We’re back in Malaysia. Landed in KL and then bused it up to Taiping for a couple of days of debriefing.

First thing we had to do was buy a couple of nails to slide between faulty shutters on our hotel room. We walked into a Hardware store and asked for 4″ nails. The guy behind the counter gave us a curious look before rummaging through some boxes.
“How many nails do you want”, he called out.
I told him two.
“Two”?
I explained that I just needed enough to nail Veronica to a cross.
Neither the Hardware guy or Veronica could see a lot of humour in that.

Next we bought an umbrella at a junk shop. I needed to road test it. A group of bemused Malay sales girls stood watching while a strange bald man started aggressively swinging his newly acquired cheap red umbrella around in the 5-footway. I didn’t break anything including the expectation that white men are very odd creatures.

We wandered through a fruit market. I told this guy selling mangosteen at RM5 for 3 kg, that in Australia we pay RM7 for one.
“One kilo”?
“No, one mangosteen”.
He wouldn’t believe me. Within 30 seconds the entire market was discussing this enormous travesty. We left the market through a guard of honour, as stall holders and buyers shook their heads at us in sympathy.

Walked around the huge central lake. Taiping is a pretty place. Met a Chinese guy who had lived in England for 40 years but decided to come back home to die. He told us that Taiping is famous for two things – rain and gambling.
“I bet you it will rain by 3 o’clock”.
He was right. Apparently it always rains by mid-afternoon.

Next day we took a jeep ride up Maxwell Hill. Don’t do that trip on a full stomach.
Met a black nuggety Indian who reckons he saw a tiger up there 20 years ago. He himself had just seen a monkey with spectacles on. An English guy who overheard our conversation then told us about a group of Liverpool supporters who visited Australia a few years ago. They wanted to see the ‘Outback’, so they hired a jeep and went bush. It was just on dusk when a large Red Kangaroo jumped out in front of them and was unfortunately hit and killed by the jeep.
The Liverpool lads felt really bad. They stopped and gathered around the dead roo, debating what to do with its remains. One of the guys had a bright idea.
“We should bury it but first let’s get a photo of it”.

They then decided that they should all be in the photo with the kangaroo. Another suggested putting one of their Liverpool soccer jumpers on it. So they propped up the deceased beast, put a jumper over its head, threaded its tiny front legs through the arm holes and gathered around for a group photo.

When the camera flash went off, the kangaroo suddenly woke up, looked around and then bolted off into the bush. The Liverpool lads were completely stunned but perhaps not as much as the local aboriginal tribe who are still coming to terms with the kangaroo who regularly bounds past wearing a football jumper.

That night we hardly slept. Downstairs there was a group of about 60 Malay men enjoying a karaoke party. It was that awful whining Malay pop music that makes Michael Bolton sound cheerful. Every song is the same pleading, crying, painfully desperate, monotonous melodramatic dribble, made all the more obnoxious by the fact that none of them could actually sing.
I went downstairs to complain. The lady on the front desk suggested we just try and ride it out. They are all members of the Police force.
Ok, we’ll live with it.

We arrived back in Penang, happy to be home despite feeling very tired from having no sleep the night before.
After an early night we bounded up to the park the next morning to meet all our tai chi friends. Instructor Peter Lim has two new western students, Philip and Hugh. They wear shirts tucked into tight shorts and socks with their tai chi slippers. Apparently they have stayed here 30 times already, speak fluent Bahasa and don’t mix with expats. No wonder we hadn’t seen them before, they probably see us coming and hide.

Dieticians agree that breakfast is the most important meal of the day and who am I to disregard such good advice. So in Penang, I usually enjoy at least two breakfasts. Muesli and fruit with Veronica and then nasi lemak or beehoon with the locals. It’s all part of a hopelessly flawed weight loss program.

Malaysia is eternally frustrating. It’s a society bursting with contradictions. Flagrant disregard for their fellow man is often coupled with acts of extreme generosity and sacrifice. There is chaos on the roads but almost no road rage. Democracy with no safety net for the poor or disadvantaged. Places of great beauty drowning in a sea of plastic bags and polystyrene. One thing, it’s never boring but I’d like to belt the living suitcase out the bastard who revs the hell out of his motorbike at 5 o’clock every morning.

Our days here are full. Whether it’s doing a qi gong course, watching Chigku perform in a restored shophouse, sipping madras coffee with Teresa at Edelweiss, meeting friends in Chinese coffee shops, riding through kampongs on our motorbike or feeling like time has stood still when prowling the decaying streets of George Town. This place just makes us smile.

