1966: Letters

Letter home, Dec 19, 1965 (three weeks before I begin my teaching assignment):

Dear family, don’t worry – the letter flurry will die down as soon as my schedule settles down. But now we are still traveling like mad all over the peninsula, and the correspondence must go like mad as well.  After Penang (what a fine place!) we took taxis up to Baling, a small town in Kedah, 3 1/2 hours north of Penang. Cost: about $1.25 each. Taxes are by far the most convenient mode of transportation, and are also surprisingly cheap. From Penang to Singapore (about 500 miles), for example, the cost is less than seven dollars per person.  In fact, everything over here is cheap, even compared with Greek prices. Shirts are around $1.50, pants around four dollars, and of course all hand tailored. I haven’t spent more than seventy five cents for a full Chinese, Malay, or Indian meal, and some of them run into four or five courses.  And just about everything is available in the big cities, so don’t worry about me running out of supplies. 

Well, back to Baling.  From there, we split up into smaller groups, and mine headed for Wang, a tiny kampong only a few miles from the Thai border. The next three days I lived with the local gang, sleeping on the floor, eating rice and curry with my hands, attending a wedding, observing, rubber tappers, monkeys, snakes, big, lizards, and cute kids, and talking with the locals as well as with the PC volunteers, who was stationed there. Our last day we filled with a visit to an aborigine village And to a Thai monastery, and then left for Taiping, very much impressed with the community development PC volunteers we have met, and perhaps a little envious of their way of life.  Taiping was a beautiful spot – it’s name means “everlasting piece“ - and it lives up to the name. Beautiful gardens and lakes, fun shops, the best Chinese, food to date, and all ringed with honest to goodness jungle, full of gibbons, otters (!), And even a few tigers (but I never saw any). Typing is also big on tin mining, so I of course, had to visit a tin mine. Unfortunately, and this is true with most of the larger cities, 80% or more of the population is Chinese, so my Malay didn’t change much for the better.  My new camera is really getting a workout, especially on the fantastic flowers, trees, and ferns, so keep expecting boxes of slides in the future. I also have some good snapshots of me printed on postcards, but you won’t get one for a while – they are packed until I arrive at my permanent assignment (wherever that may be). 

After Taiping, we headed south east to Kuala Kangsar, where I am now resting up at the Malay College. This morning we visited the sultan‘s palace (sultan of Perak, to be exact), a fine  building with lots of onions on top, and then had a little rice with goodies. Tomorrow it is aborigine village time again, and then oh boy, a little skin diving off Pangkor Island. Tough life, this Peace Corps. The weather is beautiful – even more pleasant than good old, Glyfada, if you want a comparison – and my health is dandy. I love the food, the people, the animals, the plants, the new stars, and I’ll just bet you I will end up loving teaching. You might as well come on over next year sometime – I could give you one hell of a good time. 

P. S. To Len and or Bruce:  if you need a portable radio, camera, recorder, etc. I am duty free for six more months. Just give me the word…