Champagne tastes better on beer money.
A collaborative tale of the adventures of little Katie and little Dunx
We officially decided to go to Malaysia a mere month before the race. After much number crunching and calculating we eventually worked out that it was actually possible to leave at such short notice but that it would require us to engage in a bizarre practice known as budgeting. Finance has never been one of my fortes, but compared to Kate I am basically Warren Buffet! The thought of a whole month without cafe Lattes and glasses of Bordeaux was a positively terrifying prospect, but watching a formula one car live has been on both of our to-do lists for a very long time and the opportunity to go to a race was well worth a few quiet nights at home. To fully understand the significance of formula one you must cast your mind back many years, (many many years in my case) to a time when Kate and Duncan were little Katie and little Dunx.
A long time ago in a magical harbour city with red roofed houses and tree lined streets, a little girl joined her dad on the couch to see what he was watching on television. To her amazement she saw brightly coloured cars flying round a winding track at impossible speeds, the enthusiastic yells of Murray Walker spurring them on. Little Katie was instantly hooked. Whilst most girls were combing Barbie's hair, honing their nurturing instincts on creepy eyed self wetting dolls and collecting stickers little Katie was completely enthralled by the glamorous locations, the speed and the manic noise of formula 1. Sunday after Sunday was spent with her dad watching this wonderful newfound sporting passion and as she watched and understood she began to realise that one driver in particular was being selfish and not sharing first place with anyone. "This isn't fair" she thought and swore to herself that one day she would go to a race with the sole purpose of watching Herr Schumacher crash.
Unbeknown to her, at the same time, in the land half way between the harbour and the great dragon mountains a little boy was also sitting with his dad watching the wonderful cars go round. Little Dunx had always walked to his own beat and for some inexplicable reason had always preferred baddies over the good guys, perhaps it was their cool British accents and stylish wardrobes that topped the wise cracking, vest wearing goodies or perhaps it was a deep psychological defect that would later manifest into desire to declare a jihad on bad service, anyway to little Dunx Star Wars was a tragic tale about the demise of a stylish hero called Lord Vader at the hands of the evil Puke Skywalker, Skeletor and his lovable band of brave warriors, the rightful rulers of Fantasia, were always being deceived by the cretin He-Man in his ghastly furry Speedo and, to little Dunx, Schummi with his win at all cost attitude and his humourless Prussian efficiency, was the best thing to come out of the early nineties (Culture Beats Mr. Vain a very close second). He vowed one day to watch the terrific Teuton in action. So whilst other little boys were pulling the heads off Barbies and were obsessed with sports cars, little dunx was, well doing the exact same! But he too made a vow, he swore to himself that one day he would go to a race with the sole purpose of watching Herr Schumacher win.
Years later the little girl now grown into an elegant (???) young lady and the little boy now a man (physically but not mentally) met for the first time, this mutual passion for the sport and contradictory views of a single driver brought them together. Had it not been for that first conversation about F1, all of the other "things in common" may never have emerged – a love of rock music, a respect for crocodiles and an unrelenting hatred of Julia Roberts movies. Two and a half years after the initial meeting and many, many adventures later, the two finally decided that it was time to see a race for real.
Thankfully March was good month for television as there was really exciting six nations rugby to watch and for once, after decades of disappointment with the sharks, the team I was backing actually won! Then came the Australian grand prix and the strange realisation that in a few short days we would be at race for real. With sound advice from a website written by a ground hornbill called Suze Orman the budget was well on track. It was at this point that Kate, obviously suffering from severe spending withdrawals, sudden declared that we needed new luggage for our trip. Through adorable persuasion and with delicate tilting of her little nose Katie was able to persuade scrooge to purchase new luggage. Of course this was aided by the fact that in Nam you can buy a Louis Vuitton rip off for under five bucks. The reasoning behind the new luggage was sensible, in my opinion, as the only bags we had were backpacks or massive bags that we managed to fit our entire lives into for the trip to 'Nam. Off we went to the luggage shop where a nifty overnight bag was purchased for about the same price as a 2 litre bottle of milk in SA. In the shop the urge to spend money overwhelmed me so much that I insisted on getting a new backpack too. The reason – our current backpacks were "too big and made us look like foreigners".
