Mingji Liu

Miscellaneous travel thoughts, pre-2020

By Mingji Liu ·

Travel notes written pre–2020. Most recent first.

18 December 2019 — A balcony in Kuala Lumpur

Mary Oliver writes in her poem ‘In Malaysia’: “in the carved door / blossoms / yellow ivory pure white / swell and begin to open / the agony of their sweetness / far older than the house / far older than the city itself”

~~~

It’s quiet this morning on the balcony, overlooking colonial-era buildings and a courtyard strewn with rubble and moss. An old Chinese man is reading a newspaper behind me. Languid Kuala Lumpur. Already a brothy heat. I nurse my coffee. I’ve noticed that the locals become plumper in their happiness and the backpackers become gaunter in theirs.

Down below, a downspout is spewing brown water into an overflowing metal bin. Waste bags propagate in a darkling storeroom. Everywhere, corrugated patchwork rooftops. Blue, grey, green, red. Like shades of leaves, shades of petals.

Trash versus tropical growth. An endless battle. A sapling yearns from the gunk in the concrete guttering. Ferns burst from air conditioning units that cling like dirty barnacles to the walls. A cat lurks the weedy thickness behind the clotheslines. Roots, green and vermiform, slither from cracks above me. Concrete is an invention for dry summers and mild winters, not the raging, infinitely breeding tropics. Such a static thing could never win against so much aching life.

Time for a poem.

~~~

under this tin corrugated
ramshackle roof
blue in a way they can only paint in the tropics
the downpour is like a river of thunderclaps
cymbals dancing atop one another

within this deafening house
there must be a grandmother snoring next to the tv
a pot simmering into evening
a dog cursing his god given ears

and a child
imagining what sound snow would
make in his world —

like the paws of a cat?
or the whole sky humming down
with an even more mysterious music

12 December 2019 — Penang

Ah, yes. The awkwardness of eating alone in a nearly empty food court in Penang. You’re here because Anthony Bourdain ate here once. You’re partly in Penang because you liked that episode where he came here. You plan on eating at many of the George Town restaurants Bourdain ate at. Because he was cool and you are not. Well, guess what you uncool idiot. He also probably ate burgers out of a gutter while two days into a methadone program. Is that something you want as well?

The beer arrives like minor salvation. Finally, something to do: getting drunk in the syrupy, malaise-mongering heat while the overhead fans nuzzle your back. You’re not even nursing your beer, you’re shotting it like a speakeasy regular with burnt-out eyes. You see a thin blonde with a strawberry smoothie half her size. Probably an Instagram influencer. You watch a stocky white man order a bucket of Tiger beers all for himself. Also probably an influencer. You’re not even a normal person who follows the pied pipering of social media — you’re following syndicated broadcast recommendations like a prehistoric degenerate.

You can’t decide what to order. Too many stalls. Paralysis of choice. You’d have to leave the table for that. You’d have to have a modicum of mental strength. Oh, look. A baby cockroach just scuttled across the tabletop and sipped on some of the beer you spilt. A curious sesame seed with antennae. Wonder if it’ll get as drunk as me tonight? And feel as goddamn awkward.

Shit. Now a large Malaysian Chinese family with children have settled into the tables around you. Why did they have to flank you when there are so many other empty tables? And now you find the place too busy. And bad Christmas jingles are playing over the speakers. Too many patrons! Too much humanity! When will this constant tension, the inexorable forces of aversion and craving, the cycles of samsara end?

Time to make a move. Get up and order some chicken skewers. It’s better than nothing.

8 December 2019 — Kuala Lumpur

Kuala Lumpur!

Didn’t have the strongest recollections of the city (I remember being impressed by the Islamic Arts Museum and the Batu Caves were a highlight, obviously) so was keen to sniff it out some more.

Tried to follow urban planner Alain Bertaud’s dictum of learning a city by just randomly walking around it for a few hours. A terrible idea in this climate. At one point, while I was trudging up a hill to a Buddhist temple near Little India in the midday swelter, I wondered whether heatstroke was a distinct possibility.

I am thinking more favourably of KL on my second visit. Next time I have a layover here, I’ll extend my stay a full 24 hours. For one thing, I was surprised by how many streets and landmarks I could still remember. I have strong anxieties about my ability to form stable memories (something perhaps best discussed another time) so realising that I never ‘forgot’ the city was a gentle surprise.

A verdant, 24-hour city with cheap eats, an even cheaper foreign workforce, and a patchy light rail system that shrieks like a banshee. It ranks strongly on global liveability and safety indexes relative to other parts of Southeast Asia and you can tell. City of the muddy confluence: Singapore’s brusquer, grubbier step-brother (look, I don’t have time to edit all these thoughts). Significantly more construction everywhere than I remembered. Plus, as far as I could tell, the traffic was not this terrifyingly awful thing people kept telling me about.

