With all that was happening in the office, Frank thought it best to shut down for a while, lay low, make the pirates, thieves and lawyers think he’d closed shop for good. I couldn’t have agreed more – not that I understood what he was talking about. But I did understand that we’d have a few weeks to hang out and then go to the US to make the necessary arrangements for moving overseas for so long. When I called the owner of our apartment in Fortune Gardens to tell him we’d like to extend the lease, he sadly informed me that he had just rented it out to a family from Texas. Their agent seemed to know me, he said. ‘At least she knew you were looking for a bigger apartment,’ he said. ‘Strange,’ I said.

Frank suggested we take a trip, visit a neighbour. He’d heard about this fine little getaway in the highlands of Malaysia. It would be perfect for an outdoorsy experience. Quick flight, a road trip and sweaters at night.

So, off we go to take our first trek in the jungle … with kids.

First thing I notice, because we do have these kids along and they have certain predictable needs, is that there’s absolutely no milk in the Malaysian highlands. I can’t rough it without milk. Another thing I notice – I’m sorry to say – is that they pray too much. That just doesn’t leave enough time for other stuff, like chores, education, driving lessons, farming, picking out drapes …

On our first day, after hours of tooling around in a rented ‘car’ (Fred Flintstone should be so lucky), we find what looks to be a well-lit, well-stocked, generic sort of mini-mart. So, in we go, as a family, because, indeed, this is our first family vacation on this part of the planet and we want to do everything together, as a family. The first aisle is filled with several hundred different kinds of potato chips. The kids go wild. We smile and let them fill up a basket with enough flavours to simulate a well-balanced meal – vegie-flavoured, chicken-flavoured, roast-beef-flavoured and mutton-satay-flavoured.

The next aisle has more snacks, but apparently someone finally lost steam on what else could be done to the potato. They started on something called tapioca crisps and a crunchy extrusion sort of thing made from dahl flour. The packaging is a little more homemade-looking, some stapled shut at odd angles, some just taped closed. The next aisle has peanuts and dried noodle soup, and the last one has car supplies and candy. There are beer and smokes at the checkout.

For lunch, Frank has the beer, I have the cigarettes, and Sadie and Huxley rip through some bags of chips.

The women, all in proper, serious Muslim dress, just can’t get enough of Sadie and Huxley. Every time we’re spotted, we feel like the Beatles coming to America. They do this running ululation and kiss and pull and hug them. My kids are freaked; if the ladies’ noses weren’t covered, I’m sure Huxley would bite one.

We get ourselves into the car despite the throng and start the longest, windiest ride on earth. The roads become more and more narrow, the tarmac turns to rubble, which then disappears entirely until we’re driving on grass and dirt. Every turn is just a matter of luck, or out of luck, because if another car were to come by, it’d be us or them over the side of the mountain. Huxley pukes. It isn’t just the wild ride; it’s also my fault. I never did learn that not all cries are for food and I kept stuffing him with more and more. We have to drive a while before finding room to pull over and clean up.

Oh, we are so happy when we see the lush, green fields and rolling mountains of Frasier’s Hill come into view. It looks just like the picture in the brochure. There’s what appears to be a tidy, quaint village, an extremely invitinglooking pub, a horse stable and, perched up on a small, sunny mound, an outdoor restaurant.

Then we get a little closer.

I can’t take away the fact that it is hilly and it is green and the weather does feel finer than Singapore’s. Other than that, the village is mostly defunct – broken windows, empty stores, trash flying, flies flying, mosquitoes munching on my children. The pub – hallelujah – is not closed and from the outside it does still look inviting and old and cosy. Walking in, it’s a different story. You can’t get all that comfy without, I dunno, chairs? Never mind, we say, let’s check out the restaurant we saw up on the hill. It’s called The Satay Shack. There are swarms of things darting through the air and landing on mounds of dirty dishes, but we are determined not to get totally pissy, for the sake of the children and for the fact that this is a family vacation. Frank goes up to the service counter and says, ‘Some satays, please.’

‘We don’t sell satays.’

Course you don’t at The Satay Shack!

Back to the pub. The proprietor couldn’t be more delighted to see us return. He brings out a few folding chairs and tells us about his brother in America. Do we know him? We get some cold drinks and look at the menu. There are about four things on it. None of them will ever make it past the kids’ lips but I don’t want to disappoint the owner who, in his way, takes pride in his establishment. It dawns on me that Frasier’s Hill has seen better times and is simply tired and poor and ignored. I am still going to murder the person who had the nerve to recommend it as a vacation spot.