Once the luggage scenario was sorted, another idea sprung to my mind. Malaysia is 4 degrees north of the equator so we would be in sun for three full days and getting sunburnt on top of a sunburn is not a pleasant experience, especially when Shylock had rationed our sunscreen. Very intelligently, I decided that sunhats were in order, lucky for me VN is full of hat shops as the Vietnamese are positively vampire-ish in their fear of the sun. I walked into a shop, dragging Duncan behind me (who was doing the Jack Russel "I don't want to go to the vet" walk) and, having champagne tastes, instantly fell in love with the most expensive hat in the shop. Duncan gave me the head tilted "not this month" look also known as the "you must be freaking crazy" look and I scurried away, soon to return with something equally glamorous but well within the budget. The only problem was that it was made for a Vietnamese sized head, BUT, this being Vietnam and full of industrious people the shop attendant whisked the hat away and returned 4 minutes later with the hat size now suitable for my western head.
The hat Kate bought was the sort of garment the queen would wear to a polo match but she was so chuffed with it and looked so sweet in it that I was glad to go without truffles and saffron for the next few days. When we returned home and began packing it soon became apparent that Kate's hat was so large it would not fit into the newly acquired overnight bag, this bothered me immensely as I knew, being the man, I would have carry the damn thing and feared that everyone would assume that the hat was mine. Let it be noted here that I did ask Duncan if we could take his old larger backpack as well, he then began to ask why we purchased the new back pack in the first place and why I insisted on having a hat deliberately disproportional to the new bag ( I am not a fan of wrinkles was my answer) Duncan then somehow origami folded my lovely new hat into a giant samoosa and shoved it into the overnight bag.
Friday morning eventually arrived and we were up at the crack of dawn, something which we are not used to doing here. After checking in at the airport, Duncan was ever so chivalrous and offered to carry the new backpack for a while. This sounded great to me as I was keen to get the last ciggie in before boarding a plane (a smokers nightmare.) There we were standing outside, getting excited, laughing, chatting and admiring the gorgeous sunrise before us when a loud "SHNAAP" was heard. Both a little worried, ( I instantly checked that my hip was not broken, I am almost thirty now and this is a common occurrence of the elderly) we looked around to eventually discover that the plastic clip holding the strap of the backpack had burst when Duncan had, apparently, flexed his 'pecs' in an ever macho way. I am still convinced that this was a tactical move so that he wouldn't have to carry the bag again. (A tactic known as the "Richard Carter-Brown" after my brother– this move was invented by Richard, the youngest of the Carter-Brown Clan, who being the smallest was always asked to make the family coffee. Fed up with these high percolation expectations Rich decided one day to start making the shittiest cups of coffee ever to be endured by humans. Not wanting to offend the lad we kept our disproval to ourselves but Richards days of being the family coffee boy were over). Whilst slightly annoyed that the one-day old bag was now tied together in a hobo looking way, I was quite chuffed that for once it wasn't my clumsiness that had resulted in something being broken. This mild annoyance vanished when, for the first time in our relationship, I was able to give Duncan the "I told you so" look and casually brought up the fact that I had asked him to bring his backpack too.
Fast forward two hours of turbulence, plastic cutlery and "the exits are being pointed out to you now." And we were finally in Malaysia.
We experienced mild culture shock upon arrival in Malaysia. Everything was so clean, people spoke English and things seemed to be able to work without the constant chaos that we have come to expect. While everything was going smoothly we thought we should take full advantage and go straight to the circuit to collect our tickets. A 5 minute bus ride later and we were presented with a grass bank with the words "Sepang International F1 circuit" sprawled across it. Beautiful. We were expecting to have to queue for about an hour to collect our prized possessions and walked into the office preparing ourselves. However, there were 2 lines for collection. One had about 150 people waiting, and the other had no one in line but two very bored looking people behind the counter. We thought we'd take our chance with the no liner. The man greeted us in a very pompous tone and said that his line was only for people who had booked through F1.com, and that all the other (and I swear he said 'peasants' here) 'people' have to wait in that line, and continued to point with a disgusted face. Good thing we booked through old Liberace's company then. His tone changed, he cracked what appeared to be a smile and presented us with the tickets, lanyards and ear plugs. "Pah, we're not gonna need ear plugs" we thought, and continued on our way.
