Anyone for tiffin?

Being met at KL International by 'coach transfer' in the form of a personal Mercedes felt like a good sign. Especially after my passport had been taken away by an official and I was asked to step out of the queue please. The Border Security music began pounding through my head – da da da da da dum! I tried not to sweat and look like a shifty drugs granny but suddenly I became aware of the 10kg boogie board cover strapped to my suitcase… Of course it was all about bureaucracy (and not even corruption). My passport expires in December, something you'd think might be a problem in East Europe, but hardly amongst our ASEAN friends. For Malaysia the seroconversion date is 6 months before expiry, for anyone wanting to know; after that your passport becomes an infected document. Getting into a Mercedes after that to speed along a dark and empty highway felt strangely good.

Before leaving Australia I had an idea of catching one of the local ferries that cart people to Singapore or Borneo or Penang. But it's all a bit time-consuming given the few days I have in Malaysia. I did make an exploratory journey to Port Klang, taking an extremely slow commuter train from KL Sentral which was so like being on my home away from home, the Ipswich train, that I even amused myself by identifying bogans. One particularly good 'toddler mullet' caught my eye. The urge to take a picture overcame any thwarting hesitation that I might be channeling Bill Henson.

KL has a distinctly 50s Queensland look about it when viewed as the panorama of backyards you get from gazing out of a grimy train window. Buildings are often mouldy and decrepit, and banana bushes practically thrust between the train tracks. There's that general air of heat exhaustion that stifles everything except the foliage. But I like all of that given my North Queensland childhood, even being caught in a tropical downpour and stepping into a not so shallow puddle in the middle of the footpath.

(this wasn't it – but nonetheless a surprisingly large space where one might expect a footpath to be)

Port Klang itself, with its 'International' water-front terminal filled with smoking poker-players and men offering to help me do whatever I was there to do, was straight out of Surabaya Johnny. There were no chickens in coops but plenty of guarded strangers. I was told that as a foreigner I could not go on the Indonesia ferry. The heart of darkness was rejecting my call.

So I did the next best thing and went to Malacca for the day. Malacca is one of those interesting pockets of the planet that almost every major colonial power has at one time wrestled from another, sometimes with guns and cannon, sometimes by poison. Only the French seemed to be missing from the brew. The Portuguese have left a Canton, and a fabulous moorish looking Church; Dutch traders brought protestantism and intolerance; the Indians and Chinese went right on worshipping in their splendid temples, standing side by side in Harmony Street. And very close by there's a mosque which has such varied influences in its construction that I photographed its history. This picture is bigger than the others for anyone wanting to click on it and read the text.

The British in the form of Sir Stamford Raffles managed to prevent one or two major buildings being blown up and the Arabs left what is now the official Malay religion. Frankly I became utterly confused by all this historical sediment, especially after our guide changed it between one recounting and the next, re-assigning 1641 to such a variety of important occurrences that it's now the only date which has stuck in my head, although cut adrift from any fact. But the real reason to go to the Malacca Straits is its 'other' history which continues to this day. I took some hopeful photographs but whether there are pirates in them I'm unable to say .

Today I'm meeting up with a Tour Chum from yesterday and going to the Islamic Museum. Last night we were forced by the hideous traffic to get back to our respective hotels on the monorail, the tiny driver-less carriages so dense with people it was impossible not to think of all those capsizing Philippines ferries as we lurched gaily above the trees and bus tops. So I didn't make it onto any of the Straits, and given my history on both the low and high seas that might have been a good thing. Neither did I find where the Jungle Railway began or I might still be on it, stuck indefinitely in a siding as the Bangkok trains go by. I did observe a few Australian medical tourists, heroically getting about in their bandages like the dance partners in Peter Weir's fabulous film The cars that ate Paris. And I fled the bedraggled monks who surrounded me like seagull the minute I gave a few ringgit to one of them. One of them forced this unnerving 'document' into my hand:

I don't want it but I'm too superstitious to throw it away. Help Janice what does it mean?