Malaysian batik

RM Batik is a family-run cottage industry making batik since 1977 in Kuantan. I have visited Jam, who owns the business with her husband, several times since moving here and she always greets me with a warm smile! She has introduced both our girls to the art of making batik (see Steph's butterflies below) and many of our friends back home are proud owners of her aprons, chef's hats, sarongs, make-up bags and so on! I always get a good discount from her and am happy to give her my business! The design is either stamped with hot wax onto the cloth, then painted or else drawn freehand in wax and painted. Afterwards the wax is removed in boiling water, the cloth rinsed and the dyes set.

The lady doing freehand (she is drawing heliconia plants or ginger) has been doing this for about five years. Another woman who works here has had seventeen years' experience! They make it look so simple! Inside, we watched white fabric being stamped...there must be hundreds of such stamps hand-carved made out of metal featuring all sorts of Malaysian flora and fauna, geomteric patterns, etc.

(left) Jam and her husband

(right) one wall of the metal wax stamps

Large cauldron full of boiling water to remove wax.

This length of cloth (perhaps to be made into a tablecloth?) had just been painted and was drying on the stretcher outside.

Steph holding up a pretty batik shawl (18RM or ~$5.50CAD) in the shop. Note on the back wall the lengths of colourful sarongs (same price for about 2 m. of fabric). They also sell men's shirts, women's skirts and pants, silk scarves, various sizes of toilet or make-up bags, etc. Any orders??

Steph is "at home" in Kuantan

Downtown Christchurch, N.Z. and punting on the Avon River

When computer-savvy children come back "home", one of their jobs is to clean up the parents' computer files, "fix" things that we have still not learned how to do and this time...create a "blog"! Imagine me and Pat writing our very own blog here in Malaysia to keep our friends and family updated in the best of 21st century technology! So here we are, our first three issues of "My Malaysia" reprinted for anyone who hasn't yet read them and more insights on our life here as I think about them and find them interesting enough to pass along!

Steph is on her first break from the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand and has come home to Kuantan for three weeks of R&R, studying for the MCAT exam and Mum's home-cooking! (Actually we find the local restaurants are pretty good and pretty cheap!) We will drive to Singapore on April 21st, spending the night in Melacca on the west coast of Malaysia. Melacca (or Melaka) was settled by the Portuguese and Dutch along with the British, so it has interesting architecture in its many historic buildings as well as many different types of food. From there we will continue to Singapore on Saturday, spending a couple of nights downtown. Steph writes her exam all day on Sunday then we will go out to celebrate the end of studying! The two of us will drive back to Kuantan on Monday afternoon, after the obligatory shopping in downtown Singapore while Pat remains for some business meetings, flying home on Tuesday.

To celebrate Steph's 21st birthday on April 29th, we will be heading to Pulau Perhentian, an island off the East Coast of Malaysia about a four hour drive from here. We will stay at Tuna Bay Island Resort (www.tunabay.com.my) which is a string of wooden chalets right on the beach with the jungle directly behind! We hear there is excellent scuba-diving and snorkeling in the clear water there as well as good food in the local restaurants. What more can you ask for?!?

Steph flies back to NZ on April 30th, resuming classes the next day when she arrives. We plan to see her again in early November when we head back to NZ to do some hiking on the Milford Track before she heads back to the US for graduation from Auburn on December 15th. One thing about living in S.E. Asia, you are always planning the next trip...

Which leads me to say that Pat has business in London, U.K. in early May so I will join him on a ten-day trip there, spending three days in the capital then renting a car and exploring the Southwest (Cornwall and Devon) for a week. We are very much looking forward to it and if any of you have ideas or recommendations of places to stay or visit, please send them along!

More Malaysia wildlife: a very large gray monkey snuck into the pool area at the local Hyatt Resort Hotel one afternoon as we were leaving and helped himself to handfuls of left-over cold french fries! He sat there stuffing his face and as he was being shooed away by a staff member, reached back for one more handful...for the road! One morning Pat called me to the patio doors to witness our little skinny tabby cat snoozing away on one of the patio chairs...we haven't seen him since!



