Motorcycle Explorer December 2014 Issue 3 | Page 70

M
y quest for a passage to India was opening up
another world but the larger shipping agents and
companies had little time for me. After all, my aim
didn’t fit into their streamlined operations and as they
could see they were dealing with an ever hopeful
budget traveller, they knew they weren’t going to add
any real weight to their bank accounts.
I met Yang in his favourite café. In George Town cafés
are the centre of daily life for aspiring entrepreneurs
and I was looking for someone who could help me find
a ship using other than the conventional methods. I
hoped that as is so often the case in such
circumstances, it’s personal contacts and favours that
can make something unusual work. In status, Yang’s
favourite haunt was up a level from the café stalls, but
only just. The owner was a Chinese, tubby, greasy-
haired, raucous chap who loved his own jokes.
You share tables quite automatically in cafés such as
this and I had the good fortune to sit next to Yang. A
wheeler and dealer, with it was said, many fingers in
the port’s pies, he had shoulder-length jet-black hair,
and was wearing a crisp blue shirt and a perfectly
knotted red tie. Others in the café sweated in the
hardly moving air in much more casual and grimy
working clothes. Yang looked at me and said, “You
mustn’t mind his sense of humour you know, this is his
way and people love him for it. Many drink and eat
here only for the entertainment. They don’t come for
the quality of the food that’s for sure.” He then turned
away from me and carried on his conversation with the
other man at the table. I waited my
him and then explained my quest.
he could help me, for a small fee an
palm grease. At the time I was rathe
every Overlander knows, sometime
the most unusual of places.
I returned to the café several more
Yang had been doing for me. He se
in the place and I soon clicked that
unofficial office. I was sad that I did
much Bahasa or Mandarin but in a w
understanding the languages was i
that as Yang was doing his deals, I h
on facial expressions and body mo
speak a language all of their own. N
most of his clients I could tell how
I never could with Yang as he had t
maintain a poker face regardless of
angry the other person got. But Yan
anywhere on my behalf.
My final silver lining came in the fo
made wood and paper fans for a liv
described himself as an ‘Old Fashio
with all the power tools he had lyin
tempting to dispute that. Cheung’s
filled with bundles of cane which w
the wall like rolls of tan-coloured c
workbench, but seemed to regard t
pretty useless piece of furniture as
enjoyed working at street level. Aft
me over; he told me he enjoyed pe
and that he was aware of what I’d b
shady ringside spot. He was perce