Around the World in 1980s Days - Part 5

In the fifth and penultimate part of her world trip in 1980, Josephine Parmeter travels from Southern China to Sri Lanka (Ceylon).

A note on values - in 1980, £5 (the price of some goods mentioned), would be around £16 today, while £50 - the fine for litter she mentions in Singapore would be £160 today. No wonder it was clean!
 

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Wednesday afternoon. After a three-hour flight we arrive in driving rain in Canton. The plain misses the runway by 4°. We make it in the second time around.
 
We arrive at 6 pm and are taken by bus to the hotel. It is filthy. The weather is 30°F warmer than the North, subtropical vegetation. We see grass for the first time in China. Onto a 16 course banquet at Fung Tang restaurant with flowers and water gardens lit with lanterns. There are speeches from the local chairman of China Tourist Ministry. Yvette takes a fancy to him and he comes and shakes her hand grinning. Human after all! Very nice Mandarin Chinese guide -- likes Australians, specialises in Medical Tours? Aid from Australia? We all finish at 10 pm even though the meal is still in progress! Back to hotel. Yvette is getting cold so we finish my small half bottle of whiskey and giggled till late. An American woman and her daughter in the next room are so pleased to hear laughter they don't complain. The mother is tangled up in mosquito netting anyway! The food here is much richer and more tasty but an indigestible snake was course six. The beer is good, but the wine is awful.
 
Friday. Bus to Kwangchow Station. Many formalities and we must not take out a Chinese money. Super Chinese train with revolving seats and colour television showing cultural films and also animated cartoon teaching peasants about crop spraying. Beautifully done.
 
Pass through paddy fields and wheat, cabbage, celery. No sign of industry but farms in South China have some machinery. The weather is warm and damp -- good for crops. Peasants wear coolie hats which people keep off sun and rain. They are quite heavy, as are fitted on inside round straw support. South China is an awful anti-climax after Peking and the North. Mixed feelings at pending arrival in Hong Kong. First sight of Kowloon was of skyscrapers perched on top of mountains -- strange after the flat agricultural land.
 
Hong Kong. Clouds obscure peaks. Skyscrapers as far and high as we can see. So many people, so much noise -- can't adjust after Peking. Shopping in Ocean Terminal. Collapse into bed and sleep forever -- it seems. Visit shops after dinner. Buy suitcases.
 
Saturday. Out on Canton Road to see housing developments, Vietnam Boat people and traffic jams. Work for everyone! Buses through New Territories to China. Border at Shum Chum. See where refugees swim across the river. Why? Chaos on messy smallholdings. See Friesian herd of cows which is kept inside all time as nowhere to graze. See Hakka Chinese women begging. They wear big hat with black curtain round, carrying bamboo poles and baskets and ask one dollars for a "photogrope"! See lovely flowers, burial chair -- two years temporary burial. `
 
Back to Kowloon via Sha Tin racecourse. The Hong Kong University looks like a hilltop prison.
 
Sunday. Take Star Ferry to Hong Kong Island for shopping at Red China Emporium. Change money at Grindlay's Bank - pronounced Glinnoy Bank! Super shops -- Gucci Pucci etc, Ernies, Valentino, Cardin, Jourdan etc. Frank has shirts made at Fi Ty and coat and trousers at Johnson Dong - 48-hours -- finished at 8 pm before midnight sailing! Ruth and Ellen come on board for news of China. They fly home on Wednesday. Sad. Send off by Ghurkha pipe and drum band.
 
Wednesday. Arrive Singapore. The Russian container ship in our berth finally moves after two hours waiting! It's a beautiful city. Breathtaking new architecture looks fabulous with the local vegetation. Enormous trees and parks, flowers everywhere. It's chaotic, there are long distances between A and B but it's very lovely and clean. There is a £50 fine if anyone throws a bus ticket or cigarette end on the ground. You must put those in a litter bin. There is no sign of anyone wearing long hair. The temperature is 85°F 100°F, the humidity is 101°F. The people are very nice if Chinese but the Malays are a bit sullen.
 
Our taxi driver tells us he went to Vietnam up the Mekong River for his holiday in 1972 before Communism came. Now he can't go but he says the country is very beautiful and very rich land. Singapore is a huge container port.
 
