This post was written by Peter Duke

Long-term British expat Peter Duke takes us back to his early experiences in Malaya when posted here with the army.

I had just been recently promoted to Acting Captain when my wife and I arrived in Singapore on a burning hot February morning in 1961. As we came down the steps of the plane, our two-year-old son Nigel fell on the tarmac, scraping his knee badly. My wife nearly fainted; after all we’d heard about the nasty tropical diseases, she didn’t believe he’d last the week. We both came from relatively small towns and even though we were in our 20s and had travelled extensively in Europe, we were still naïve.

Life In JB

We were taken across the causeway to Johor Bahru (JB), a busy but small Chinese town. We were fascinated by what we saw through the car windows; Nigel was particularly taken with the old Indian guards sitting outside banks and gold shops holding ancient rifles. We were lodged in a reasonable two-storey hotel, the only one in town, and after a couple of weeks we moved to a pleasant bungalow with a large garden. We had several tropical fruit trees including the nefarious rambutan tree. Our son loved the fruit and often came into the house with his shorts and t-shirt stained purple.

We inherited a fearsome elderly Chinese lady as our amah, Ah Qu. She was a member of a clan of amahs who were always dressed in black trousers and a white top. She did all the fresh goods shopping and often came home with a live chicken dangling from her wrists by its legs.

Life Then And Now

We lived well in those distant days; the support system provided by the army was excellent, if a bit stifling. There were plenty of young Ghurkha officers with their swinging wives, many excellent parties and many friends were made in a short space of time.

I was transported to work every day by jeep to our camp, set in an area called Hulu Pandan on the edges of the Tebrau River. The Ghurkhas were in a much larger barracks. Our little officers’ mess was situated on the river bank and the area abounded with wildlife. The mess was popular at lunch time with young officers from other units as we had an excellent Chinese chef. What the visitors did not know, and what I only found out just before I left, was that one of the chef’s star dishes was actually freshly caught iguana from the river.

JB was a bustling town with its temples, the old fort, and the beautiful Sultan’s palace, much as it is today. Masses of bicycles plied the streets, some laden with the most incredible loads. Rickshaws had disappeared from the roads when we arrived, but the tricycle cart was a popular form of transport. The wet market was large, hot, and sprawling, and some of the smaller animals were slaughtered there. There was a zoo, but it was poorly kept and the one thing I remember most is the three-legged tiger that was kept in appalling conditions by today’s standards.

Taking To The Roads

Travel outside of JB was along reasonable roads bordered by rubber plantations and the occasional cluster of picturesque Malay houses with their gardens and small vegetable plots. When you approached Selangor, there were many tin ponds with a small steam-powered dredge trudging away across the muddy waters.

Travel along the roads was dangerous, as the large logging lorries came charging down from the north, fully laden with huge logs for export from Singapore, and head-on crashes were not unheard of.

Out And About

When you entered a Chinese town, there was often an old man dressed in black pyjamas sitting at the end of a row of shop houses. He was the local towkay (boss). In the evening, the Chinese families would come out to eat at the food stalls. They were universally dressed in what looked to us as colourful pyjamas and the children’s faces were covered in white powder.

The Cameron Highlands was still largely untouched in those days, with a few large bungalows scattered along the roads, the golf course, and the tea plantations. It was the stepping off point for jungle trekking, which was a part of army training. Although the emergency was over by 1961, the army was still in a state of low alert against any possible flare up, and all of us had to spend a certain number of nights each tour in the jungle on a survival exercise.

Moving On

We stayed in JB for about a year, before moving to the brand new Terendak Camp situated a few miles from Malacca. In Terandak we had most of the modern conveniences available at that time, including a lovely two-storey house a few hundred yards from the officers’ beach club. The camp was equipped with a very large NAAFI, the duty-free army supplies shop, an Olympic-size swimming pool, and a rudimentary golf course.

We had an Indian family to look after us: Tony, the husband, who managed the house and cooking, his wife who was the baby amah, and the wife’s younger sister, who was the wash amah. They were absolutely marvellous and we kept in touch with them for years after we left Malaysia.

The journey to Malacca was along a pretty rural road with many attractive traditional Malay houses along the way. The road ran past many rice growing areas and Malay villages. Depending on the time of the year, we could see the small boys riding the water buffaloes and the men and women planting the seedlings, while at harvest time the women would be winnowing the ripened stalks.

There were two major hazards on the roads at that time: the stray water buffalo and the local transport system, which consisted of a two-wheeled cart with a thatched high pitched roof, drawn by one or two bulls. The driver nearly always looked to be half asleep.

Days in Melacca

Malacca town was still a thriving small port in those days and the warehouses along the river were still in use. The centre was very much as today and the area by the beach was a pleasant, open grassy area.

Jonker Street was a thriving thoroughfare with many antique and furniture shops.

Perhaps the most enduring events were the cholera outbreak and the drought of 1962-63. The cholera outbreak caused a number of deaths in the town and took several months to bring under control. For those of us living in Terandak, the outbreak caused little more than inconvenience, as we all had cholera immunisations. We were not allowed into the town during the outbreak and had to carry our passports and cholera certificates if we left the state.

The drought was more serious and the local people suffered badly: the rice crop was destroyed, animals died, and poverty increased. We relied on water trucks to deliver drinking water once a day, while sea water was pumped through the homes for the toilets and washing.

Segregation

Despite independence, white men still dominated in many industries and areas of government, especially in plantation and mine management.

Many clubs had a separation policy: local people were allowed to join, but were often not allowed in certain areas. A friend of mine, a captain, married an Indian girl and was barred from the air-conditioned bar if she came with him. If you were in the military, marrying a local woman almost certainly ended your career. Mixing of the races was definitely frowned upon, and while the white single men in the plantations and mines often had local girlfriends, the girls were paid off when the men went home to marry.

Changes And Developments

The most demonstrable change has been the development: highways, railways, airports, and buildings. I think the rural cities have lost a lot of their charm through unplanned development.

The biggest change as far as I am concerned is the change in the social make-up of the country. Any foreigners that are still working in these jobs are now hired for their technical abilities, not because of their status at home.

Malaysia now belongs to Malaysians and not to the colonial man as it was in 1963. This has made society much richer.

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Source: The Expat June 2013
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