Our side patio










Is it? The Malays love to add the generic expression, "is it?" at the end of a phrase. What is funny (to us) is that the pronoun rarely agrees with the subject, so that you get something like this: "Oh, so your daughter is coming to visit, is it?" or "Pat is away on business this week, is it?" Canadians who use "eh?" a lot can associate with the word, "lah", which many Malays use at the end of almost anything they say. For some speakers, it is more pronounced and noticeable, for others, it is used only occasionally. So you would hear something like, "Come and sit here, lah, and we'll talk" or "We drove to KL, lah, and spent the weekend", and so on. We even hear the ex-pats using it in their speech, so I guess it is catching! Finally, the use of the word, "can": if asked if someone can do something, the answer might be an emphatic single use "can". For added emphasis, you will hear "can can" or "can lah". If the answer is negative, then you will hear "can not". You have to listen closely to distinguish between the second "can" or the "not" to find out which it is to be! More later...jumpa lagi! K.


















Living room-Kuantan house Dining room and dry kitchen


(Note copy of "Afghan Girl" on D.R. wall, this was done in pastel by the in-residence artist at The Hyatt Kuantan Resort as a "Welcome to Malaysia" gift to me from Pat!)

My Malaysia Issue 3 (take 2)

Insight from Kuantan (February 2006): Issue 3

Where have the past several months gone? We’ve been gone…to Italy in October, China and Hong Kong in November, Canada in December/January and New Zealand in February! We are chalking up the air miles and thus no time to write my thoughts! It has been wonderful hearing from you, either in the fall or over the Christmas season…please keep your letters and e-mails coming this way!

Downtown Guangzhou, China (left)

Chen Clan Ancestral Hall (part of Guangdong Museum of Folk Art) right

Water traffic in Hong Kong harbour

Downtown Hong Kong with Victoria Peak

I have been asked about local wildlife: I think our resident bat has moved on, but there is a skinny tabby cat who wanders by the patio door occasionally. Sometimes she gives herself a bath while balancing on our wall!

One day I was startled by a stray cat which leaped out of a garbage can as I was walking along the road! Twice I have seen great hornbill birds in the trees around the neighbourhood (that was impressive!) and also twice I have seen monitor lizards (about 2 feet long, similar to a small alligator but very skittish). At dusk, there are lots of monkeys on the road near the Hyatt-people come to feed them, but they are rather pesky and can attack if provoked. I am told there are wild boars by one of the beaches, but I haven’t seen one yet, nor have I seen any snakes (yeah! How long will that last?). Our favourite beach up the coast has herds of goats running around the fields and among the houses in the area! The little kids are adorable!

Goat family at Beserah Beach, near Kuantan

I saw a hearse one day downtown-it was a white panel van with glass sides and back doors, flashing lights on top and a loudspeaker announcing something from it…perhaps the deceased’s name? It was a sight, to be sure! Another sight we witnessed several times in December whenever we were at the airport, was the “official” send-off for those Muslims attending the Hajj in Mecca. For every person making the journey, there must have been several hundred well-wishers! Our little airport was so crammed with people, that security and police were there as traffic controllers inside the building!

People have wondered what sorts of costs we incur, so here are a few samples in CAD:
City water bill between $2.50 and $9.00 (we have yet to figure this one out!)
Electricity bill between $151 and $211
5 gal. bottled water $3.00
Dry cleaning three items once cost $6.59
Daily newspaper (KL)$9.83 for the month
Camry fill-up $17.19
Groceries between $200-300 monthly (depending on who is here!)

So there you have it, but not everything is cheap, and remember the average salary in Malaysia is less than 2,000 MR (or $614 CAD) per month!

Lightbulbs: OK everyone, when was the last time you changed a lightbulb inside or outside your home? How about two or more? Would you believe we average between 12 and 40 per month? (No, I didn’t think so, but I’ve been keeping track and it is quite true!) We’ve started buying them by the case at a local electric shop! Perhaps we need to buy shares in Phillips?

I’ve cut out articles from our daily paper which I find of interest…one was titled, “Eternally annoying Malaysia traits”. Specifically the author was complaining about those people who do not RSVP to a function, but show up anyway, thus messing up the seating arrangements and leaving the staff scrambling to set up more tables1 Another is “Malaysia time”, not unlike “Southern time” (you know, “I’m fixin’ to do it…”). Quote: “It is perfectly normal for an invitation to state the time of arrival of guests at 7:30 p.m. when the event in fact would only start at 8:30 p.m. Even so, it is still common to see some guests making their grand entrance at 8:50 p.m.” This happened to us at a function in KL last December when the King and Queen of Malaysia were expected to attend. In fact, the King ended up golfing somewhere, the Queen was perhaps watching him, so they sent the Princess in their place! She was about 30 minutes late and held everyone up! The article goes on to say that the favourite Malaysian excuse for being late is, the traffic jam. For not turning up at work, the excuse is food poisoning, apparently!

