Take me to the exciting, pulsating heart of the city, I told the cabbie, and there I was, in a mall in the center of Johor Bahru, Malaysia. Standing in front of a Kenny Rogers Roasters. Please don’t take it as a knock against Kenny or his justly famous chicken, but, well, it’s not what I call local flavor. Still, a mall was a good an introduction as any to Malaysia’s second city. They build ‘em big and chilly in a nation where the humidity and temperatures both hover in the low 90s.
Waiting in the sticky heat blowing from the strait of Johor was exhausting, wilting locals and visitors alike as they stood in Johor’s open-air passport control line. Leaving Singapore for Malaysia, the Singaporean Tourism Board singled me out for a survey while I waited on their side of the border--their blissfully air-conditioned side of the border—but after an hour in line on the Malaysian side, I hail a cab. My cabbie, the only cab driver I’ll have in Malaysia who won’t try to take me for every cent I have, makes me laugh. It is October 2008 and there’s one thing on everyone’s mind: “Obama!” he shouts, when I tell him I am American. Plus, Obama’s not-actually-true Muslim status is a plus here: 60 percent of the country shares the religion (just not with Obama).
I envisioned Johor as a kind of Malaysian Tijuana, a cheeky city of sin and excess to which famously uptight Singaporeans could escape to blow off steam. I’m convinced there is a story here. Alas, as any scientist could tell you, working backwards from result to hypothesis is not a solid system for discovery. And though sometimes it’s the only way for a travel writer to find a story, I am being punished for it. Now I know: very few people longing to escape Singapore’s nanny state run towards the bearded embrace of Kenny Rogers.
There is much to like in Johor’s central mall, though. Signs advertise snatch-proof purses (they detach from the handle when pulled and therefore are “easily snatched” purses) and warn to watch your slippers on the escalators, lest they get caught and chewed by the machinery. And, of course, there’s the hijab store called “First Lady”, which sells nothing but colorful head scarves of every shape and size. If you’ve going to be oppressive about women’s rights, at least let the gals look good.
There is also a huge display of the Twilight books. A series about (mostly) chaste teenage vampires written by a Mormon housewife may seem incongruous in Southeast Asia, but a modern story about repressed desire is a perfect fit for any country with a big Muslim population.
I wander back into the Johor Bahru afternoon. Johor’s two nicest streets, lined with palms and cobblestones, lead me to a bakery. The store’s hand-painted sign, the photos of family members on the wall, the enthusiastic proprietor, it all feels right to me. I’ve found what I was looking for: a story.
This is where the wheels come off.
They say satisfaction from travel comes from an experience where you push yourself to go outside your boundaries, but we tend to forget how horrible those events feel at the time as they recede into the “good experience” of your mind’s eye. I was ready to have one of those, but with baked goods—skipping the discomfort entirely, unless you count scones, the pastry which I believe most closely approximates the experience of taking a bite from the White Cliffs of Dover.
We struck up a conversation, and the Baker invited me to have a beer when he closed up shop at the end of the workday. I returned as the last of the evening light seeped from the orange blossom sky, ready for a beer and to talk about, oh, kneading techniques and whatever else. The Baker introduced me to his two young daughters and his cousin, all of whom were helping him close the shop on a Saturday night. “Go have a tea together while I lock up,” he told me.
The cousin and I popped around the corner for teh tarik, a “pulled” sweet, milky tea poured between two cups from increasingly great heights to make it frothy. He told me that the Baker’s wife had just died of cancer some months earlier. We ambled back to the front of the store, now shuttered, and the cousin took a phone call. “I must go,” he told me, “but the Baker will be back in a moment. Just wait here.” He drove off.
I stood watching the geckoes dart between the signs across the street. The streetlights cast a yellowy pall over the arcade, as if they were gas lamps. There was no noise. Traveling alone is not always the easiest, but there are some times when it’s harder than others. There’s frustration when everyone in Paris is rude--and then there’s standing alone on the street in Johor Bahru while the darkness closes in and there’s no sound on the street but your own shuffling on the sidewalk.
At last, the Baker came out the front door and beckoned me to walk through the store to the back entrance in an alleyway. “I only have moto” he said. He’d said it a couple of times, but I didn’t think it meant much. We were just going around the corner for a beer, right?
We were not. He handed me a motorcycle helmet. I put my plastic shopping bag (in which I had a hijab, some nuts and Deeparvali decorations) in his scooter’s storage compartment and hopped on.
As an aside, I should probably mention that this was the first time I’d ever ridden on a scooter, or motorized, two-wheeled conveyance of any kind. Perhaps, just perhaps, riding on a motorcycle with a strange man was not the wisest traveling decision I’d ever made before. Today it probably makes the top five, after pitching the Albanian Riviera as Europe’s Next Hot Destination to my editor at the New York Post and the time I thought that learning to ski at age 19 in the Czech Republic would end in anything other than me falling off the ski lift and rolling down the bunny slope to safety.
I wanted to have an experience. This man had children. And family. And a framed newspaper article on the wall of his shop; no one featured in the lifestyle section ever commits a crime. What could possibly happen?
What happened was a six foot two inch Jew clinging to a scooter dodging buses along the Johor highway on the ride to the Baker’s “local” watering hole. It was certainly an introduction to scooters. Lesson One: Riding on a scooter in Malaysia is fucking terrifying.
Before we were even off the bike at the bar, the Baker greeted friends at nearby tables. He ordered four Carlsbergs for the two of us and we chatted, he asking me questions about my travels, my hotel and my thoughts on Johor while I asked about his wife and his kids. Then, the conversation turned. It seemed that we were sticking with topic of hotels, but it was more of a suggestion from the Baker that it would be nice to go back to mine. Together.
This was not the experience I wanted, or ever intended to have. I was so locked into getting a feel for the local culture that I didn’t realize that instead of having a cultural moment, I was being cruised, propositioned really, by a middle-aged Muslim man in a Malaysian bar. In my terror at riding on the scooter, the fact that I held onto his love handles with a certain tenacity probably sent a message counter to my actual feelings for the man.
I let it pass once, steering the conversation back to safer topics. We would continue to talk, but every five minutes or so, he’d proposition me again. Far from questioning my sexuality, as perhaps the Baker hoped I would after four beers—he’d ordered another round—I was looking for the exit. Any exit. I excused myself to the bathroom and had the bar’s proprietor call me a cab. When it arrived, I was the happiest I’ve ever been to see a taxi, even a rapacious Malaysian taxi. I would have paid any amount to be taken back to the hotel. I bid the Baker goodnight. He was sad to see me go, like any man propositioning me for sex for the last half hour would have been.
Before my trip, when I mentioned to friends that I planned to stop in Johor Bahru, they’d ask: what ever for? Gypsies, tramps and thieves, I thought, might add some color to what was probably not that bad of a place, this Malaysian Tijuana of mine. That was wrong. Johor had a story for me, just not the one I wanted.
Next time, I’m sticking to the hijab stores—they’re a lot safer.
