Ipoh street art walk and not a story in sight

You plunge into your imagination with high hopes as you stroll along these streets; hope that one day, to some extent, all the streets in our often grey and hectic world will resemble these.

A shady district. A shabby side street parallel to Jalan Sultan Iskandar. No tourists, just a cat. A local one. Great companion, an exquisite and graceful guide. I could adopt him or her (actually forgot to ask about the name) smuggling it somehow in my backpack and then back home. I might have a new friend… reminding me of Malaysia and those lovely couple of days in Ipoh.

With my head down to the ground, still chatting with the cat, I catch a glimpse of red flip flops and hear a male voice warning me:
– It’s not safe walking here. There is a bus stop over there. You should take one and leave.

Empty streets. He may be right. But the cat and my curiosity persist.

I’ve always enjoyed wandering and discovering the colors and shapes of ordinary life.

Later on, when I shows these two pics to a taxi driver who really insists on giving me a lift back to my hostel (while trying to me convince me that the very last bus had just gone), he throws me this a suspicious look and says:

– Are you stoned or something?
– Or something – I agree.

Though it’s the 6th largest city in Malaysia, you wouldn’t know it from the lazy moments I spent in this slow colonial town just hanging around and meeting a happy Polish girl who turned out to be a friend of a friend.

It’s a place where I could forget to pay for a hostel or simply receive a couple nights for free. It’s this sleepy town that made me decide that, sooner or later, I’m going to come back to Malaysia. I feel at home here, surrounded by the unique vibe of what at first glance appears to be a run-of-the-mill town

A true journey is not what you imagine it to be. Your labyrinths of expectations never quite match up to your roadmap. The details found on the map are out of sync with the here and now of experience in this place, avoided by tourists. This place where a sojourner, tired of wandering the world, doesn’t feel like they’re in yet another hotel. The kind you sometimes find yourself in, sitting on the balcony with a view of jagged a mountain landscape, telling yourself honest lies such as „I’ll come and visit you in Santa Monica”. Honest for that time and place because the truth is enclosed in the moment of present circumstances. Tomorrow it will be nothing but fiction.

You don’t have to hide anything as you chat with strangers who are more than willing to listen to you tell them everything and nothing or even nothing but the truth, which you find yourself doing with carefree abandon because you know you’ll never see eachother again. You can safely reveal all your secrets during casual, anonymous meetings; secrets about where you’ve been and where you’re going, secrets meant for a kindred spirit who’s wandered the world, knows the cost of ………(proszę po Polsku o co chodzi z tą extraterritorial flexibility)…and knows what it is to feel at home everywhere and nowhere.

Being on your own in this unremarkable yet nevertheless somehow utterly unique town, far off the beaten track, you feel alive.

Back home you find yourself craving more byways painted in storied street art cartoons and dying to hit the road again in the hope that one day the world will be yours.

Chinese temple in Ipoh

As you see, street art is not a new trick. We just change our legends and choose new heroes.

To be continued…in Georgetown. Believe the Mad Hatter.