by Marian Wright
by Marian Wright
On a stinkin' hot Tuesday in April, Peter and I were traversing the interior of jungly, red-earthed Malaysia on one of those legendary Expres buses. We'd been in Asia for about two months, travelling through Bali and Java in Indonesia before flying up to the city-state of Singapore on the southernmost tip of the Malay peninsula.Tired of watching the lush and romantic scenery, I gazed in wonder at another of the mysterious co-pilot seats I had often seen on these Malay buses. This particular throne was a white plastic lawn chair on a pedestal. A big Panasonic TV was attached to the ceiling above it along with a super-duper brand-new 4-piece jammin' stereo system. A 4-foot Marlboro poster was stuck to the windshield by way of suction cups and hooks, No Smoking and Do Not Spit signs (Dilarang Merokok and Jangan Meludah), and several pink plastic flower garlands hung from the wide angle rear view mirror. On the expansive dashboard were a cornucopia of items: a tissue box with a gold-filigree cover, a Mickey Mouse in a top hat, a bouquet of fake purple roses in a Grecian style urn, a bunch of tapes and numerous bottles of brightly-colored water. Commodious undoubtedly, but the funny thing is, I never saw anyone sitting on one of those seats of honor. It must have something to do with the extraordinary speed and inversely proportional driving skill of the Malay bus drivers.
The bit of land we were exploring was bordered by the South China Sea to the east and the Straits of Malacca to the west. It holds both Malaysia and the southern portion of Thailand. The bulbous northern end of Thailand sits squarely within the Asian continent and is surrounded, counterclockwise, by Cambodia, Laos and Burma. We weren't in Kansas anymore, that was for certain, but we were having the adventure of our lives.