Along the same line, is the Asian penchant for being (what Westerners consider) rude. We have noticed how Asians think it is perfectly OK to ask how much one earns, what an item costs and how old you are! This drives my ex-pat friends up the wall, particularly the Brits! The absolute worse offence is to comment on one’s personal appearance (i.e.”You must have eaten too much over Chinese New Year—you are looking fat today!”). Then there are the people who rush into an elevator or onto a subway train before letting others off…most frustrating in the KL airport when you are lugging suitcases! This article was written in conjunction with a review of the book, “Talk to the Hand” by Lynne Truss, about “The Utter Bloody Rudeness of the World Today, or Six Good reasons to Stay Home and Bolt the Door”. (She is the author of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves”.) I have one British friend who carries the article around in her purse to show her Asian friends when they make rude comments about her looks, dress, what-have-you! Such occurrences continue to amuse us no end!

Finally, another driving story: I was returning home from a step class one morning when I encountered a police check at a road block. I was asked to show my license, both my International Permit and my Louisiana one. The police officer looked at me then my picture and asked, “Is Louisiana your name?” A British friend was stopped the same day, and all she was asked was her age!

The monsoon season (which we mostly missed this year) is coming to an end, with the China Sea much calmer, the days often sunny and clear with just a little breeze, but still hot (28-30+C range). The tourists are returning to the Hyatt (we could hardly find an empty lounge chair by the pool on the weekend!) and plans are being made to go diving/snorkeling up the coast in April. The flowers are starting to bloom again-red ginger, tiny yellow jungle orchids and pretty orangey-red canna (not at all like our lilies) in our garden for starters. Soon we will have been here a whole year…hard to believe! It is going to get increasingly difficult to find you stories that are a little off-beat, I think! Until next time…

Lotus pond beside terrace

My Malaysia Issue 2 (take 2)

Insight from Kuantan, September 2005 (issue 2)

After a long, hot summer, we are now into a long, hot fall, which, of course will be followed by a long, hot winter…you get the picture! Actually, I spent about 6 weeks with Jen in her Montreal apartment this summer (sans A/C with outside temps. reaching to 35C+ some days) and occasionally Pat would call and say it was cooler in Kuantan! Go figure! The monsoon rains come in November and our landlord has told us it will be cooler then...

Some funny sights I have noted: Muslim women in their head scarves and helmets on their motor scooters, scarf tails flying behind them in the breeze! One day, a Muslim woman, in full dress with head scarf, was working on her car engine by the side of the road…I wished I had my camera handy for that one! A Chinese girl at the MegaMall dressed to kill in a black top, mini-skirt and boots dragging a brightly coloured vacuum cleaner to her shop! Malay cats…mostly very scrawny, some with deformed tails (even bent at right angles!) or even no tails! At a coastal resort recently for the P&G Company Family Day, Pat was amused at how I had to use the handle of my fork to spread butter and jam on my toast at breakfast…for each meal, only a fork and large spoon were set as utensils.

Chelsea, aka “Crab Dog”, has now successfully caught three crabs on our favourite beach for fresh sushi treat during our morning walks! She is quick to see the crab scuttle into the ocean, races after it, pounces on it with her front paws and grabs it in her mouth to tear the soft fleshy part out of the shell. So far she has no idea what the pincers do…

First car accident: on my birthday in mid-August, Jen and I were leaving the grocery store at lunchtime when CRASH! We were hit from behind on the left side, smashing lights and denting the side and fender area. After we recovered from the shock (we were not hurt), I got out of the car to see what had caused it…there was a small pick-up truck (or lorry here) trying to squeeze between me and the curb on the left. He didn’t make it. A few minutes later the lady behind me asked me to move my car as we were blocking traffic, it turns out she, too, was sideswiped by the same lorry along the whole left side of her Toyota van, side mirror was bent backwards and smashed the corner front window, and, to add to that, the little car behind her had also been hit! I never did understand why the driver felt he had to squeeze by all three of us causing damage, but since my car was in the way, he couldn’t make a quick getaway! The rest of the afternoon was spent at the Traffic Police office downtown filling out forms and making a statement. Lucky for me, the Chinese lady (in the Toyota van) spoke perfect English and helped me to get through all the forms. She was especially annoyed as a similar thing had happened to her in the same van less than a year before! With the help of Pat’s trusty Admin., Erica, we were able to have the insurance agent come to the house later that afternoon with the body shop manager to take it away for repairs. It was all ready, looking quite brand new again less than two weeks later. In a society where graft is rampant, we were amazed at how quickly post-accident we were swarmed by representatives of the various body shops in town, who said they would take us personally to the Traffic Police office, they would take the car for repairs, etc. I just smiled, took all their business cards and said I would be in touch! In the end we had a choice of about five shops who would work with our insurance company. A lesson learned…driving is still a nightmare and one must be both aggressive and defensive!


