism.  In some ways, the state itself has grown and continues to function as a kind of corporation, with citizens playing the role of employees subject to strict policies and the role  of shareholders, benefiting from the success and prudence of management.

Separated from Malaysia in 1965, perennial statesman Lee Kwan Yew oversaw its rise from an underdeveloped colonial outpost to a first world Asian tiger.  It ranks 23 in the 2009 Human Development Index, above Hong Kong, South Korea, and Greece.  The de facto financial center of Southeast Asia, Singapore boasts enviably high rule of law, investment in education, and shrewd policies attracting the globally educated to immigrate.

A friend of AsiaWheeling and Harvard graduate plans to move to Singapore before the year is out.  Because of his high caliber education, he can receive a passport to the nation-state within two years.  With tax and regulatory concessions available for industries the government wishes to encourage, a growing number of alternative investment managers and global financial institutions are migrating their legal entities, their employees, and their (albeit low) tax dollars to Singapore.

Citizens of Singapore are healthy, courteous, and enjoy much greater income equality than Hong Kong or New York, alleviating many social class pressures.  A businessman in Hong Kong once told me, “If you ask a taxi driver in Hong Kong how big his apartment is, he’ll tell you it’s 389.27 square feet exactly.  If you ask a Singaporean taxi driver, he’ll tell you it’s somewhere around 400 square feet.”  Singapore’s social and economic policies have resulted in this relaxed, non-competitive attitude, which encourages community involvement and a sense of social responsibility.

On the MRT in Singapore, we saw a young man in a fitted baseball cap volunteer his seat when an elderly man boarded the train.  On the Tokyo subway, even the priority seats for elderly, disabled, and pregnant are filled with dozing salarymen during rush hours.  Singapore smacks of a utopia.

But Singapore has a dark side.  It’s a place where drug addicts are caned, rounds of layoffs can happen under the guise of a fire drill, and the government’s tactic for squelching dissidents is to sue them for sedition, bankrupting them with legal fees.  Multicultural harmony is advertised and prided, though the city still suffers from racial divisions and sports neighborhoods that double as ethnic enclaves.

Road crews and other blue collar jobs appear to be dominated by the Tamils, whose script is invariably last on the multilingual municipal signs. Singapore’s multicultural composition can also spark conflict.  For Chinese New Year, McDonald’s released a set of the 12 zodiac doraemon, but had replaced the pig with a doraemon holding a heart.   Chinese New Year happened to fall on Valentine’s Day, and the pig was certainly not Halal.  In an attempt not to alienate their Muslim customers, they outraged the Chinese community,  and began producing a new toy zodiac pig, and posted the apology below.

Prostitution finds its way into a legal gray area, with the odd-number buildings of certain districts designated as mid-rise brothel/bar complexes.  Karaoke bars of ill-repute lubricate business deals by allowing expenses to be reimbursed by what appears to be a shockingly high bar tab.

With punishments for petty crimes so high, desperation seems to reign, as human nature enjoys a bit of sin.  Singapore’s underbelly proves that the city is not fully the nursery rhyme it purports to be. Dig deep enough and you’ll find plenty that smacks of a dystopia.

Many of those to whom we explained the experiment of AsiaWheeling admitted they would have loved to have engaged in such a project in their youth, but even with the means, it was simply not in their consciousness.  The education system, which churns out highly analytical graduates, coupled with the mandatory military conscription, which teaches hierarchy and teamwork, somehow misses out on equally developing creativity.

Frank Lloyd Wright said, “Give me the luxuries of life, and I will do without the necessities.”  In the increasingly interconnected global economy, analytical minds will be the backbone of competitive development.  However it will be this analytical firepower, coupled with creativity and passion, that will really define innovation to come.  Without developing the creative faculties of its people, Singapore may find itself in an unexpected state of imperfection.

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The Sim City 2000 theme song poured out of my phone and, with it, we from our beds. We made our way downstairs to the finest breakfast of the entire trip to date. The Hotel Puri had filled the garden courtyard with a lavish buffet.

A central round tiered table contained all kinds of pastry, fruit and yogurt. A side table contained many steaming trays of traditional Malay breakfast foods (fried noodles, fried rice and a kind of salty porridge, alongside flapjacks, (chicken) sausages and home fried potatoes. A central beverage bar served (admittedly mediocre, but infinite in quantity) coffee, teas, and juices. And in the back corner, a fellow was dutifully raging on eggs to order. We were quite thrilled, and when the cab that was called for us by the hotel was quite late, we wandered into the street and flagged one of our own, making our way to the bus station in plenty of time.