Our nasi lemak and samosas come with a hot dog frankfurt on the side. The kids are in luck after all. Frank and I, on the other hand, are not so lucky. We are cursed with the problem of how not to insult the owner and still not eat. Whatever is slipping around on our plates, it is absurd to call it food. It’s fatty, oily, greasy, smelly and ugly, and I think even hairy, too. We cover the plates with a napkin. Then, a butterfly truly the size of an ample rear end comes through the window and alights on our table. I knew the area was world-renowned for its butterflies but I agreed to come anyway. In other words, I pretty much couldn’t give a shit about colourful moths. They are bugs to me. Still, this one is cool because it is so big. Obscenely so, actually.

Off we canter back to the car to find the house we rented. The directions Frank received from the travel agent don’t seem to work. I ask some tourists with butterfly nets for help and that doesn’t work. (But Frank and I do feel so much better about everything after we laugh at them. ‘Just shoot me if I ever look like that,’ we say.) Then a helpful old codger motions for us to follow him and for some reason, we don’t take a moment to think ‘Why not?’ He leads us up and up and round and round to a gigantic flat house surrounded by a big iron fence. He climbs under the gate – a bit peculiar, that. He motions for us to wait and then disappears around the back. At last the gate opens and we go in. The remains of a recent party – smouldering butts, chip crumbs, dirty cups – decorate the living room. We are dumbfounded, but move through the hall to the bedrooms to put down our bags. The first one is occupied, or at least the lump in the bed seems pretty organic. We’re nudged along to another door leading to an unoccupied room. The old man nods his head.

I didn’t know it was coming, but rage takes over and I start screaming at everyone. I am incredibly fed up with my intrepid husband who ‘planned’ this trip apparently during that one moment when he became an idiot. This is a backwards garbage dump of a place, not just the house, the past 50 million miles. Plus, I still have the smell of vomit in my olfactory memory. I wave my hand under the old man’s nose. ‘See?’ To top it off, I saw a butterfly that was too big to be pretty. I’m pinching my wrist in an effort to shut up, cap it there. You’ve said enough. Stop, stop. You are ruining the vacation and scaring the kids. That just isn’t reason enough to actually calm down. But when the man laughs his veiny little bald head off, I stop and laugh, too. It turns out he thought we needed a place to sleep; he thought he was rescuing us. He doesn’t know where the hell 6 Orchid Lane is. This is 2 Crescent Close. He is obliging enough to direct us back to the centre of town.

‘We’re so stupid. Why don’t we just call the house and tell them to come get us?’ I say. Why in the world didn’t we think of this sooner?

Well, according to a shrinking Frank, the place we are to stay with two small children in a foreign and strange land has no phone. I better pray a few times in the right direction that our cell phones work up here if we need them.

I huff away and light a cigarette. I see a police station. ‘Frank!’ I shout. ‘They’ll know how to get there.’

Frank gets all shy about this because it hits two large nerves: one, that he’s asking for directions and two, it’s the police (oooohhh, like they’re aware of Frank’s high-school drug use). I march in. I take pen in hand and ask them to draw me a map. I ask for street names and landmarks and I repeat the directions to them eight times. I motion for us all to get back into the car. I let Frank drive so he can feel a little less castrated.

About five minutes later, there we are at 6 Orchid Lane. The bungalow is large and situated on a little, cultivated plateau overlooking the valley with a grand view of the mountains. The garden is brilliantly in bloom, full of exotic flowers. Unfortunately, the smell of rotting garbage robs the setting of its glory.

Our caretaker, ‘T’, and his family live behind our bungalow in a home of equal size and dimension, only theirs looks newer. I’m sure they switched accommodations on us. In ours, each bathroom is worse than the last. The first has a toilet and rusty tin shower. The second has a toilet and sink and the third just has a squatter. The bed sheets are made of Kleenex and, instead of a kitchen, T has brought in a bucket with a few ice cubes. I can hear his kids laughing at a show on their cable television. We don’t have a radio. But the place is roomy. No doubt it would have been less so with the introduction of furniture.

