Trip of a Lifetime

We flew through the air on a refurbished plane, the shakes and the rattles sure gave us some pain. But we were the ones who fortune had named to spend years Far East with our dad’s army game. The journey exciting, we’d not been before to a place where the winters did not foul our door, so with overcoats changed for our tropical clothes we boarded the plane to where God only knows. With propellers screaming we tore on our way and rose in the air as the ground dropped away, though creaking and groaning the plane struggled on though both the wings flapped as we flew to the sun. British Eagle, the airline that carried us away, a turbo prop plane that had long past its day. But that’s all our army could ever afford when transporting dozen of families abroad. Though night time in Turkey, at our first stop, was not really the place where we found it too hot, when we landed in India, some time around noon, I think that it dawned what we’d be facing soon. As we walked down the gantry to this foreign place I thought the plane’s engines blew hot in our face, but as we walked away the hot stream still blew strong and it soon became clear t’was the wind all along! But soon we resumed on our creaky old ride, like sardines in a can we were packed back inside and as Singapore rose in the sky like the sun our new life in the tropics had really begun. From a plane that just made it, next day was a train with another full day of rough travelling again, with seats made of wicker on which we would ride and bunks made of wood crammed with people each side. The view as we trundled down the track for that day was worth any discomfort the train threw our way, plantations and jungle, bananas and palms, made this glorious Malaya a world full of charms. Four years in Penang with its warmth, sun and sea changed not only my life but the essence of me, though it’s now fifty years since I had to depart this ‘Pearl of the Orients’ still lives in my heart. Ivor G Davies