The ride to Kuala Lumpur (or as the locals seem to all refer to it, KL) seemed to take only 15 minutes, so furiously were the two of us working on correspondence on that bus. When the bus began to unload we were quite startled to find ourselves not only in the giant and teeming city of Kuala Lumpur, but also unloading not at a central bus station, but at a seemingly random corner in the city. We piled our things and sat down on the curb, pondering our next steps. Scott made radio contact with our Malaysia Bureau Chief, Smita Sharma, while I began to field questions from the group of English-speaking KL-ites who were mostly well dressed business people. They were gathering around us, curious about the cycles. The city of KL was clean and mechanized, not so dissimilar from Singapore, at least from our then vantage point. I was demonstrating the Speed TR’s folding capabilities to a fellow who had come over to ask us if we needed a taxi, and then stuck around. I explained to him “no, we are going to cycle;” Scott had arranged a rendezvous with Smita at the most obvious landmark we could see, a large reddish tower emblazoned with the gold lettering “Times Square.” So, bidding adieu to AsaiWheeling’s new friends, we climbed on the cycles, fully loaded, and careened into KL’s traffic-clogged streets.

Wheeling in Kuala Lumpur proved to be (perhaps unsurprisingly) something in between riding in the reasonably quiet, regimented and rule-bound traffic of Singapore and the snarling honk-filled madness of a city like Jakarta. We had yet to see a bicycle in this city, though the traffic seemed to consist of at least 35% two wheeled machines, and traffic treated us for the most part with respect. Through close communication, and careful signaling of our intent, we were able to make it to Times Square, sweating and starving, but in very high spirits. We then found ourselves sent on a wild meandering goose chase by security guards trundling conflicting views as to where it might be appropriate to park our cycles. Eventually we locked them to a fence that seemed to serve a similar purpose for a number of motor scooters.

The ground floor of the Times Square building in KL proved to be a sprawling mall, where we promptly set up shop in a Starbucks, and were sipping iced coffee and enjoying the free wireless Internet when we noticed a short-haired woman in a Grinnell College tee-shirt hammering on the glass of the window near our seats. This, we realized must be Ms Sharma herself, with a folding cycle that was propped seductively behind her.

We dispensed with the trivialities of small talk, ice breaking, and the like, and dove right into the meat of the issue. Smita informed us that she was ravenously hungry, had a restaurant in mind, and wanted to depart right there and then by bicycle. Scott and I were able to instantly relate, and with the regulation of blood sugar playing such a starring role in AsiaWheeling already, we knew we had found a fine adviser. She also rode hard and fast, which we like, signaling her intent, and demanding her place in traffic. This is, in the humble opinion of your correspondents, the safest way to cycle. A cyclist who lingers at the side of the road, riding slowly and nervously, invites cars to whip past them, and risks an inability to make turns because he or she is forced to be re-entering traffic constantly. A confident cyclist can take his or her place with the slower traffic, and through effective signaling of intent and confident lane occupation, navigate traffic with no decreased fluidity relative to the rest of traffic. With this lesson already well ingrained, we had only to begin the process of the teaching Smita the Field Commands, and she would be ready to wheel with the best of them. We’ve introduced many a person to the craft of wheeling, and Smita proved to be one of the few wheeling pupils for whom we never had to repeat a single command. Needless to say, we were quite impressed.

After parking the bikes, she lead us into the basement of yet another gargantuan sprawling mall, where we found a gargantuan and sprawling food court, called “Lot 10 Hutong.”

“The creator of this food court,” Smita explained, “selected all his favorite street food hawkers and put them all together in one place.” And my goodness, what a place! I enjoyed a bowl of pork noodles (one would have expected these to be a rarity in this Muslim country), Scott a plate of sweet-smelling noodles in dark sauce, and Smita a Penang style curry dish.

Scott completed the experience by running to a nearby shop and buying a number of interesting fruit juices as we commenced the process of making one another’s acquaintance.

We decided to leave the cycles locked there, and climbed onto KL’s monorail system, connecting to the elevated train system, and eventually getting off outside the city center where Smita showed us her apartment. It was delightful, and situated high up in a skyscraper, overlooking a number of apartment blocks, parks, and mosques.

She delighted us with a tidy room to stay in, with its own private bath and shower, bountiful wireless Internet, and a little round of refreshments before we dashed back out for more wheeling.