Never mind, this is a family vacation and all of these oddball events are what make it memorable. Let’s all go out and sit at the picnic table and dig into some bags of roti chips. ‘Huxley,’ I say, ‘I want you to eat all your spinach-flavoured crisps before you start on those chocolate ones.’

Later, we tuck the kids in bed and have a good story and a good laugh. They’re snug in their squeaky cots. We make up a one-act play with their stuffed animals, do a few shadow pictures on the wall. We eat them up, ‘Love you’, ‘Love you’, ‘Love you too’, and we retreat with haste out the door to start our happy hour. I uncork the wine, we find some light by rigging a lamp just outside the front door, and we begin to read aloud from the short story book we’re on. When we get peckish, we make a stew of peanuts, chips and dahl flour extrusions. We finish reading and discussing the goodness of our future and go to bed. Seemingly, moments later, there is clatter and confusion in the house. T is delivering us our breakfast. I know I didn’t tell him to.

We are all mad at T for waking us up unannounced, but when the meal arrives, it seems the kids are ready. There is buttery toast and instant coffee and one hot dog frankfurt on every plate. When I ask for milk, T is only too happy to oblige and returns with packets of non-dairy creamer. Maybe the kids could eat it like some sort of nutritious ‘Lickemaide’. T lurks about, presumably to fetch whatever else we need. I’m too bushed to try to get an egg out of him. Besides, his family is probably having ours right now on English muffins with hollandaise sauce.

Even after I’ve nodded and smiled and done my best to indicate that we are all set, things are swell, you can go now … really … you can … T hangs around. He leaves eventually, but only to appear unannounced at other times, walking in whenever he pleases, trying to learn a little more about America, like how we look when we’re naked and other practical things. ‘How many citizens are in a town of New York?’ ‘What car was cost?’ If we had furniture, I would have been able to duck out of the way at least. Instead, I run from him and shout out misinformation because I’m not sure myself. I’m angrier with him for taking the better house than I am with him for catching me off guard.

Our morning activity is a walk to a nice waterfall in the area. I’ve read that it’s a short walk along a paved path and down some steps to the falls. Sadly, we discover that they have found a way to make it anything but a sight to behold. First, wherever nature intended there to be rocks, there is cement – behind the falls, in front of the falls, even the ‘beach’ is a cement slab. The park service thought to supply trash cans but then forgot to assign someone the job of emptying them.

In short, it’s depressing. We head back to the car. Frank elbows me. ‘Eleven o’clock,’ he whispers. ‘Do me a favour and just kill me if I ever look like that.’ I locate the subjects. Oh, mood soaring, they are perfect. Just about the pastiest couple on earth, in their 50s or 60s – or 30s for that matter. Who can tell? Clearly British. They proudly wear their various butterfly nets in special carriers, like soldiers, and their binoculars and water canteen at a predetermined angle, for quick access. They have matching khaki outfits and their trouser legs are stuffed into their thick, woolly socks. Wow, do we ever feel better after that laugh.

We get into the car and drive to a hotel that was written up as being a landmark, full of antiques and history. It is a lovely place, even up close. It’s amply furnished and the only sign of the downturn in the tourist trade is the carpet, which is threadbare, but not sad. It adds character. It bespeaks decades of elegant, leisure-class expats journeying here to escape the heat and drink tea or scotch. As Frank waits for the hostess, I go off to the bathroom and who should I spy having a cuppa but the same British couple who made our day. They are now in matchy-matchy tea-drinking costumes.

‘Hi,’ I say to them. ‘I think we just saw you out by the waterfall.’

‘Oh yes, we were so disappointed,’ the woman says.

‘Rather,’ says the man (or maybe I just assumed he would say that and didn’t really listen).

‘Yeah, it was like travelling for miles to visit the sewer,’ I say.

‘You mean the waterfall?’ she asks. ‘We felt the same way, didn’t we, when we first came here.’

‘I should say so,’ says the man (or at least he should have).

‘You’ve been here before?’ I ask.

‘Oh yes, we make it a point to come when there’s a chance to see the magubericks. They eat the cinderberry pistula near the waterfall.’

‘Indeed,’ the man probably doesn’t say.

‘What are magubericks?’ I ask.

‘Oh, they are rare butterflies who grow to enormous dimensions,’ she says.

‘Wingspan of an eagle,’ he says and gulps down the remainder of his scotch.

‘Gee, I wonder if that thing we saw in the pub was one?’ I muse.

