“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness,” Mark Twain wrote. It also has the power to awaken the senses. In 1962, I was an innocent abroad, a white boy plucked from homogenous suburban Toronto and deposited in the tropical, northern Malayan town of Ipoh. My father, born there during colonial times, had decided to move us to his hometown while he embarked on a writing project and explored his ancestral roots. I can still vividly remember all the exotic smells, sights and sounds of the place. A walk through Ipoh’s streets, past food stalls selling aromatic curries and spiky rambutans, dodging trishaw peddlers and pedestrians in sarongs and ch...
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