At Batam, we left Indonesia.

We realised, too late, we could have caught a ferry directly to Malaysia. Instead we had booked ourselves to travel to three countries in one day.

We love travelling by sea. Give us a jetty, port or ferry terminal any day, before an airport.

Leaving Indonesia was as relaxed as arriving into the country, way back in West Timor. By 8am we were on our way to Singapore,

and by about 8.30am we finally finished off our crumbly stores of homemade roo and rabbit jerky.

By mid morning we were arriving in the old British colonial port of Singapore,

where we experienced a rather more uptight immigration system. Still, those who were supposed to be assessing our x-rayed luggage and bodies were instead scrolling on their screens or watching a movie on their phone, just like in Indonesia. We were to find the same laissez-faire attitude in Malaysia, later in the day.

We had hoped to connect with some permies in Singapore but the timing wasn’t to be, so we hightailed it from the south to the north of this micro-country, which we found to be fastidiously neat.

From the north of Singapore (about 30 minutes by car) we boarded a five minute train that took us to the Malaysian border.

We crossed the Strait of Johor,

into Malaysia, and were thrilled to find these homemade baked goods at the station.

In the third country for the day we boarded another train to go north, with our lunch of tea eggs and beef cake.

With the bureaucracy of borders behind us and our bellies full and nourished, we settled in for a gentle journey for the afternoon,

beholding what nation states do to their respective Mother Countries in order to participate in the global-pool-of-money-tragedy-of-the-commons routine.

In Malaysia, rubber and tin industries are in decline, but palm oil is in expansion. While habitat loss and species extinction are stories well associated with palm oil farming, in more recent years metastasis cancers have been linked to palmitic acid in those who consume it. This is potentially serious because palm oil is now found in close to 50% of the packaged products found in supermarkets. Think Nutella, for example, which is more than 50% palm oil and refined sugar.

When we arrived in Gemas that night, we were asked by an Indian-Malay tradesman staying in the same hotel why would we come to such a town.

“We like non-touristy places,” was Patrick’s reply. “We want to see how people live in towns that are not famous.”

Even though we were treated like tourists and overcharged when we stopped at a local food hall for dinner,

the meals we bought were delicious and highly affordable for we radical frugalists who live in a rich country, and whose nation’s wealth is also dependent on destroying the landbase. We are not shy in ‘fessing up to the fact that our travelling is predicated on the privilege of a currency made strong by mining, thus earth-wrecking. Thus too, the local fruit here was highly affordable, a little of which we bought for breakfast and lunch the next day.

We’re getting used to living on golden mangoes, and sleeping in cheap hotel beds.

We woke to rain and fog,

walked through the streets,

startled the local pigeons,

and arrived back at the station.

Seeking out small towns and avoiding big cities is our aim in Malaysia, in the bid to avoid taking in too much pollution. However, we are finding that Malaysia has much cleaner environments and air than Indonesia. We have loved the absence of drugs and alcohol in the two countries. It makes us reflect just how much pain comes with addiction to these things.

From sweet Gemas we boarded a train,

and relaxed into a rainy morning of travel and air conditioning. While Patrick has recovered from his malaise in Batam, Meg was feeling a tad under the weather.

By midday our train had arrived at the Terminal Bersepadu Selatan on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, where we stood in line to book a bus to go yet further north.

No one gave Woody the memo about his politically indecent attire. At the time we were clueless that if you wear yellow clothes in Malaysia you could risk a fine of AUS$1600. In 2016, protestors wearing yellow clothing walked the streets of Kuala Lumpur calling for the resignation of then-Prime Minister Najib. Several years on, yellow clothes are still considered a symbol of protest and a threat to national security. We were completely oblivious to this next chapter of people control.

Across the world governments are incrementally stepping up efforts to censor, coerce and forbid people from exerting their basic human rights. A slow, year-by-year approach using mass propaganda tactics has seen human rights steadily dissolve across the world.

In 1951, Hannah Arendt, in her The Origins of Totalitarianism, wrote: “Mass propaganda discovered that its audience was ready at all times to believe the worst, no matter how absurd, and did not particularly object to being deceived because it held every statement to be a lie anyhow. The totalitarian mass leaders based their propaganda on the correct psychological assumption that, under such conditions, one could make people believe the most fantastic statements one day, and trust that if the next day they were given irrefutable proof of their falsehood, they would take refuge in cynicism; instead of deserting the leaders who had lied to them, they would protest that they had known all along that the statement was a lie and would admire the leaders for their superior tactical cleverness.” Does this sound like the past four years to you? Does this sound like watching, for example, ABC TV’s emergency porn propaganda during the Covid years?

Thankfully no one locked Woody away or fined him for wearing a yellow t-shirt. Coming from a family of protesters, the irony of being political disruptors even without knowing it wasn’t lost on us.

The bus we booked turned out to be filled with electric massage seats. Only none of them worked. This large coach headed off about an hour after the advertised time,

and on the way out of KL, we met glimpses of the city displaying modernist vertical gardens,

and archaic colourful temples.

The measure of a city’s soul does not concern the most elegant architecture, the most dazzling spectacles, or the most novel cafés and restaurants, but rather how the poorest members are living.

Our ‘first class massage coach’ embodied only the pretence of wealth. It was in fact the cheapest bus ticket money could buy, and it stopped several times over the course of the afternoon, to drop off passengers at unglamorous petrol stations,

taking us past thousands more hectares of palm oil monocultures,

and grand old hills and mountains,

many of which are being reduced to lime,

and cement products.

On the road we read about the 5 million year-old limestone hill being destroyed by a Malaysian cement company, and reflected on all the small projects back home where we’ve used cement, as well as all the many times we have found alternatives.

While the massage chairs were broken in the bus, and were generally fairly uncomfortable, at least one provided the right nest for rest for Magpie.