Back in the city, center we were making our way through traffic, Smita  confidently taking bishop, and Scott and I gawking at the massive city that towered around us. KL was certainly a city of malls, and we passed one after another.

Some of them were giant hyper posh projects, which were, Smita explained, kept afloat by middle eastern oil wealth, which would come to KL on shopping tours.

At one point we (for not the first time) became siphoned onto a giant highway. In KL, though it is extremely hard to get to some places without using one, it is actually illegal to ride a bicycle on the highways Luckily, here we were able to make our way back onto legal roads, by taking a shortcut through the campus of a giant Chinese funeral center. An interesting waypoint indeed. Due to the short cut and the whims of the local highway designers, we found ourselves once again somewhat unsure of our exact location.

The streets had become quite empty, and all around us there were giant and seemingly empty apartment blocks. The surrounding grass looked as though it had not been cut in months, and at times was threatening to swallow up what once had been signs of habitation (playgrounds, signage, and the occasional long parked car).

Soon, up ahead of us, there appeared a kind of wall of trash. It was the kind of barrier that one might expect to be erected in cases of street warfare, behind which a soldier might hide from bullets. We rolled to a halt in front of this, and after some conversation, hoisted our bikes over, and began to wheel deeper into the beast. Here in the middle of a towering and crowded city, a crumbling and empty world… the extremes of experience indeed.

We hoisted the cycles over two more barriers and past a couple of burned out cars before we made our way back into civilization. We stopped at an Indian food vendor’s shop and asked what it was we had just wheeled through. “A government housing development,” he answered Smita in Malay. Still under development, we would assume.

We stopped for a cool drink at a local convenience store, and Smita explained how startled she was at the quality of the Indian’s Malay. “He’s been here two years, and his Malay is better than mine…” she grumbled. Even given that Smita had spent about four of the last five years abroad studying in the U.S.,  we had to admit, this was impressive. It speaks not only to the steadfastness of the fellow’s Malay study, but also to an observation we had made again and again with both Malay and the very closely related Indonesian languages: They are considered some of the easiest in the world to learn. It would be my guess that given a language where the mechanics are quite easy to get down, then the elements that separate the good from the best must be the more subtle, use-based qualities, such as accent, deftness of vocabulary selection, and the like. Regardless, such qualities suggest learning Malay or Indonesian at some point in my life would be very interesting.

We headed to a favorite spot of the Kuala Lumpur literati, the Annexe gallery.  Here we observed some contemporary art, including photographs, drawings, and mixed media work.

Before leaving, we consulted the gallery’s management on the location of our next waypoint, which required a mapping session.

Moving onward and upward, we mounted the cycles and again took to the streets.

Our next waypoint was likely the best known in all of KL. As,you ,dear reader, have no doubt already surmised, I mean the Petronas Towers, the pair of giant silver banded twin monoliths that loom over the city. We tore through the city traffic, lichting and rausching our way to the base of the great towers, where we found a very interesting piece of rotating corporate art and a decided lack of bicycle parking.

Guard after guard directed us from place to place, all of which would have been completely legitimate parking spots, many of which were already populated with cars and motor bikes, but none of which seemed to be sanctioned for bike parking. In the end, we were forced to ride some half a kilometer from the base of the towers ,where we parked in an almost identical lot full of motor bikes.

So be it.

We strolled through the large and decadent park that lay at the feet of the towers and took in the view. I thought aloud how Malaysians must come to this city and feel pride in their country. “Or feel frustration at an entire country’s wealth spent in the development of one city,” Smita added. A valid point… I guess more research is needed.

We strolled into the mall, taking a moment to pause and note one particular floor that Robert Mugabe’s wife is quite fond of.

We dined in the food court at the mall, which lay in the belly of the towers. It was delightful, markedly devoid of western chain restaurants and quite affordable.

That night we enjoyed a cocktail at the rooftop bar of a local hotel called Traders, where we were treated to a most glorious view of the Petronas towers, now completely lit up with bright halogens.

By the time we set up to wheel home through the Kuala Lumpur night, they had already turned the lights off, no doubt to save on the electricity bill, and we enjoyed a high-voltage night wheel home. Kuala Lumpur was proving a delightful, albeit high-voltage wheeling city. As we whisked by Indian street food kiosks, noble glowing mosques, and high-rise apartments decorated with kaleidoscopic swaths of drying clothing, I thought to myself that, perhaps, I might even consider spending some years of my life living in this place.

Our third morning at the Hutton Lodge began with us packing up our belongings and stashing them in the staff room at the hotel. Our mission for the day was to wheel south toward a much discussed snake temple.