We caught a bus back to our hotel and managed to see quite a bit of the countryside, we passed through areas that looked similar to Kloof, then an area resembling Port Louis and then just as we were passing through an uglier version of Stanger the bus stopped and were told that this was our destination. We caught a taxi from the bus stop to our hotel and after the wonderful chaos of HCMC we were amazed at how efficient everything was. Our taxi driver was very talkative and friendly and insisted on picking us up and taking us to the circuit the next day at 10am he even quoted us a really good price. The hotel as expected was quite basic, but our check-in was quick and friendly. This general theme of efficiency continued in our bedroom where in keeping with the theme the TV only had three channels (Asian pop, Asian soap opera and Asian home shopping network), the aircon only had one setting (Siberian breeze) and the bathroom was an all in one self cleaning unit (Could be mistaken for a mini bar in a western hotel, see below for description).
After admiring the wonderful view of the parking lot from our window and critiquing the completely mismatched oil painting of an English cottage we decided that a quite visit to the capital was in order and gathered our things to head out to KL. On our way out we noticed a sign on the back of the door with prices for all the items in the bedroom, apparently if we desired we could purchase the curtains, the TV remote and even the oil painting as souvenirs. Despite Kate's begging and pleading for the vanity chair I had to refuse, sadly we just didn't have the budget for it.
Everyone in Malaysia speaks English and Kuala Lumpur is very geared for tourist but despite this it's always easy to get lost in a strange city. Desperate not to miss the last train home we came up with a meeting point in the station if we separated, synchronised out watches and then walked out making a point to memorise the nearest land mark. We stepped out of the station and into the shadow of the Petronas towers. For those that don't know the current tallest twin towers in the world, each tower is higher than Empire State at well over 450 meters and they are visible from basically everywhere. As far as land marks go this one was pretty nifty. KL is wonderful, its clean the people are diverse and impossibly friendly it was completely different to what we have been used to. You can breathe without inhaling 2 stroke fumes for one thing and we were totally baffled by the four way stops, traffic obeying red lights and the lack of scooters on the pavements. Still in Vietnam mode we were jay walking into oncoming traffic, crossing the road without waiting for the lights and smiling when a bus drove past and gave us a lungful of familiar carbon monoxide, my we must have looked like tourists. After walking the city and seeing the sites we went to a pub where I had a giant beer in a frosted glass bigger than my head! On the train back to the hotel with a belly full of German ale and burger king I thought to myself that this day had been pretty special, little did I know how incredible the next day would be.
Saturday morning finally arrived and we were eager to get going. We walked outside expecting to see our new taxi driver friend waiting for us, but no. Eventually 10:20 came around and still no taxi driver so we asked reception to arrange one for us. No problem, the taxi will be outside in 10 minutes. 5 minutes later and who arrives, but our taxi driver from the previous night who had no recollection of ever meeting us before. The drive to the track was a strange one, for some reason the nut job that was transporting us was holding speed stick to the fan in the car. If it was actually speed stick it might have been bearable, but it smelt like bad toilet spray mixed with old lady perfume and I fought back the urge to stick my head out the window like a dog. Just as I thought I couldn't take it anymore, the driver pulled over on the highway, got out, changed his pair of shoes, then continued to drive while holding the vile smelling gel to the fan again. I was ecstatic to finally get out of the guys car and never ever get back into it, until he insisted on picking us up the next morning. We only agreed because we thought he would forget. Obviously he wasn't high enough for that yet.
We were delighted when we finally went to our seats, a grassy bank well over 600 meters long with views of well over half the race track. The top half of the area was covered so we could choose between sipping peach iced tea in the shade or basking with a beer in the sun.
