A journey of re-discovery. Beginning in the Far East.

This is not what Kuala Lumpur looked like when I lived there. Aged 13, I moved with my family to live in Malaysia; it was 1975. The tallest building was the Hilton which was 21 storeys high. There were chickens, sometimes even bullock carts, in the centre of the city and it was not yet a tourist destination. During the six years that I lived in KL, more Australian and New Zealand backpackers appeared, but no-one really ventured all the way from the UK or US for their holidays.

Growing up in the Far East was very different from how it would have been in the UK. Unusually, my parents decided to send us to schools locally, so I attended a small expat school following the English curriculum and took my ‘O’ levels there. I grew into a very different sort of young woman than I would have been if I had stayed in England.

I returned to the UK to attend university but, sadly, our departure was traumatic. I had just started my first year when my parents’ marriage broke up and I just never went back. The last time I left, I didn’t know I was leaving. I thought I was going to the UK to prepare for university and that I would be able to look forward to vacations in the place I knew as home.

That was over 30 years ago. Circumstances dictated that I was unable to travel to the Far East even for a holiday, even when Malaysia gradually became a popular holiday destination and the flights became shorter and more plentiful. The separation from my home and everything I knew and understood became so painful that I refused to talk or think about Malaysia. For three decades, I avoided conversations about my former home, changed channels when adverts for ‘Malaysia Truly Asia’ appeared and pretended that I had experienced a typical English teenagehood.

A couple of years ago, in a conversation with Bharti Kerai, I bravely uncovered my pain and learned that perhaps it was not so much homesickness as feelings of hurt and abandonment following the nature of my return to England and the fracture of our family and lifestyle. This insight helped me to feel a lot better and I could talk about Malaysia more easily, but I still felt sad that I had never been back.

Then, the unimaginable happened. Just over six months ago, I was given the opportunity to travel with my son to Malaysia and Singapore and to stay in five different locations over two weeks. I would be able to visit my former home, update my impressions and make my peace with the country I felt I belonged in as a girl. I was amazed, grateful and terrified, all at the same time. I knew I would be sad to see so many changes and I wondered how hard it would be to leave again at the end of two weeks. But most of all, I was excited and curious to find out how this pilgrimage would change me.

While I was away, I wrote enough to fill one and a half notebooks. I scribbled every day conscientiously, determined to preserve my impressions as clearly as possible. During April, I will be posting every day, inspired by my memories and my notes, sharing my journey. As much as it is an opportunity for me to tell my story to others, however, this is my way of finding out what I have learned, of creating a structure and a framework for my experience, and discovering how I might use it in the future.

Thank you for joining me on my journey of re-discovery.