Excerpts from postcards sent in March 1988, Dean's World Tour I:
 

Kuala Lumpur, 13 March 1988 -- Selamat pagi (Malaysian "good morning")!  Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia's capital city, may be the cleanest, most pleasant major city I've ever seen.  There's a lot of money here too, even by American standards.  In fact, I'll bet if you placed this city in the States, it would be ranked highest in quality of life.  A lot of people are driving Mercedes and BMWs.  I could travel for 8 or 10 years on the cost of one of those.  And where's the urban decay?  There is none; at least I haven't seen anything approaching it.  Everything here seems as if it was constructed a month ago merely for my benefit.  I've seen more beautiful skylines, and the multitude of skyscraper buildings are too scattered to be photogenic; but many buildings on their own appear as if they've won an architectual design contest.  Every major international bank seems to have tried to outdo the rest by building a more unique looking skyscraper.  The banks must be here to try to get their share of the rubber and tin industries profits.  Whoops there goes another rubber tree plant!

Why don't American cities look like this, like the Emerald City in the Wizard of Oz?  Everything is squeaky clean here.  Vegetation is trimmed and groomed; lawns are manicured to their precise 3/4 inch height.  Even the railroad yards look like nice places to have picnics!  The railway station itself is large, ultramodern and, this being an Islamic country, has the appearance of a mosque.  Our station in the Twin Cities looks like it's ready to be blown down in the next 30 mph wind.  Streets and sidewalks here are spotless, and who here has heard of a pothole?  Meanwhile, you wouldn't want to drop anything on the ground.  Litterbugs are mentioned in the same breath with drug traffickers!  Really, it's true, although litterers are fined $500 and drug traffickers are executed.

Just about everybody dresses neatly and classy, and most seem quite well educated.  Even the McDonalds workers have to know how to say "May I help you" in three very different languages ... Malay, Chinese and English.

All Star Wrestling is over now.  Benny Hill is coming on next.  Talk about the height of culture.

You'll be happy to know that there are Seven Elevens evenly dispersed throughout this city, seemingly about three blocks in every direction.  What better sign of a country's affluence than wall-to-wall convenience stores?

Although, as I stated earlier, drug offenses carry the highest penalty here, I was surprised to see out the front door of my youth hostel, one man jabbing a needle into the arm of another.  I guess things are less perfect than I was describing.

You should hear a Chinese Malaysian give his imitation of an American with a Bostonian accent.  The Trial of Lee Harvey Oswald, has been on television here lately and this local person I met, aside from talking very knowledgeably of recent American politics, does a very amusing impersonation of John Kennedy.

It looks as if George Bush will win the election.  I'm skeptical as to whether Dukakis can generate any more enthusiasm than Walter Mondale did, assuming Dukakis is the nominee.  Maybe he can win in the Northeast as well as in Minnesota.  It's not enough.  I'm expecting Republican presidents until the economy turns seriously sour.

I'm up too late!  I catch a bus for Singapore tomorrow.

Singapore, 18 March 1988 -- How hot has it been in Southeast Asia, you ask?  It's been so hot that perspiration around my waist dampened my money belt enough to make my American Express travelers checks say "Void!"  Or perhaps the money belt got splashed when I brought it in the shower with me.  There was no problem replacing them since I had the receipt, but scatterbrained Dean lost $50 cash in an extra plastic travelers check holder that he decided he didn't need as he handed it back to the American Express agent.  By the time I realized it, the agent had already given the check pouch to someone who bought travelers checks and is now $50 happier.  Scatterbrainness seems to cost me an average of a few hundred dollars a year.

Singapore's high rents have made even the budget hotels expensive by Asian standards.  Luckily, many apartment dwellers have created low cost "crash pads" for people like me.  Squeeze in as many bunk beds as possible, and things are cramped but cozy.  Ours is quite clean and pleasant on the 6th floor of a modern high rise.  Each room of a four bedroom apartment and the living room sleeps eight travelers from scattered parts of the globe.  My room was filled with ppeople from Poland.  Housing foreigners like this is supposedly mildly illegal, but then again this is Singapore, and free enterprise is what counts.

Most here in Singapore are ethnic Chinese, and in the home and in some other social contexts, the first language is Chinese.  But in business, English is usually the first language, and the same people who speak to each other in Chinese in one context will speak to each other in English in another.  Almost everything written (street signs, shop advertisements, etc.) is in English.  Television and movies are in English or Chinese with or without subtitles.  There's nothing so unusual about this, but I'm forever amazed at whole cultures that, of necessity, must function in two languages.

