i want to spend a lot of time travelling this summer - other than going up to melbourne to see minyin and caijing in the last two weeks of august, i very much want to go up to malacca before that, perhaps my dad and i can make a day trip, (i shall certainly write to teskey and nohrnberg about malacca afterwards, if i find anything useful for reading the lusiads!) and also to KL to see a certain seamstress about some kebayas for me - she's outfitted my cousin irene beautifully, and the bimbo in me wants the same. i also have about 70000 krisflyer miles (80000 by the time i get home next month) which i thought i might use to travel in southeast asia. i very much want to go to india. then poach and i are thinking we might go to cambodia together some time this year. also i'd like to go to vietnam, at some point, after yvonne's many posts of the street scenes during her travels: here, here and here. perhaps if some of you cambridge folk would come visit me and we can travel together in southeast asia? although if you want to go to bali or tioman or phuket - sorry, you're on your own. i don't do beaches and resorts and watersports (i will at most climb things and go into caves.)

(it is true, i think, that camoens has something to do with my wanting to spend time - really spend time - reading southeast asian history, and travelling, and seeing for myself, and learning local languages, and thinking about the region - as region rather than individual countries - but that is only one small part of the growing sense, over the last two years, of being, on the one hand, increasingly fed up with people and wanting to shout - i'm not east asian, okay! i may look it and speak mandarin and have ingrained in me certain cultural traditions that i inherited from my chinese ancestors who migrated to the region in the 19th century but i'm southeast asian and by the way singapore is not in china! do you know that in the time it takes to fly from singapore to beijing you could fly from boston to frankfurt? i have coconut milk in my diet! my national anthem is in malay! i speak singlish, can? - and on the other hand, the acute sense of being educated - and having quite consciously chosen to educated myself - in the most traditional way possible - latin, greek, anglo-saxon, medieval english and continental literatures - and in chinese classical literature - and of course both of those are mine, really mine, - but not even being able to speak malay - or know very much at all about the pre-colonial history or literature of the region - of even of singapore)

so yes, the impulse to travel, and specifically to these countries close to home, has to do with learning, and relearning, and seeing. on the other hand, i think i must be careful not to turn these into sentimental journeys - because we tend to do that - to sentimentalise history, to romanticise suffering, and i do not want this to turn into a sort of private henry mackenzie type sentimental journey where i keep feeling for the suffering and history - as if the act of witnessing, and the act of weeping - were enough. i think yvonne says in one of her posts - something about how one can't say i want to visit your country because you've suffered and you have real history. i should be on guard against becoming the man of feeling.