The old colonial and Malay Islamic architecture scattered throughout the city is eye-catching. There’s also something cosy and innocently pleasant about travelling around a rich, cosmopolitan city which caters to a significant Muslim population. I’ll leave it as an exercise to the reader to determine the potentially problematic implications in that statement.

Condos and affluent shopping abound — three of the world’s ten largest shopping malls, in fact. Last time I was in KL, a bloke I met told me how the department stores in Malaysia were like Star Trek holodecks, with every pixel perfectly placed. It was an influential off-hand remark for me. Even now, whenever I walk into any department store in the world, I often think to myself ‘welcome to the fuckin’ Holodeck.’

As I was walking along the miserable-looking Klang River — more like a glorified toxic storm drain — I saw a large fish splash about. I couldn’t believe it! In that kind of muddy pollution! The endurance of life against all odds.

Night two: Scored a free ticket to see a martial arts tournament in Kuala Lumpur! Got to watch grown men (and women) beat the living bejeezus out of each other for our entertainment.

It was everything I should’ve expected but didn’t. The hype master. Ring girls with t-shirt cannons. Fighters with nicknames like “Babyface Killer” and “Shadowcat”. The stern Japanese referee who clearly wanted ‘a good clean fight’. Lots of bleeding noses, ears, and eyebrows. And the crowd obviously going wild whenever the Malaysian fighters went up.

I definitely preferred the kickboxing fights to the mixed martial arts ones. Too much hugging in the latter.

Onwards to Penang now.

5 December 2019 — Project Peregrinus

Dear friends.

As many of you know, I am about to embark on a seven-months-plus trip around the world.

“Project Peregrinus” (as I’ve dubbed this personal life project) has been in the works for much of 2019, with all the endless research and anxiety and excitement and self-doubt that has accompanied it. I’m a mildly seasoned traveller but I’ve never attempted something quite like this. My current plan is two months in India via Malaysia, followed by Egypt, Israel, and Jordan, and then onwards to continental Europe and beyond. I’ve planned and planned and planned, knowing fully well that none of it will go as expected.

Travel is one of my great passions in life — quite possibly my greatest passion. I have so many things I want to do on this trip. I want to see great works of art and explore major world cities. I want to visit some of the holiest sites on earth and some of the most ancient. I want to mainly travel by train and bus. I want to scuba dive and I want to meditate. I want to hike and I want to photograph. I want to read and I want to write. And by god, I want to seize the world’s reins while I still can.

Of course, I have no illusions about what it’ll be like. For one thing, I tend to travel on the less comfortable side, and for another, I am travelling solo. I know for a fact that I will experience many lows to complement the highs. That is simply how these things go. There will be days where I will feel intense loneliness. There will be days where I will fall sick. I will have moments of weakness and moments of failure. And I’ll meet some terrible people just as certainly I’ll meet incredible people. That is simply how everything goes.

Travel doesn’t automatically make you a better or smarter or more interesting person. It certainly can’t substitute for a personality. Travel doesn’t guarantee anything, quite frankly. But there is “something” there, I think. Some kind of essence, some type of crude matter that I want to hold onto and work with.

I’ve been told by people (perhaps only half-jokingly) on many occasions that this trip is my “quarter-life crisis” and a chance for me to “find my true self”. Bloody hell! Clichés abound! But I will be level with you: I also do need a break. Over the last little while, my mental health hasn’t been the best. I’m a bit lost with my career at the moment and recently I’ve been dealing with heartache. And I’ve felt burdened by personal disappointments, some lasting years. Travel can’t “fix” any of these, but a respite is always nice. Yes, a respite might do some good.

As you can no doubt tell, I am firmly putting on my writer’s hat. At the very least, I intend to thoroughly document my trip and post way too many photos and errant thoughts on Facebook and elsewhere. I wish to apologise ahead of time for the quantity and/or quality of what is about to come…

Anyway, I think that’s all I have to say for now. Time for one more night of fretful sleep in Melbourne and then it’s onwards and, hopefully, upwards.

*****

It’s almost time. And who better to turn to at a time like this than the great poet Seamus Heaney?

When they make the circle wide, it’s time to swim
out on your own and fill the element
with signatures on your own frequency,
echo soundings, searches, probes, allurements,
elver-gleams in the dark of the whole sea.

*****

And to quote the journalist and writer Ryszard Kapuściński:

Why was I travelling? To look, to walk around, to ask, to listen, to sniff, to think, to write.

