Read Online The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison by Susan Aldous, Nicola Pierce - Free Book Online Page B

that night despite the glasses of wine I drank to help me relax. The morning finally came round and I tried to savour my last hours in Melbourne, Australia. I remember eating a particularly gorgeous apple, and wondering how soon it would be before I would taste an apple that good again. On the way to the airport I constantly checked and rechecked all my bits and pieces. I must have worn a hole in my passport with the amount of times I frantically rifled through my holdall, even though I had just held it between my fingers seconds earlier. I clutched it, let it go and immediately fumbled around again as if it might vanish if I couldn’t feel it. Rose, her mother, her son, my parents and Annabel saw me off. I didn’t cry when I said goodbye because I was so tremendously excited.
    I packed just one bag, wanting to keep it simple. Philip was flying out with me. We were landing in Kuala Lumpur where I was to spend a week before moving on to Penang. As usual I was taking a huge risk. Philip was heading on to Hong Kong to attend to some business dealings while I was going to wait for a miracle with my one bag and very little money. The last I heard of him was that he had married again, to a Filipino, and had settled down in Singapore. Meanwhile, I had a phone number of a guy I had met ages ago in Sydney. I knew he had married a Malay woman and was living and teaching somewhere in Malaysia.

    The airport in Kuala Lumpur was a tin shed—nothing like its hugeness and variety of shops and restaurants today. When I stepped off the plane I nearly buckled under the immense wall of heat that seemed to descend on us; the typical reaction of westerners to tropical countries. We headed across the tarmac in the middle of the night. I was exhausted but on a high, hardly believing where I was. There were small crowds of youths standing around in groups; I marvelled at the amount of young boys out so late and hanging around an airport. I mentioned this to Philip, who laughed and told me that these were full-grown men and the reason they were ‘hanging out’ at the airport was because they were taxi drivers waiting to earn a living to feed their families. I looked again. They were shorter, slimmer and much younger looking than the men who drove taxis in Melbourne. They were also mostly dressed the same, stuck in the fashions of the 1970s, with colourful bell-bottomed pants and wide flashy belts. This was the 1980s now but I felt a jolt of nostalgia for the not-so-good old days.
    I learned pretty quickly that transparent clothes were going to have to take a back seat in my daily attire. The first morning I innocently went walking in Kuala Lumpur clad in clothes which were normal in Melbourne. I was wearing bright pink shorts and a yellow see-through singlet, and as was usual for me I wasn’t wearing a bra. I almost caused a traffic accident. People were almost hanging out of their cars with lolling tongues and gawping eyes, and that was just the women. There were beeping horns, with people whispering and gesturing in my direction. I felt visually mauled and ran back in tears to the safety of the hotel. If that is what being a celebrity is like I’ll stop envying Madonna right now! I was so ignorant it actually took me a while to work out that there was nothing wrong with these people. I was the one at fault for dressing inappropriately and walking around a Muslim town. I was utterly shocked and thought about getting on the next plane home. Although, in my defence I would like to point out that I was very young and had spent the previous six months dressed as a playboy bunny!
    The second morning I dressed in a cotton t-shirt and hippie skirt and headed out into the hot sun to explore again. I found some markets and bought myself a sarong kabaya, which is the national Malaysian costume. They cover most of the body but are quite tight-fitting so I felt sexy and conservative simultaneously. I received a much friendlier reaction, and people seemed