After the move, it's still a great Camembert.

Way back when, there was a best-selling self-help book titled Who Moved My Cheese?  It was about our attitudes toward change, whether it's change that we initiate or change that is inflicted upon us. I never read the book, but it occurs to me that my move to Cambodia was partly my doing and partly not. It's not been painless, but overall the change has been a positive one.

I returned briefly to Kuala Lumpur last week to say farewell to a dear friend. Vinca and I haunted Brickfields together for nearly a decade, but now her employer is shifting her position to Geneva.  The visit was an emotionally turbulent one -- joy at seeing friends again, and deep grief that Brickfields, like most of KL, has changed radically, and in my opinion, for the worse.

On the night I arrived, Vinca and I joined Alvin and Barry at a place that -- blessedly -- has not changed much since the 1940s. It's a building in the Cantonese section of a large Chinese cemetery across the river from Brickfields. It has served as a shrine, an administrative office, a Japanese interrogation centre during the war, and now as an impromptu pub. There are three tables outside, and the older Chinese folks there serve a few kinds of beer. Visitors are welcome to bring their own food (which Alvin did, in his mother's glorious antique tiffin carrier) and other tipples for those who don't care for beer (Vinca grabbed a bottle of Bordeaux for Barry and me as we left her apartment).  Sitting in the middle of a cemetery, this place is peaceful, green, quiet (except for the caged songbirds) and quite probably haunted. We adore it.

A last supper, of sorts

Here's to you, little cemetery pub -- may you never change.

Malaysia's social harmony, much touted by the Ministry of Tourism, is increasingly besieged by the racial and religious squabbles fuelled by all the other ministries, collectively known as the Ministry to Ensure the Eternal Rule of the Present Government. That said, there is still one thing that all Malaysians stoutly agree upon:  If you eat durian and simultaneously drink alcohol, you will die.  No, you will not suffer indigestion, or diarrhea, vomiting or dizziness -- your life will end.  I have disputed this many times, citing first-hand, experiential studies, but Malaysians still insist the combination is fatal.  I suppose it's simply a matter of time. I'll die eventually, and then the Malaysians can nod and congratulate themselves for knowing the cause.

But I'll die happy.

I was in KL for only four nights and three days, so the whole time was a whirl of reunions with friends. I wish I could say my reunion with the city was as happy. I'm not averse to change, not opposed to development if it makes sense. In the Klang Valley, luxury shopping malls and condos are popping up like mushrooms on a manure pile, each one larger and glitzier than the others. Meanwhile, housing and shopping areas on a human scale are disappearing. Neighbourhoods? I guess they're becoming vertical if they exist at all -- you speak to the people who ride up and down in the lift at the same time you do. Malaysians who can't afford to live or shop in high style are being edged out of the city's center, and then people complain about the soaring crime rates and largely non-Malaysian population that moves in to fill the vacuum. The developers don't care about heritage, about liveability, or increasingly about style -- many of the new constructions are aesthetic abominations. See a patch of bare ground? So what if it's a public park? There are people in city hall who will see it nicely tranferred into a developer's hands for yet another high-rise monstrosity. If there is any public protest, the politicians may or may not show up to hear the pleas and complaints, and the development will proceed regardless.  There is just too much money in play to consider anything else.

Long before the concrete jungle, this was the
neighbourhood of the railway and the brick-making yards.

This is Brickfields today. When I moved there in 2004, the only two high-rise buildings were the two white hotels toward the right.  All the others have come up since then, many of them inches apart. Those who bought a condo five years ago with a long view of the Petronas towers and the whole city skyline now enjoy a view into their neighbour's living room.  "You were never guaranteed a view," the developer told them. Banners showing the Prime Minister's face hang here and there, proclaiming KL's new "Central Business District".  I suppose it was insufferable that the arch-rival to the south should have a CBD, so now Brickfields has been sacrificed in the latest keeping-up-with-the-Joneses-in-Singapore spat.

Brickfields has always been the community of the blind; the Malaysian Ass'n for the Blind is located there. With the rapid development, constant construction and now chronic congestion, they can barely navigate. Further, the rising rental prices will edge them out soon. Many of them lived in the same block of shoplots in which my apartment was located -- the low, black-roofed row at the lower left in the photo.  Shops and restaurants were at the ground level; our apartments were above. I can't believe developers will allow these blocks to survive much longer; there is too much money to be made by razing them and putting up another high-rise, taller than the ones across the street.

See that little field, or padang, at the lower right?  It's the only green space left in that part of Brickfields, and for years all the locals said, "Oh, that's protected. They'll never build on that."  Some said it was the Sultan of Selangor who owned it; others said it was gazetted as a public space. Now it belongs to the YTL Corporation. That last bit of peace and nature, of open space and greenery, will soon be under construction. A new hotel, condo, shopping mall, office building?  The greed is truly bottomless. They seem to have no sense that they're not just building something, they're destroying something else. Or, more probably, they just don't care.

Wait a minute, you say -- isn't this a blog about the Phenomenal Penguin?  Why are you going on about KL?