22 August 2018 — MoMA at the NGV

MoMA at the NGV was satisfactory and I score it a six out of dix even though most of the pieces on play were the gallery’s B-side tracks as opposed to their hit singles too precious to release from the starry jewel box on 53rd Street in Midtown so there weren’t any particularly great Cézannes or O’Keeffes or even a single ruddy Rousseau for that matter but seeing some Matisse always warms the heart as does Jasper Johns and despite everyone crowding around Dali’s small but O so persistent memory I was much more delighted to see Chirico’s absolutely thrilling Gare Montparnasse Ah it’s good to see you again my old amico and before I go I must make the odd remark that the artwork labels for kiddie visitors were sometimes more interesting to read than the quote unquote adult labels above and this isn’t the first time the NGV has done this and O by the way Mister Warhola sucks because he’s practically the Nokia ringtone of pop art and now I’ve finished my review so goodnight.

22 January 2018 — Hong Kong

Hong Kong’s a hectic town. Visit if you like fun and want to perform penitence for the Opium Wars. Some neat little things to do, aside from the loud, larger-than-life, tourist attractions:

  1. Take the slow, dorky, double-decker trams across Hong Kong Island. They are lumbering turtles compared to the rabbit-paced streets around them.
  2. Go to a proper local tea cafe. Drink thick, over-brewed condensed milk tea. Have a middle-aged lady shout at you in Cantonese. Point at random (but delicious) things on their huge menu and have it served to you in five minutes flat.
  3. Buy dope-ass Chinese tea on the cheap. Shit’s the bomb, yo. Marvel at how pu’er tea can be aged for decades and cost ridiculous amounts.
  4. After going up Victoria Peak on the funicular tram, take a local double-decker bus down the mountain. Vividly imagine how you will plummet to your death as the bus driver swerves his way down the slope.

18 January 2018 — Singapore

Going to keep up my New Year’s goal of recording down more of my thoughts, so here’s a quick take on Singapore:

Second time visiting since my first trip in 2015 and my thoughts on the place have remained largely unchanged. Singlish is gibberish. Ticket prices for museums and galleries should be much cheaper. Public infrastructure is preternaturally efficient. The price of alcohol is ghastly - but good food is surprisingly affordable if you know where to go.

Those that know me well have likely heard my rambling critiques against putting Singapore on a pedestal as the gleaming city-upon-a-hill. Some comments I’ve brought up in the past:

On reflection, I think I’m just reacting to the clichéd praise that Singapore frequently (and in many cases, correctly) receives - how clean, efficient, and unbelievably safe it is, etc, etc. I like a bit of edginess and earthiness to the places I visit. Plus, I’ve never been a big fan of relentless technocracy and societal perfectibility (probably means I’m not a great economist). I enjoy being a contrarian, alas.

[An aside: If you want the absolute gold standard of anti-Singaporeanism, I highly recommend William Gibson’s infamous 1993 Wired piece “Disneyland with the Death Penalty”. It was so scathing, Wired magazine got banned for a while over there.]

Anyway, I’ll simply say this: visit Singapore if you get the chance, especially since everyone’s flights to Asia are going through Kuala Lumpur more and more these days. Make up your own goddamn minds.

16 January 2018 — South Korea

A review of South Korea based on two weeks of travel:

Seoul feels underrated as an asian metropolis compared to nearby cities like Tokyo and Shanghai. A vibrant urban powerhouse that is definitely worth a visit if you have a few days spare on your East Asia trip. Bullet points:

26 January 2014 — Some reflections on my travels

Written while jetlagged in Sydney.

Proem

Layover limbo at Abu Dhabi. This transit point in the nowhere, this artifice on the dunes, ex nihilo in the desert. Slivered on this foreign time zone, I find that the meaning of sunrise and sunset have become blurred like the contrails of aeroplanes long passed.

Look at all us interlopers! Slumpbacked on pleather seats, glaze-eyed on travelators. Round and round the whirling dervishes go. Around the pillars of Duty Free and shitty WiFi we dance and spin. Clutching handfuls of AED from the UAE in the ADI, round and round we go.

Paris

Down and out in Paris on a winter’s day. It is our lunchtime and we are sitting on a park bench under the phallic majesty of the Eiffel Tower, eating baguettes, fromage, and pâté like the worthless vagabonds we are. We clutch cold hunks of cheap sustenance between frozen fingers and shovel them between our chapped lips. Mmmm… It’s so… f-f-fucking… d-de-delicious…

The Parisians that stroll past look as well dressed as always.