Pat and I spent our 25th wedding anniversary at a lovely coastal resort about two hours’ drive north of here, called TanJong Jara Resort (www.tanjongjararesort.com). We enjoyed about five days there with Jen (who was able to visit us for about three weeks) and went snorkeling, swimming, enjoyed their lovely spa and delicious meals, and Pat resumed scuba-diving after a lull of over 30 years!






















We have a resident bat who likes to hang from the eaves in the carport, just above my car, so you can imagine what that means! The landlord has chased him away with his slingshot but that hasn’t deterred him yet! With apologies to Fred Penner, who used to sing about cats when the girls were little, “The bat came back the very next day…”!

We have a newly installed ceiling fan in our wet kitchen, which makes a big difference to the air circulation when making meals now! It’s not quite the same as A/C, but it helps! We have set up our old BBQ in the back yard and use it often.

I asked Jen to share a story which evoked much laughter from all who heard it:

On the way to Malaysia this summer, I had a 24 hour lay-over in Seoul, Korea. The first night, after showering and resting from the flight, I went to the hotel lobby for suggestions of where to go eat dinner. A very helpful older gentleman, with a moderate command of English, offered to show me a Korean restaurant across the street, which he assured me was quite good. We walked to the restaurant, and, after considering a seat at a floor-level table, he decided that a western-style table and chair would be more suitable. He then proffered the menu:

“Do you like pork or people?”

”I’m sorry?”

“Pork or people?”

This continued a few times, me frantically trying to figure out WHAT I was expected to eat (having already seen a rather tame, bilingual menu), until I finally said, “I’m sorry, but I really don’t understand what you mean.” At this point, he opened the menu to the pictures of the meals, and gestured at several dishes which clearly said (in English) “pork”—ribs and the like. He then gestured to the beef dishes, and similarly pointed and said, “See, people, people, people.” I ordered the people, but it really tasted like beef!
(addendum: after telling this story to a friend who spend 3 years in Korea, I understand that there aren’t sounds for “b” and “f” in Korean, leading to something more like “pee’l”, or, as I heard, “people”.)


On that note, I will leave you. Until next time…

My Malaysia Issue 1 (take 2)

Insight from Kuantan, June 2005

For the most part Malaysians show their smiling faces and greet you in passing, except when I am with Chelsea as Muslims cannot touch dogs, so there are occasional shrieks of hysteria or the admission, “I’m scared of dogs”. No wonder, many Chinese homes have ferocious guard dogs which pace by the front gates…I’m scared of them too!
One day a Malay woman driving a van with numerous children inside stopped to watch Chelsea and me at the edge of the road for a long time, the little ones all smiling and pointing at the dog. I wondered what the mother was saying about our gentle Golden Retriever! The Malay word for dog is “anjing” which the children yell out loudly!

Driving on the left side of the road is still a little hairy one month after our arrival…especially when having to watch for motorscooters on all sides dart in and out of traffic. At least when the light turns green, only one lane of traffic gets to go so there is no having to cross the oncoming traffic. Some large intersections have countdown lights, either in red (to tell you when the light will turn green) or in green (to tell you how long you have to get across the intersection)! It is easy to forget that you put the blinker on with your RIGHT hand and when you are the driver, you reach over your RIGHT shoulder for the seat belt! We ordered a 2.4 litre Toyota Camry for me which took about two weeks to arrive…Pat’s employees think he is very rich to be able to afford such a luxurious and expensive car (they would have bought only the 2 litre model!).