They lean forward in their chairs, eager for news. I describe the bug I saw. They press me to think hard, try harder – you aren’t trying hard enough – to remember the exact time I saw it.

‘Cheer up, Nick,’ says the lady. ‘We have two more weeks to finally track it down.’

‘Very well,’ I say for Nick.

It seems the couple have been coming over from Surrey for the past 20 years. Frank near busts a gut when I get to the part about them staying for two weeks.

We sit outside, surrounded by a glorious garden and a moody view of the mountains. From here, they look carpeted in curly green brush, half shrouded in clouds, wrapped around them like a shawl. I am dying to run wild over them. The weather is perfect and the kids are enjoying themselves on the swinging porch seat. We take lots of pictures and then horse around in the soft, cool grass. Sadie orders ‘bubble and squeak’ based on its name, I order the salmon salad, Frank, the cottage pie, and we get Huxley an omelette. The beers are nice and cold. The kids slurp up their apple juice – no milk again today. Our lunches come out together, which is extremely rare in Asia because either they think you are all sharing everything … or, they don’t care, you’ll take it when it’s ready … or, it’s just a coincidence you’re all sitting at the same table. The food looks wholesome and delicious; even the hot dog frankfurt curved on the rim of each plate seems plump with good health. I think a hot dog frankfurt is their garnish, like a parsley sprig. I wonder what happens when you order a hot dog.

As Frank says, ‘Vacations with you are like boot camp.’ After lunch, I have assigned us a big trek through the jungle on a path leading to the ‘Vicar’s Cottage’. My literature says it is ‘superb’ and the journey is suitable for young and old. Somebody edited out the line ‘for the first ten minutes’. At the beginning, the trail is nicely dug out and follows the edge of the mountain so that we can sense our altitude and enjoy the cool shade of the jungle vegetation. We see monkeys and are on the constant lookout for tigers. We stop to watch a six-pound centipede, and we pluck and dissect several types of berries and fruits. But that all grows stale as the troops grow cranky, hot and exhausted. The kids are thirsty. I’ve run out of water. The monkeys become menacing, hissing and lurking too nearby, scaring Sadie and enticing Huxley. But I make it perfectly clear to the family: we are not quitters. We will reach ‘Vicar’s Cottage’ and we will work as a team. The kids break the whine barrier as their mosquito bites inflame to the size of human heads. The path becomes narrower and overgrown, difficult to decipher. The markers aren’t presenting themselves as they once were. Are we still on a path?

Just when I’m about to cave, feeling great embarrassment and remorse, just when Frank is hurling another ‘Way to go, Columbus’ insult over to me, there’s a sign: ‘This way to Vicar’s Cottage – .02 kilometres.’

Hooray!

Tragically, that .02 kilometres is entirely straight up a slippery mud slope with far and few handholds. Frank and I are each balancing a kid on our back by now. Frank is good and mad. He tells me he hates me.

Glory be, we get to the top. We round the bend and there’s the ‘Vicar’s Cottage’. It’s a heap of stones covered in graffiti and sprinkled with broken beer bottles. There’s a soiled mattress in the corner. Naughty vicar!

The retreat is quicker than the one we made at the falls. We’re getting good at this turning-on-our-heels-in-disappointment-and-disgust thing. I try to make it all happy by singing a song but no one joins in. Oh, except when Frank starts singing a song, then the kids scream ‘Bravo’ and ask for an encore. But once the trail levels and becomes well defined, there’s a bit of jocularity, and it’s okay that it’s all at my expense. Long as they’re happy again. Frank has Sadie on his shoulders and is leading the way. I have Huxley on mine. I spy a big old mud blob on Frank’s calf. I bend down and flick it off. ‘Just a little mud, honey, I got it off.’ But blood starts spurting out. It’s dripping onto his socks and dribbling down over his nice new hiking boots. He keeps walking. He doesn’t know he’s bleeding. He doesn’t know he’s been leeched. I am faced with quite a dilemma: do I tell him? Do I let him bleed to death (he was pretty nasty back there) and save myself the lecture? Should I watch it for a while for something to do?

I decide on not telling him, and watching. After a few hours, the wound has finally coagulated. Back at our bungalow I gather the dirty laundry as fast as I can and he never even knows he lost a bucket of blood. My only problem is how I am going to convince him to wear long pants tucked into his socks for tomorrow’s hike.