Shortly after arriving the stadium erupted with the savage sound of internal combustion, we waited excitedly only to watch a pack of GP2 cars come flying round the track, the racing was exciting and the noise wonderful but it did make us wonder how much faster and louder the GP2 cars bigger angrier brothers would be. We didn't have to wait long to find out. After a really exciting GP2 race and a comparatively slow touring car race the F1 cars were unleashed for their final practice. Nothing quite prepares you for the noise of an F1 car and for the first ten minutes we sat there stunned and just bathed in the savage beauty of the noise. In the same way that a cup of coffee has over a thousand different aromas there are many, many elements that make up the sound of an F1 car, they are as loud as an African storm and every bit as fierce, you can honestly shout directly into some ones ear and they will not be able to hear you, they are that loud. But there are other elements too, a raw animalistic note like the roar of a lion, a harmonious note like Pavarotti standing on a drawing pin and an annoying metallic sound like Bjork and an alley cat fighting to the death in a drain pipe. Add in a bit of angle grinder and a blue whale with deli belly and that's pretty much the recipe for the sound of an F1 car.
The air tingles as they fly past and the speed is incomprehensible, the whole experience was surreal and the hour drifted past in a wave of explosive sound and flashes of colour. It was only a few hours later during the qualifying that it actually began to sink in.
Of course the highlight of the day was seeing Kate in her wonderful hat, which looked exactly like the roof of the grand stand at Sepang ( I am sure she planned that). She looked absolutely splendid and was easy to spot in a crowd, she looked as though she should be skipping instead of walking although with her track record she would probably twist an ankle, face plant into the mud and ruin her hat. As sweet as she looked her dark side came out later that evening when, after a long day, Kate severely reprimanded (Banele'd) the ticket lady at the train station and we bussed home again to ugly stanger. We got back to the hotel, for sale curtains and Anne Hathaway's cottage and had an early night sleep.
We have heard from a few people that Malaysian cuisine is fantastic, and I would love to say that we agree with this statement but everything was going so smoothly that we didn't want to chance our good fortune with bad breyani. I am slightly ashamed to say that we stuck to eating the usual western junk, but it seemed a worthwhile sacrifice when you consider what the bathrooms are like in Asia. A common trend is to put the shower above the loo and the hand basin is always situated just short of a thigh length away from the toilet. Meaning you are ALWAYS squashed, and should you need to use the bathroom just after someone has showered it means your feet will be cleaned with the soapy water on the floor and a nice wet toilet seat will await you. Now, we have experienced Malaysian efficiency and this stems into the bathrooms as well. Quite surprisingly, they are smaller than the bathrooms found in VN. Perhaps they do everything at once, going to the loo, showering and washing your hands and washing their bath towels while sitting in one place may be a time saver but it's something foreigners never get used to. We just have a different idea as to what bathroom should be like, I like to think it's more than a place to merely ablute, it is also a sacred chamber where you can admire your bag breaking 'pecs' in the mirror, pluck stray grey hairs from your side burns and sing like a Gregorian monk in the shower. Now I know why Duncan takes 4 times longer than me in the mornings.
An interesting side note and another reason why we didn't sample too much local cuisine.
Apparently the only thing worse than a smoker is an ex-smoker, allegedly we swan around with a (smoke free) air of self righteousness, cast judgemental stares at those with lesser will power and basically act as though all smokers have leprosy, or so I've been told. Much to my delight cigarette packs in Malaysia have grotesque pictures on them, presumably in an attempt to dissuade potential smokers, and being slightly odd, these were a constant source of entertainment for me. After my 'pec' flexing incident I was forbidden to carry the bag and every time young Kate wanted a ciggy I had to rummage around in the rucksack to find them, of course when I did I would make a point of showing her the disgusting picture and explain that that's what's happening to her lungs every time she lit up. This would have been funnier if the pictures weren't so gag worthy. So bad were the images of blackened lips, oozing wounds and open throats that there must have been a mistake at the printers. Somewhere in Southeast Asia I picture a plantation worker feverishly paging through a reptile book after being bitten by a cobra and, ironically, is about to breathe a sigh of relief when he sees that the symptoms of a cobra bite are a wheezy laugh and yellow fingers, I am sure of it. Anyway we were sitting at the track, having breakfast- a nutritious chicken hot dog -when Kate took a bite from the processed Vienna and there wedged inside it was a hideous red blob of chicken something, possibly its lung, possibly that weird dangly red thing under its beak but definitely revolting (I ultimately had the last laugh as smoking is known to suppress your hunger so unlike Duncan, I was not torn for the rest of the day between my grumbling belly and the thought of another chicken Vienna). Somehow after that the cancerous smoker wounds just weren't that scary anymore and for the rest of the weekend I could not look at Schummi's shiny red crash helmet without mock charging.