I now know the approximate itinerary, although not the exact timetable of the rest of my trip.  I have spent $775 on air tickets.  I fly from here to Jakarta in a few days and from Denpasar, Bali to Perth April 23rd.  Within 6 months (sooner if I have no luck finding employment) I will be leaving Australia on a ticket with stopovers on the Pacific Islands of New Caladonia, New Zealand and Tahiti, ending in L.A.  If I don't work in Australia, I may return by October.

After experiencing the super-sanitized air-conditioned everything of Singapore, I had almost forgotten that I was still traveling.  I was quickly reminded, however, when I reached the urban squalor of Jakarta, Indonesia.  On the first day, a typical tropical torrential downpour made it necessary to wade past garbage and sewar rats in knee deep water.

Jakarta has somewhat of a reputation for street crime in some parts.  More notably, wallets are lifted, backpacks and even moneybelts worn around the waist under one's pants are slashed with knives on city busses.  It happened to one person I spoke with, and I heard of it happening to several others.  Busses are excedingly crowded and several people usually work together to get at the money.  One guy had his credit card cut with a knife.  Luckily, it wasn't his stomach.

In spite of things like this, I really like Indonesia so far.  The people are mostly quite warm and friendly, the women are  very beautiful, the food is appealing and the bottom line is ... prices are cheap.

Have a cup of Java!  Indonesia, the fifth most populous nation after China, India, the Soviet Union and the United States, has most of its population jam packed into this island of Java, known for its volcanos and coffee.  It's just one of thousands of islands which together contain hundreds of cultures speaking thousands of languages and dialects, all under one national flag.

Officially, Islam is the national religion; but by the time Islam had been imported here, it was considerably mellower than the militant brand that overtook the Arab world.  It's most obviously apparent in the fact that women are permitted to be something more closely resembling human beings.  Instead of being completely veiled, they can dress nearly as freely as Western women.

I'm back to entertaining the troops of travelers at the youth hostel with the new guitar I bought in Singapore.  Of course, it's not hard for the hostel's dogs to interrupt my performance and steal the show by capturing a rat scurrying across the floor.

I've come up with something approaching a decent resume, for what it's worth.  It may not yeild any real employment in Australia, but it's good practice for when I return to the States.

Yojakarta, Indonesia, 28 March 1988 -- Everything seems to be falling apart all at once ... my camera, my watch, the zipper on my backpack, even my sentimentally valued "Get lost with a Geographer" tee-shirt have all bitten the dust in the past few days.  On top of these losses, I also suffered my third rejection by a female in Asia (this time, a stunning American of Japanese heritage who's traveling on money she acquired from sueing the City of San Francisco for being run over by police horses while demonstrating at the Democratic Convention).  Adding injury to insult, I also acquired an eye infection, conjunctivitis (pink eye), which is pretty disgusting to look at, although the locals like to point at it and remind me of it.  I'm applying some gunky eye medicine, but it looks like it's not going to clear up overnight.  In spite of these problems, I'm holding myself together, and as far as rejection goes, you can put your violins away -- I'll live to flirt another day.  Sometimes, travel is great (i.e. the 40 cent shrimp coctail I'm eating right now) and sometimes travel is just shit, but it still averages out to worthwhile.

There has been a nasty unconfirmed rumor, however, that just came up the tourist pipeline saying that Mr. Lonely Planet Publications himself, Tony Wheeler, 42, was killed in a motorcycle accident in India recently.  (NOTE:  This later proved not to be true).  Since the late 1970s, his books have been the bibles of budget travel everywhere except in Europe and North America.  He's made a lot of bucks and became a minor legend, but it seems it is possible to ravel too much.  The risks of the road eventually may catch up with you.  To quote Tony himslef about transportation accidents in some countries, "Safety -- wazzat??"  I've seen my life pass before me on numerous bus rides.  Life seems to be valued very cheaply in some of these countries.  There's no such thing as defensive driving.  The only rule is "Watch out!  I'm coming through!"  I prefer to take trains whenever possible.  It's a good thing that alcohol consumption is not so large here, or I may have seen a few more busses on their sides in the ditch.

I've been dropping some bucks lately -- airline tickets, new guitar, etc. -- so as the bank account dwindles, the day of reckoning approaches more rapidly.  It will be interesting to see what employment opportunities Australia will or won't yeild for me.  Almost every budget traveler headed in that direction has his eyes set on finding a job there.

Several of us were going to take a small boat to the famous volcano Krakatoa, but the waters were so rough that two fishermen died that morning -- so we wrote that off our "things to do" list.

It seems that every hostel has its very own bilingual talking bird.  The one at our hostel has a pretty wide vocabulary.

Happy Springtime,
President Suharto

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