From the USA to Malaysia to the USA with Regret

 

On October 3, 1999, I stood in disarray on the edge of a sidewalk in Singapore and stared at a busy street. I looked up from the small cars and motorcycles rolling over the steaming asphalt to the sixth floor of Singapore General Hospital.

 

How did I end up here? was the only thought that I could verbalize.

 

Over the past two years, I had accumulated thousands of dollars in debt in the United States health care system. My wife’s family was Malaysian citizens, but they had heard that Singapore had some of the best hospitals in the world. So when my in-laws offered to meet us in Singapore, I had no choice but to comply.

 

After a week she was released from the hospital. We stayed in Singapore for the rest of the month in order for her to continue to check up with the doctor. I tried to find a job, but legal work is difficult to obtain when you’re not a citizen. Jobless and helpless, I wandered around the streets of Singapore-Orchard Boulevard, Pagoda Street, Serangoon Road, Sommerset Road, …sometimes I sat on the MRT (Mass Rapid Transit) and alighted at random stations. After a month of aimlessly drifting around the island of Singapore, I told my wife’s family, “I am American and I belong in the U. S. We will return as soon as she is well.”

 

On November 3, 1999 my wife, her family, and I took a bus across the Johor-Singapore Causeway from Singapore to Malaysia. We stayed in her home town of Maran for three and a half months. I think they had hoped that I would find a reason to stay in Malaysia, but in my culture shock, my lack of competence, and to my wife’s frustration I insisted that we return to the United States.

 

Late one night in February of 2000 my wife and I strolled through the Mobile Regional Airport in Mobile, Alabama. The next day we rented an apartment and began our life again in America. Over the next four years, I became a successful guitar instructor. Despite my success, I often found myself telling friends and students that in Malaysia I saw monkeys causing trouble in parks like squirrels play in your yard; Singapore General Hospital is as good as any hospital in the United States; or Kuala Lumpur is the most beautiful city I’ve ever seen. In the fast food restaurants of Mobile, I would say ‘take away’ instead of ‘to go.’ I spent hours studying Mandarin so that I could communicate easier with my in-laws.

 

In Singapore and Malaysia I lived in regret of what I did wrong in the United States. Why couldn’t I have taken care of my wife there? In the United States, I said our life would have turned out better in Singapore or Malaysia. I lived in regret of what I did wrong in the Southeast Asia. Why couldn’t I have made life work there?

 

In December of 2004, we took our two year old son to Malaysia. It was an adventurous trip to say the least. He cried the entire twenty-two hour plane ride. On the first night in the hotel in Kuala Lumpur he slipped in the bathroom and his head was bleeding. With him in arms I ran down stairs, jumped into a taxi, threw some green American cash in the taxi driver’s hand, and the driver rushed us to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital. They treated his minor head wound and found out that he had been crying on the airplane flight because of an ear infection. In Maran, my wife’s hometown, he hid behind a rack of clothes in clothing store and sent me searching all over the street for him.

 

Early on the morning of December 30, after an exhausting one month visit, my wife and son slept most of the taxi ride from Maran to the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. I watched the mountainous jungles rise and fall as the taxi driver flew through the snake like highways of Malaysia.

 

What would I have done had I not been a coward and left Malaysia four years ago? I asked myself.

 

I looked at my son who was asleep in his mother’s arms, and I thought, I would not have had the experience of rushing to Kuala Lumpur General Hospital at 3:00 a.m. because of a fall; or I would not know what it is like to have entire airplanes filled with people from Mobile Regional Airport to KLIA look at me like they wanted to kill me because of a crying baby;  and I would not know the mixed emotions of searching the streets of Maran for a child whom I was ready to kill or die for.

 

 

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6 responses to “From the USA to Malaysia to the USA with Regret

  1. Travel teaches us so many lessons and offers us rich experiences James. So happy you shared yours with us. Ditto on KL; it’s clean, beautiful and has real flavor too. We’re flying back for a day next month on a visa run from Bali. Looking forward to it for the food, the people and the fun experience. Thanks for your heart felt story.

    Ryan

  2. I hope you enjoy your time in my home country as much as I love it here in Monterey CA! My 18-month at the Naval Postgraduate School has been awesome, to say the least. Terima kasih 😉

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