Berlin

Standing behind the yellow line at Alexanderplatz, I wait for the next scheduled arrival of German efficiency. A drunk man in a khaki jacket staggers around on the platform, holding a plastic bag full of empty beer bottles.

A couple of the bottles roll onto the tracks. The drunk man jumps down onto the tracks and starts casually picking them up. There are shouts and screams and two people rush to pull him out of there just as the next train pulls into the station. I swear the S-Bahn almost hits him. He curses at them and then walks away, laughing.

‘Jesus Christ’, I say. The German man standing next to me agrees. ‘Crazy’, he says.

Zurich

I have boarded an early morning train for northern Italy. A gaunt Swiss man in a woollen beanie drops his coffee on the floor. ‘Merde!’ he cried. ‘Merde!’ And as if to reaffirm the nature of the world, he repeats in English: ‘Shit! Shit!’. The coffee water laps against the heels of my boots. I move forward a seat.

Turin

There once was a Christmas in Italy
Among the ANU student nobility.
With pasta and wine
And a Russian man, we dined,
Only time will reduce alcohol toxicity.

Florence

It is my final night in Florence. I am sitting on the slopes of the Palazzo Pitti, smoking and drinking beer. Only a handful of stars pierce the Tuscan cloudscape. The cobblestone streets feel old and sleepy. She offers me another cigarette. This is the happiest I have been in a long time.

Florence is surely the beautiful place on Earth. I will say no more.

Rome

Greasy pizza breakfast and Senegalese panini.

Open-air concert at the Spanish Steps. Overpriced gelato at Piazza Navona.

I wander the slick and sleepy New Year streets of Roma.

I toss two coins into Trevi Fountain.

It is sometimes good to be alone, my friend.

Vatican City

I am the first one up to the top of St. Peter’s Basilica this morning. Church bells thunder as I watch sunrise over St. Peter’s Square and the city of Rome. It is a beautiful sight.

Checkmate, atheists!

Venice

Nightfall in Venice, one must depart the narrow street squeeze of San Marco and San Polo and escape sideways into the depths of the city. Weaving through the empty canal corridors of Cannaregio and Castello, one becomes lost among the unlit walkways and dead-end bridges, lost with the lonely sound of boat creak and water lap-lapping on stone step.

Up ahead is a little square surrounded by shuttered façades of old shops. The locals here have not yet taken down the Christmas decorations. The street lamps cast a mulled, swollen haze of orange over this little square. Two children are playing soccer against a brick wall.

Have I finally found the real Venice? Or is this just another trick of the light?

Vienna

By god! European art will be the death of me! I have too many gold-gilded medieval altarpieces, too many paintings of brutalised saints and crucified messiahs, too many hideous Christ Childs and 16th century Flemish paintings with their creepy reptile-eyed Jesuses. I close my eyes and all I see are walls lined with the Annunciations of the Lord, Madonnas with Childs, Depositions of Christ, heads of John the Baptist and porcupined Saint Sebastians. The Lance of Longinus, the Holy Sponge, Saint Veronica with her flappity flap of flapping holy cloth.

I pray for a reprieve. Anything to snap me out of this wretched continental canonicity! If only the museum cafe weren’t so bloody overpriced, I might even stay here another hour…

Budapest

A warm winter is the worst kind of winter. No snow to let the earth sleep. An ugly, sluggish world laid bare without a layer of foundation, without its seasonal make-up. Surely the mighty Magyars built their empire on the dead, snow-bitten earth, not this tepid kingdom of a fool’s winter?

Prague

Midnight on the Charles Bridge. The hawkers, pickpockets, and beggarmen of Prague have all retired for the night. Only lovers and street cleaners remain. All of us caught under the dead gaze of a menagerie of saints.

A soft presence of snowfall is caught in the columns of street light. I recall that the Turkish gentleman at the pizzeria on Karlova street told me it snowed last winter for only thirty minutes. ‘It was boring’, he said.

I stand around on the bridge for a few minutes, readying myself for something to happen. But nothing does.

Dresden

I think I shall visit Dresden again in ten, twenty years. Perhaps by then the yawning gaps between the Altstadt skyline will have been finally filled up. Perhaps with time the Frauenkirche will no longer resemble the inside of a Hungarian bathhouse. Maybe even one day Neustadt will escape the clutches of its bourgeois bohème ways.

Ah yes! Elbflorenz reborn! How I would love to waltz down her wide streets once more. I would trace my fingers along the street art and ride the rumbling tram lines. I would kick through the dead leaves of Alaunpark, wander through its riverside flea market, before sailing down the Elbe herself to find out where all the pretty German girls are.