There is a small but well-stocked stationery shop near the ex-pat grocery store about a mile down the road. I bought a few greeting cards (in English) upon arrival, only to find I also needed to buy glue to seal them! The grocery store is a little more expensive than the bigger ones but it is handy and sells a good variety of goods. For example, eggs come in plastic crates of ten, not a dozen! They are also not refrigerated, which I find a bit disconcerting! There are lots of fresh fruits and vegetables, two types of mangos (one is small and yellow and very sweet, the other is green, longer and sweet but not as juicy), two sizes of pineapples (less than 50 cents each!), delicate butter lettuce, sweet and very fat carrots wrapped in pairs in plastic wrap, lovely tasty tomatoes which are all uniformly small in size, grapes from Australia and/or New Zealand, etc. There are also, of course, many types of produce that I don’t recognize and for which I need to use my Malay dictionary! The fishmonger is quickly becoming friends with Pat and sells him huge shrimp (called prawns here, like in the U.K.) for about $4.00 per pound. Recently we had some that worked out to be about 8 count! They sell wine and liquor in the grocery stores but there are also two good wine shops in town and we are getting to know the Chinese owners of one…to the point where one Saturday, he invited us to the back room for some lunch of fish broth over noodles, with add-ins such as lettuce, pineapple, carrots, chillies.

The new Electrolux washer and dryer in the house take forever to complete a cycle…I fear our clothes will soon wear out completely! Even the Econowash takes a full two hours, so just exactly what is being economized?!? A fold-up drying rack placed outside the back door saves on dryer power, provided it doesn’t rain during the afternoon!

There is the occasional “house lizard” roaming around…the first one we found in the dishwasher! The next one was just outside our bedroom door one morning. They are a most unattractive sickly brown colour and leave a dropping not unlike mouse dirt here and there! (Yuck!)

Our Chinese landlord and landlady are very friendly and helpful, especially when attending to things which go wrong in the new house, i.e. power problems as a result of one of the garden lights which was set too low and shorts out because of the water table. We have had the carpenter, electrician, A/C and dishwasher repairman here in record time to fine tune certain problems. Asian custom seems to dictate that it is perfectly OK to ask how much something costs when you admire it, so I find myself frequently justifying what we paid in North America for this and that to Mary and Ho!

We are in the middle of a construction zone on our street…beside us a semi-detached house is being built and we have watched the footings poured with cement, now the reinforced columns are being poured, by hand with buckets of cement! There is a constant din of noise also from behind us and across the street where two more houses are partly done. We observed the brick wall being built around “the compound” (or yard), then it was covered with stucco and smoothed out in the house across from us. Most of this work was done by a Chinese lady! No one seems to like the look of brick as each house and wall is made of stucco. The roofs are tiled, usually red, sometimes orange or even blue. The environmentalists among you will be happy to know that everyone has solar panels on the roof instead of a hot water heater. Our landlord had a good laugh when I asked where the tank was so I could turn down the thermostat a little…we found it awfully hot when we first moved in! There is obviously no such thing as “cold” water coming right from the tap! Most people have a car port instead of a proper garage, and it is beautifully covered in attractive tiles from the entrance gates (automatic door opener) right to the front door. It is customary for the maid to sweep and mop these tiles frequently; otherwise you would be tracking dirt and grit inside the house.






Our yard is lush and green with various palm trees, birds of paradise, ginger plants and other tropical plants whose names I do not know! My landlady felt that we didn’t know how to water properly when we first arrived, so she has arranged for her maid to come daily around 8 a.m. to do the job. For that I pay her 50 ringit (about $12.50) per month and I don’t get all hot and sweaty first thing in the morning! We do find it odd, however, that even after a severe thunderstorm with heavy rains overnight, she is still there watering in the morning! There must be no such thing as “overwatering”!





We have an Indian maid, Mani, who comes two afternoons per week for about 6 hours. She irons, cleans the bathrooms and the floors and dusts, plus washes the tiles outside once a week. She has worked for ex-pats before and is very pleasant and honest. I pay her 300 ringit per month or about $75.00. Personally, I feel this is akin to highway robbery, but when in Malaysia… (more next time)

Intro to My Malaysia (web edition)

Welcome to our blog of life in Kuantan, Malaysia! I will post interesting updates periodically. Bookmark this site under your favourites and check it out from time to time! Please feel free to leave a comment or ask a question (no need to sign up through Blogger).

Jumpa lagi! ('see you around' in Bahasa Malay)
Kathie and Pat

Kathie and Pat at 45th Anniversary of DoveChem in Kuala Lumpur, October 2005