And while the rail systems in both Indonesia and Malaysia are reliable and enjoyable to travel on, we’ve found that if you are travelling by bus, always expect the unexpected. The driver dropped us off in Pekan Simpang, and not where our ticket stated.

We protested (must have been Woody’s reactionary yellow t-shirt that got us going), saying we booked a ticket to Taiping, the next town. The driver shrugged and rudely said, “You get a car.” Which is how we arrived here, at the Knight Alley Hotel in Taiping.

Woody and Patrick tucked Meg into bed and went exploring.

Taiping is known as the rainy town, but it was warm and dry, and the buildings fascinating.

There’s significant juxtaposition between wealth and poverty, arrogance and humility, imposition and makeshift spirit here.

Wherever the locals gather for meals is a sure bet there’s goodly food on offer. “I’ll take your picture, dad,” said Woody.

Woody and Patrick dined in one of the food halls in the main centre. It was bloody hot.

Chilli pan mee for Patrick, a glutton for punishment, and a fermented chicken bun for the boy.

We love the food here, and the endless trip hazards in the streets that keep us alert and watchful,

After our meals we tripped into a fruit store to buy some dinner for Meg. The fruit bat got to work, hand selecting golden mangoes for his mum.

On the way back to the hotel we found this beautiful little offering.

We were later told that the offering was most likely made to the spirit of a tree that once stood on this street corner. The beauty of this gesture reminded us of our own European animist tradition – to touch or knock on wood, to wake up the gods or spirits living there, to bring forth luck or safe passage. Traces of this tradition remain in us today, carried by grandmothers and uncles, and poets like Blake and Wordsworth, who once penned, “One impulse from a vernal wood/ May teach you more of man,/ Of moral evil and of good,/ Than all the sages can.”

Approximately 63% of the population of Malaysia practices Islam, 18% Buddhism, 8% Christianity, 6% Hinduism and 5% are other groups, which include animists, Confucianists, Taoists and Sikhs. To our minds, any spiritual practice that makes offerings to the spirits in trees that have been cut down, has our attention. Can we imagine if this was a major religious expression throughout the world? Oh, how our economic, political and cultural forms would radically change.

We left this lovely little non-tourist town, without experiencing the Taiping rain,

and were pleased we could travel the next leg by train.

It was a short trip, which included the practice of patience,

before we arrived in Butterworth, an industrial service town that powers Penang Island from the mainland.

We booked another $30 room high up in the clouds. We estimate we are spending around AUS $50 a day on this trip.

and while Meg did some office work to both fill back up the coffers and because she loves her meaningful work managing the Holmgren Design comms,

Patrick and Woody pursued their bourgeois lifestyle, and took a swim.

Woody is getting right into the spirit of this trip. When we first arrived in Dili he experienced significant culture shock. Now, several weeks on he is thriving.

In the late afternoon, we took a ferry across to Penang Island,

Woody practiced his photography,

Patrick too,

while Meg hung out with the bikies.

It was a short ride, and as none of us had eaten lunch, we stopped into this cosy shed for a snack.

The proprietor didn’t seemed that fazed by our late arrival.

While in Malaysia we’ve been dwelling on the phenomenon of the human blindspot. What have we been ignoring or are unable to see while we travel? The evidence now of scientific fraudulence and iatrogenocide in the Covid era is all around for anyone willing to investigate it. DNA contamination in the original mRNA shots is becoming a growing concern for scientists brave enough to study it, for example. We see it, hear and speak it. But it feels like the majority still prefer to actively unsee the lies, or defend them. Rather than sit in the sadness and horror of such masking (for what this means to human health and indeed civil rights), we’ve found it more important to ask, what are we averting our eyes from? What are we refusing to speak? What are we blocking our ears to?

It is the little things, the fledglings, the minutiae that inform this journey.

After we had a little moment with this chick, she hopped down from her perch and proceeded onto the road. We turned to see a man race over to her rescue, gather her up and return her to a safe place. After we’d photographed and admired the little bird, we’d turned away from her despite the obvious absence of a parent bird. The kindness of the rescuing man caused us to reflect on why we hadn’t done the same. In hindsight, it probably got down to touch. We were afraid of touching the chick, even us, confirmed terrain theorists. This event made us more aware of the greater caution we have to microbiology while travelling. While we are mostly eating street food and using tap water to clean our teeth, in the bid to train our microbiomes to co-evolve with our adventuring, we are at the same time applying the precautionary principle.

While in George Town on Penang Island, we met Tamanna and Adam, who are locals. Patrick and Meg teach on David Holmgren and Beck Lowe’s permaculture courses, both in-residence and online. Tamanna and Adam have booked in to the online PDC and Meg, in recent weeks, established a goodly email rapport with Tammana about the course. One thing led to another, which in turn led to us sharing an evening together. Adam led us to a lively street of food.

Where we were thrilled for his local knowledge.

He ordered many little tasting plates,

and the flavours were divine.

“Dinner is on us,” said Adam. We agreed with the condition we repay the generosity back in Australia. During this meal, Patrick was escorted to another realm,

into a nirvana of flavours and pleasure sticks.

We had such a special night with these two, reminding us how more enriching it is to be with locals of a place, who equally love simple and rich food culture.

The next day we headed north again,

catching a commuter train to the border,

where we had a few hours to reflect on our brief sojourn through the heart of Malaysia,

and where we beheld the switch from palm oil to rice agricultures,

and caught up with some sleep. Could someone please tape that mouth shut!

Then, before the day had begun to buzz, we were off the train,

and into a local initiative that takes people across the border in vans.

We lined up,

and were transported to the Thai border centre, where we went through immigration and customs without bother or money.

From there, we boarded a space ship to transport us to the next leg of our adventure…