Sunday morning and the anticipation of the main event was almost too much to handle. We were quite surprised to walk outside and find the same taxi driver waiting for us, thankfully this time without weird smells. We got to the track pretty early, the crowds came in fairly quickly and the vibe on our hillstand was electric. We chilled out, watched GP2 races and the DTM series (all the cars I will own in the future)(Lamborghini's Ferrari's, Audi R8's, Corvettes, Lola's, TVR's, Lotus's we are going to have to read a lot more of the ground hornbills books to afford those) and enjoyed watching people run about with their flags. While waiting for the race a 10 year old boy walked past with his hands in his backpack, looked around for security, whipped out Carlsberg beer and tried to sell it to us. He even started bargaining himself down when we declined. 2 minutes later I got up to take a picture of Duncan when a stereotypical looking Malaysian man sitting beside us leaned over and asked in Queens English if we would like him to take a picture of us. This is one of the reasons I enjoyed the country so much, it is as diverse as SA and similar in so many ways. True to South East Asian weather, the heat was almost intolerable the whole day until 5 minutes before the race when it started raining. At least the temperature cooled down. The race started and the noise of the cars was incredible, better than I had ever expected it to be. I tried to record this but nothing quite captures the noise of 22 2.8 litre V8 F1 cars revving at over 16000 rpm cruising around a fast corner. Duncan and I just sat and smiled. The rain got heavier and the race was red flagged. I started to get really anxious about the race not starting again but had faith that Malaysian rain was similar to that in VN where it rains so much in 40 minutes that it floods the streets, then disappears and blue skies present themselves. This can be quite awkward when you didn't know it had ever begun raining, and step outside thinking the Saigon river has burst its banks. Never the less, the race restarted and we sat watching for an hour and a half in complete contentment.
The only blemish on the otherwise perfect weekend was an incompetent (drunk) taxi driver who got us lost going home and took us to three different hotels. Kate went Banele for the second time on the trip only this time with the ferocity of an F1 car and the guy left us sober, sorry and without charging us, and who said going Banele didn't work? A quick phone call from the wrong hotel and one sober taxi driver later and we were snuggling in bed chatting about the epic weekend we had just had.
We had an early start the next day and decided to get to the airport well before our flight, have a leisurely breakfast and explore the duty free shops. After all the lugubrious budgeting we actually had quite a bit of money left over and instead of exchanging our Ringgit back to Dong I gave it to Kate for a bit of retail therapy. After weeks of thrifty living poor Kate went mad and scurried from shop to shop in search of something to buy, she ran into Harrods only to take a photo of a teddy bear, visited the body shop but left with only a lip balm, then duty free with nothing, then a clothes shop again with nothing, momentarily it appeared that Kate had forgotten how to spend, we even went to Starbucks to look at flasks and left without a latte. Naturally I was accused of conditioning her in a Pavlovian manner not to spend money until finally a chunky shiny bracelet caught the Magpie's eye and we were able to leave Malaysia with a nice souvenir.
While the little girls hopes of seeing Michael Schumacher crash didn't come true, he did have an off. And while the boys dreams of seeing Michael Schumacher win a race wasn't fulfilled, he got to see his childhood champ qualify in 3rd and show some moments of sheer brilliance during the incident filled race, in a race after he had come out of retirement. And both got to see six world champions drive in a race that had both wet and dry conditions in a new country while sitting next to each other. Neither could have asked for a more perfect ending to a perfect weekend. In fact, the weekend was such a great success that after receiving our pay checks today we are off to the travel agent tomorrow to plan our next adventure.