It was, rumor told, filled with pit vipers that had come to the temple of their own accord (tired of the monotony of life in the jungle perhaps), where they were promptly sedated by a Chinese monk by the name of Chor Soo Kong, using a special blend of incense rumored to turn the deadly poisonous vipers into docile wall ornaments.  We pictured a darkened room billowing with clouds of fragrant and intoxicating smoke.  On the cold, clay ground, we envisioned gigantic pit vipers, their bodies arching and slowly writhing as if entranced by the burning herbs.  Get too close, we thought, and they may spit poison into our eyes and strike with vicious fury.  Sounded like the kind of place that might make a good waypoint, so off we went, wheeling hard southward.

We made our way down the coast, where we were soon able to leave the highway, and ride on a delightful wooded side-path, which snaked in between the highway and the straits of Malacca.

Our ride took us past a number of strange settlements and construction projects. When the hunger hit, we found ourselves outside a rather posh looking mall in a suburban district, and made our way inside to find sustenance.

We wandered the mall, looking for food, and spending quite a bit of time in a dried snacks shop, where I had the great misfortune of sampling a salted prune that rang throughout my mouth with a most vile flavor that refused dilution no matter how much water I drank.

An overpriced, but thankfully large meal of chicken and rice, and a cup of Joe at the local Old Town White Coffee shop later, we were back on the cycles with renewed energy on our mission for the snake temple.

We stopped at a large Chinese temple, which proved not to contain any snakes. Rather, we found an old man inside who directed us in half-words of English toward the water. He assured us that our destination was “na fa.” And though we were almost certain that we had completely failed in communicating anything to him about the snake temple, we decided it would not hurt to follow his vehement gesticulations in the direction of the sea.

We were glad we did, since, though there was no snake temple to be found, there was a large fishing dock, where men unloaded piles of glistening fish and a fellow was operating a strange garbage transport vehicle, which emitted plumes of blue smoke as it grunted up 45 degree inclines.

Back on the road, we decided to dart into the interior of the island, away from the sea in search of the temple.

Again and again, we would stop to buy water from a merchant of some kind, or at the very least, sweet soda served in a plastic bag.  It was quite hot, and we were sweating hard.  He or she would direct us very clearly toward somewhere in the midst of this vast industrial park. But each time, we were unsuccessful. We did enjoy a fine tour of the airport, and the local Penang free trade zone, but alas, no snakes.

We were enjoying a can of “100 Plus”, the local energy drink, when in desperation we asked a local Tamil truck driver who was refueling and purchasing snack food at a local convenience store one last time for directions. His response was so ridiculously hard to interpret, and spiced so heavily with head wobbling and the phrases “so simple” and “no anyway place” (which we took to mean one-way road) that we were torn between bursting into laughter and dutifully heeding his directions. So we decided to simply do both, and, low and behold, we found ourselves arriving at the elusive place.  We gave silent thanks to the Tamil driver and his wonderfully peculiar way of communication, and in we went.  We braced ourselves for the dozens of snakes writhing entranced on the clay floor, and the holy men who would have the no-doubt thankless task of sedating them.

I’ll be honest, the snake temple is nothing to write home about.  It seems as though the architects of this experience had read neither One Thousand and One (Arabian) Nights (كتاب ألف ليلة وليلة‎), nor had they considered consulting the temple’s design with children raised on Chuck Jones cartoons.

But there were some very drugged snakes inside, and plenty of incense, though not the billows we had expected. AsiaWheeling after all is about the journey, not the waypoints themselves.

So let it suffice to say: we were quite underwhelmed with the whole experience, and will dispense with all mention of the snake temple from here forth.  Back on the road, we wheeled hard back toward the city; traffic was thickening, and we were eager to get home before dark.

Famished from the day’s wheel, we made our way to another emergent-style Penang restaurant.  Scott had a powerful lust for fried oysters.  Coupled with egg, they made for a delicious appetizer.

Followed by banana leaf rice (pulut inti)…

and a healthy dose of chicken.

Now there would be just enough time to say our goodbyes to the friends we had made at the Hutton Lodge, take a few minuets to work furiously on correspondence before piling, cycles and all, into a taxi cab and heading for the bus depot.  The office was a hardscrabble collection of transport brokers, one with large tattoos on her arm that meant “nothing”.

We spent that night in an anti-anxiety medication induced half sleep, propped up on loudly patterned seats in a squeaking and yawing overnight bus to Malacca.

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