Free The Angel of Bang Kwang Prison by Susan Aldous, Nicola Pierce Page A

Butterworth Regional Meteorological Office of the Malaysian Meteorological Service of the Royal Malaysian Air Force.
    We lived very simply. I received small gifts of money and donations from my family and friends in Australia. Then when my visa ran out I would fly to Singapore and do a bit of fund-raising there. The locals were very generous and always liked to give a donation towards whatever project I was working on.
    I worked hard in Penang. I had brought puppets over from Australia and Ben and I frequently put on shows for kids. We also set up a service to help out the disabled people in our area. I wanted to learn the Malay language because I hoped to get into one-on-one counselling. However, it quickly became apparent that I wouldn’t be using it much as everyone I came in contact with was actually Chinese, or Chinese-Malaysian. It made more sense to learn Hokkien, which is the Chinese language—or dialect—of the Hoklo, an ethnic-cultural group that originated in Fujian. People marvelled at my speed at picking up the language, but as far as I was concerned, my becoming fluent in a short amount of time just proved to me that I was meant to be in Asia; it was where I belonged. In fact I’d go further and say that I was predestined to live here. The Thais would say I must have been Asian in a previous life.
    There are large numbers of Hokkien descendants in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Thailand. I know this because I think I’ve met most of them! Our Chinese house-mate introduced us to all her friends and then they took us out at night to meet other people. The Chinese are a friendly, curious bunch and make it extremely easy for you to chat them up at the local food stalls. These stalls are great meeting places at night and the food is good too. They’re not afraid to ask questions, and I love to talk, so we were perfect for each other. Also, the fact that I was Australian was a big plus; because of the Australian Air Force base Aussie dollars were very popular. I was meeting quite a lot of disenchanted young Chinese people and ended up giving quite a few impromptu counselling sessions alongside learning Hokkien and Mandarin Chinese. I enjoyed these people and even today I would probably be more suited to the Chinese personality than the Malay. The Chinese are just more direct; you always know where you are with them. No matter where I have travelled to I always end up meeting Chinese people. When I went to Indonesia a few months later I ended up counselling wealthy Chinese people. They were very open with me, perhaps because I was an independent foreigner who wanted and needed nothing from them.
    I stayed in Penang for a year or so. I would have to leave every so often for another place, like Songkla, because I hadn’t got a long term visa, so I would need to leave to get my passport stamped elsewhere. There was nothing grand or routine about our work. I wasn’t interested in getting involved and working through organised Christian groups or churches—they were too bureaucratic and narrow-minded for me and spent a lot of time debating denominational theories. Instead, I worked very informally: for instance one day I got a very strong feeling that I should go to the beach—Penang has the most fabulous beaches—and when I got there I got chatting to this Chinese guy who was utterly fed up with himself and his life. After a couple of hours in conversation I challenged him to come and help me out for a bit with my work, which he duly accepted, taking his mind off his problems and making him feel a whole lot better. Another time I got on a bus and happened to sit next to a woman who was practically suicidal. I got off the bus with her and we went for a coffee, over which we talked until she too felt better. This type of one-on-one work is perfect for helping me to assimilate myself into the culture of the country I’m working in. It’s like a backdoor in, which allows me to skip over