One thing we have often talked about doing is trying to find Suffolk House. This majestic mansion was once the home of Penang’s founder, Francis Light and stood as a seat of governance for successive generations. We have never met anybody who actually knew where it stands. Like Camelot, Suffolk House has always been the stuff of legends. We’ve seen pictures painted of it 150 years ago but for all we knew, it had crumbled and disappeared into historical memory. By all accounts this was by far the most magnificent mansion this island has ever seen. We probably should try and find it or what’s left of it.

Over breakfast at a hawker centre in Air Hitam, we quizzed a large group of Chinese friends about the whereabouts of Suffolk House. Not only did they not know where it was, they’d never heard of it.
They are living in one of the most special cities in all of Asia and it’s slowly crumbling around them. They don’t notice it. When it’s all gone, it doesn’t matter, we can build something else and it won’t look so old and tired. Heritage, what’s that? A multi-level car park would be nice. Sure make it easier to get to the new supermarket they’ve built now that that horrible old row of 1875 Southern Eclectic Style Chinese Shophouses has finally been bulldozed from memory.

Veronica and I found new determination. We are going to find Suffolk House. We are John and Veronica, tai chi Instructors, team number one on the Amazing Race. Someone once told us that the Mansion was somewhere near the State Mosque. We bid our Chinese friends good day, jumped on our motorbike and left them to contemplate new ways to make money.

We knew that Suffolk House was annexed to a school and had even been used as the school canteen for a number of years. I believed it was St. Xaviers, so we headed there. An Indian couple outside the school thought it wasn’t here but we should try the Methodist Boys School further along the Air Hitam Road. Sounded right, we rode there, talked our way past the bored guard on the gate – something about me being a professor and doing a doctorate on Asian education. We rode up the main drive and then walked the last 50 metres to the main office. We explained our quest for the Holy Grail and consequently found ourselves being directed to follow a young female student who would take us to the school counsellor.
Two things immediately sprung to mind.
Why do we need a Counsellor and what’s a girl doing at the Methodist Boys School?

The Counsellor was busy but upon hearing what our girl guide uttered, he just pushed all his papers aside, stood up and charged out of the office dragging us in his wake.
“I’ll show you Suffolk House”, he proudly stated.

This was getting exciting albeit a little strange but hey, this is Malaysia, strange is the norm. We didn’t have to walk far before the scaffold-clad facade of what was left of Suffolk House loomed imposingly over the school’s back fence. It was bizarre. This was it. Like finding the Pyramids in a suburb of Cairo. Like an inconsiderate Developer who had built a high-rise Condo next door to a bungalow. But this was no Condo. Even in its neglected state, its former magnificence was obvious. We squeezed through a small gap in the cyclone fence and onto a construction site. John and Veronica, you are team number one.

The Counsellor left us to our devices and suggested we come back to his office when we were ready. He had apparently written an article on the house that we may be interested in. Suffolk House was to be fully restored and stage one had begun. Stage two and onward was dependent on securing funds.

After wandering around the skeletal remains of the mansion for about twenty minutes we went back for some counselling. The Counsellor printed out an article on the house for us and showed us several old photos of generations of school children eating their lunch at the ‘Suffolk House Canteen’.  With the passing of time the house eventually became structurally unsafe for use, boarded up and abandoned.

The Counsellor was very kind and generous with his time. I suspect that he was delighted to meet people with a kindred interest in the House. We rode out of the school grounds with a sense of achievement. Why had it taken us so long to find the grand lady in the small parlour? Finding Suffolk House and sensing its future was probably now secure left us with a wonderful feeling.

We browsed through the horrible Batu Ferringhi trash market that night. Found a CD of nursery rhymes that included songs such as Mary had a Little Lamp and Little Jack Horny. I kid you not. Also bought a DVD with a warning for pirates. Any person making illegal copies of this video will be persecuted. We bought some movie about teen werewolves, just for the warning. The pirates who make these copies inadvertently copy the threats against themselves incorrectly. Now that’s funny.

I recall watching a pirated copy of a Batman movie that we purchased at the Bart a few years ago. It was in English but also contained English subtitles. At one point Bruce Wayne was berating a group of wealthy guests being entertained at his mansion. He yelled out that he was fed up with all his sycophantic friends. The subtitle had him being fed up with all his sick of antique friends.