Because, indirectly, this trip to KL made me realise some things both about Phnom Penh and about myself. I left Malaysia because I had no other choice; they changed the long-term visa requirements just in time for me to be unable to meet them. Even as I told my Malaysian friends, "No, really, it's ok -- I actually do like Phnom Penh", I could hear in my own voice the suggestion that I was trying to make the best of an unfortunate situation.

As I stood in Vinca's living room (from which I shot the photo above), a few things became very clear to me. When I feel homesick for Malaysia, I'm pining for a KL that no longer exists. My friends are still there, still very beloved, and I will stay in touch with them, visiting either here or there as often as I can. The move to Phnom Penh, though, was a good one for me. The city is still on a liveable scale. There is development, and it may get out of hand as Malaysia's has done.  Then it will be time to move on again. I used to say I wanted to spend the rest of my life in KL.  I am loving Phnom Penh today, but I'm not making a lifetime commitment.

There's a house back there, well-hidden.

In February, I snapped this photo of Jacky, the young realtor who had been driving me around most of southern Phnom Penh on that little moto for the better part of a day. I could tell he was getting weary of viewing one place after another and getting noncommittal responses from me. "Ok," he said. "One more place maybe good."  His tone of voice suggested that he didn't hold out much hope for this place. We pulled up, and he called in to the owner.  I could barely see any of the house behind the trees, but somehow I had a sense that this might be the place, so I ducked across the street to photograph... what? Trees? Gates?

As I sit here now, on the opposite side of those trees, absolutely revelling in all the greenness, I am enormously content. Slowly, slowly, I meet people and form new friendships. Some of them will move on in time, and if our connection is deep enough, we will stay in touch. If I ever hear myself complaining about Phnom Penh more than I sing its praises, I will know that it's time for me to move on, too. I hear Battambang is a great little city.

Here is one last rant about Malaysian development, placed thoughtfully at the end of the post, so you can click yourself out of here if you've had enough.  There is a new terminal for the budget airlines in KL.  Called KLIA2, it opened in the spring, well beyond its scheduled completion date and wildly over budget.  As my Air Asia plane taxied in, I mused that the terminal looks like its architect may have been a fan of the 1970s, perhaps related to the fashion designers who gave us bell-bottoms, platform shoes, and polyester leisure suits with coordinating floral shirts.  It's one ugly structure.

At a very brisk walk, it took me 25 minutes to get from the plane to the Immigration checkpoint. I was grumpy and lugging a wheeled suitcase that was (ahem!) a tad over the carry-on luggage allowance, but I'm generally fit and have a good, ground-covering gait. I tried to imagine the same trek for someone with bad knees, weary toddlers or her elderly mother-in-law in tow.

After clearing Immigration and Customs, I wanted to be on my way to Brickfields, pronto. To get from the arrivals lounge to the public transit, I had to navigate several levels of -- I know I shouldn't have been surprised -- a shopping mall.

On the trip home, it was the reverse:  I arrived at KLIA2 with all my luggage, and before I could check my heavy suitcase I was forced to weave up and around three levels of the shopping mall.  Imagine you're going on holiday, and you show up at the airport with the whole family and tons of baggage. Do you really want to shop for clothing and shoes, jewelry, luxury housewares or electronics before you check in for your flight? Mmm, I didn't think so.  But you'll have to pass by damned near every shop on your way to the counter.

So you finally reach the Air Asia check-in counter. Phew! Ah, but you've still got miles to go before you fly. My friend, Charlene, snapped this photo of the banner at the entrance of the departure hall.

Flying with us?  Maybe, if you can make it to the plane.

Please note the suggestion at the bottom of the bunting to allow 50 minutes to walk from the check-in desk to the departure gate.  Given my 25-minute speed walk in the opposite direction, this seems like sage advice. It would be lovely if Air Asia made mention of this when you purchase your tickets or check in for your flights on-line, but they don't.  If you spot this sign when you're standing at the check-in counter and don't happen to have nearly an hour to spare simply to walk to the gate, well... maybe you have rollerblades in your hand luggage?

On these long-distance jaunts to and from the plane, I noticed one section of 'travelator'.  It was about four metres long.  I noticed it as I was walking past those who were standing upon it, all of us probably wondering, what the hell is the point of this? Why even install the thing for such a miniscule distance? "Because Malaysia boleh," grumbled Charlene. (Malaysia boleh, or Malaysia can, is an expression which started life as a patriotic motto and is now usually muttered very ironically when noting the latest mad screw-up.)

So yes, behold KLIA2, which, according to the adverts, offers "a world-class shopping experience" and which requires budget airline passengers to walk halfway to their ASEAN destinations.

Vinca, we had ten glorious years in Brickfields -- meeting for char kway teow at the kopitiam on the corner, for tosai at the stall under the trees, waving to the ice man as he puttered about delivering blocks of ice from the sidecar on his moto, having beer in the cemetery and in the pub on the brothel street. We weren't Malaysian, but it felt very much like our neighbourhood. I'm crying again as I write this, but I am happy here in Phnom Penh, and I pray you'll be as happy in Geneva. I have a bamboo bicycle, and you'll have Swiss chocolate, and we'll see each other again somewhere or other.