Prices here are not cheap like China but the stores sell Paris dresses -- Dior, Cardin etc alongside Hallmark birthday cards, plastic and crocodile bags etc.
 
Visit cultural centre and see rosewood carving, silk embroidery, copper work. Have lunch at Rasa Singapore where at the outside tables one eats local dishes of one's choice - these are selected from various kiosks where the food is prepared and cooked - boiled chicken, prawn fritters, strange fish and dumplings and very hot sauces. The beer is good. Great slices of pineapple and melon for sale.
 
We shop for silks at Rewas, which is a specialist shopping centre on the Orchard Road.
 
We see lights from Crows Nest Bar. The shipping at anchor is a lovely site - all lit up at night -- almost like city.
 
Friday. Straits of Malacca -- much traffic and many vast tankers. Some colourful Malaysian fishing boats pass close by to starboard. The temperature is 90° F and the humidity 70° F.
 
Monday. We arrive at Madras at  8 pm. It is an Iron Ore Port, very, very hot and dusty with a rust red dust. We take a bus tour of the city. There is incredible poverty everywhere and also some very beautiful contrast in architectural styles. There are many signs of colonial buildings which are now used as a public administration offices and colleges, medical schools etc. Little children follow and beg for money. Temperatures 85° to 90°F.
 
We see the church where Clive of India was married. A pleasant Indian woman guide wearing a yellow silks sari trails us through the dirty dusty streets to show us a Hindu temple. Worshippers offer lotus flower and coconut to the gods then go and bath in the "holy water", which is a stagnant pond mercifully covered with water lilies. White cows wander freely amidst the traffic. There are old Morris cars, Austins, bicycles, ancient trucks and carts drawn by two bullocks with horns painted - one green, one red.
 
It's a new year for one of the religions so crowds everywhere are just standing about or sitting in the squalor. The women are very beautiful and a young girls are really charming and positively exotically beautiful. After the temple, we visit the Art Museum - it is a fine gold sandstone building that looks like a cathedral. The early Bronzes date from 2nd century BC but I don't like the line. It is too sensuous and compared with contemporary Greek or Chinese or Egyptian seems too erotic. Some of the temple carvings, which finely done and very vigorous, are also obscene, but the general effect of nine vertical layers of figures climbing upwards towards Vishnu is truly remarkable.
 
The people vary from vacant eyed beggars and incredibly poor families living in shacks of cardboard and unbelievable squalor just on the sidewalks to the smiling face of businessmen and shopkeepers with a sense of purpose. The officials are bossy and officious.
 
We visit a handicrafts centre to see the best of India and export crafts -- silks, carpets, jewellery, carvings, ivory, brass etc. The carpets seem very silky and copy Persian patterns. They are very pretty but very expensive. Little men unfurl floor rugs in the blink of an eye, at a great pace, and never cease their sales patter. If only one could meditate for a few minutes one could easily be tempted to buy. Onto a little shop to buy cotton sari. We pass the fruit and vegetable market -- plastic buckets, tin pans, strange vegetables. Dirt everywhere including cow dung and vegetable peelings.
 
Back to ship after three and three-quarter hours for a cool lunch.
 
Revived after beer, we set forth again to explore the market stalls set up on the quayside. These include silks, cottons, ivory carvings, rugs etc. A shoe repairer sits on the dockside and does a "while you wait" service. Incredible bargains -- snakeskin purse and wallet for £5.
 
Relations and friends of crew come aboard to visit. Our dining room steward has a wife and four children who came from Bombay travelling 24 hours to see him for a few hours. Another's brother and sister-in-law and friends came 1200 miles by bus over two days and nights to see him. His mother was not well enough to come. The women folk are lovely gentle creatures wearing beautiful saris and make P&O passengers look like old cows!
 
Tuesday. Last day on board. We say farewell to everybody and play deck tennis with Yvette and have a final swim. Say farewell to Syd and Gary in the bar -good laugh, Spaniards German boys Australian Brian. Rhoda, the art teacher, says she is very sad as she wanted my paintings in the exhibition. She kisses me farewell.
 
Wednesday. Sri Lanka -- farewell to the Canberra!