The road to Penang

7 1/2 hours to kill on the train ride north, to the island of Penang.

Palm trees, farms, fields, lakes and more palm trees. When I tire of the scenery, I turn my attention to the movie playing on loop, a cut price Bradley Cooper affair. He and a sinewy-necked Kurt Russell are saving some pretty people from drowning on a big boat.

My Booker Prize Winnah takes a turn for the intriguing and ends with an interesting moral dilemma. I sleep. Eat a custard doughnut that tastes of nail polish remover. Listen to Joy Division and Kate Nash. Write my memoirs.

Eons pass, and then I'm off the icebox train and walking toward the ferry. The sun slaps me in the face. The heat wraps itself around my limbs and strangles them. I haven't had a conversation with anyone for about 24hrs.

I spend the evening drinking with a fellow lone traveller. Tim is interesting, intelligent and funny. He's also quite attractive and just the right side of 40. We have a good chat about the joys of solo travel, his dream to create his own compost toilet and all the books we disagree on. It's nice to talk with someone about the pleasures of solitude.

He tells me how every relationship he has had, including the one with his wife, has ended during holidays together, and now he travels alone. I point out the common denominator for him. He negs me a few times: I talk too much, am only interested in my own opinions, am "a little strange" etc. All true, but these are quirks rather than flaws, surely.

Inevitably, with every beer, I become less strange, and considerably more interesting to him. Sadly, he is one of those tedious men who thinks that he can merely tell a woman that she is intelligent and the shock of this flattery will send her hurtling into his arms. I restrain myself.

Finally, after the sixth beer, I become Beautiful. He lays a meaningful, and therefore meaningless, hand on my knee and stares at me for a long, long time. Silence. If he starts trying to read my palm, I decide I will leave. Seven beers: now, I have become Amazing.

While he is throwing up in the gutter outside the cafe, I think about all the brilliant, intelligent, amazing, kind, resourceful women I know. We do not not need to be told. I'm not sure how long he spends evacuating his stomach, but it's long enough for me to strike up conversation with the Nigerian guy behind me, ask about his holiday plans, what he thinks of Malaysia, how long his flight was, the connecting flight codes between Nigeria and Kualar Lumpar...

I leave Tim lurching in the road, and retire to bed.