Page 59 - Michael Frost-Voyages to Maturity-23531.indd

The Mantua

2 Mantua and Malwa

he car ride up to Kuala Lumpur was very instructive; most ports offer
Ta distorted vision of the country being visited, as they are unusually
cosmopolitan. In most countries’ ports, certainly in Malaya, the lingua franca
might as well be English, and shops have available most things foreigners –
crew and passengers – might want. Inland, Malaya presented a most attractive
countryside, lush, well-ordered and interesting in its variety of plantations,
unusual trees and shrubs, and, of course, acres of rubber trees.

At that time Kuala Lumpur, while a city of some significance, was very different
from the concrete and glass jungle that an advancing economy has produced.
The country had the benefits of political stability, was patently prosperous and
had the advantage of being in sharp contrast to nearby Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia, where the escalating conflict demonstrated the clay feet of the world’s
greatest power. Indonesia was becoming an economic and political quagmire,
Burma, shortly to be a reclusive military dictatorship, apparently descending into
poverty, and Thailand was home to amiability but sharp social divisions. Malaya
was helped by having resources of tin, rubber (earlier, and very successfully,
transplanted from Brazil) and a well-educated population. The problem that
could have prevented progress, that of the racial balance between the Malays, the
Chinese and the Indians had apparently been resolved by a delicate agreement
as to the role of each faction, the only recent issue of substance having been the
communist insurgency which the British and Malayan armies had successfully

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