I’m posting this from home. We’ve stopped in Port Dickson for two nights on our way up north – for laundry, for internet, for sanity.

Tomorrow we go on the road again. I’m leaving all my art materials behind – the watercolor kit, brushes, color pencils, pencils, scissors, glue, fuckin’ stapler – and keeping only the video camera, small notebook and ONE pen. I had this romantic idea of making art on the road, you see. Alas! The will is strong but the flesh is aching, sweaty and unable to do much more than shower at the end of the day.

Right ho my dears, onwards with an actual roadtrip update. I’m trying to post these in the order they happened, so there’s some kind of continuity.

Before we left Singapore, we stopped by Haw Par Villa, or the famous Tiger Balm Gardens.

Dudes, Haw Par Villa is some serious CRAZY.

It’s just… ahhh, how do I even… Ok, you know what a diorama is? It’s like someone was ordered to make elaborate life-size dioramas of all the major themes/works/touchstones of Chinese culture, with sly and subtle focus on the ‘moral and ethical values’ of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism. So you’ve got animals from the Chinese zodiac, Journey to the West, Ten Courts of Hell, all manner of major and minor deities and more, so much more.

It’s fun, and very fucked up. I was brought there as a child, which I’m sure left all sorts of psychological scars. I remember being vaguely terrified but fascinated by the characters, colors and shapes.

This time though, after the initial high, I started to feel strangely oppressed. The artist kid in me still loved the visual LSD of Haw Par Villa, but the adult, the woman, couldn’t stand the morality.

It was like wandering around inside the head of a Chinese patriarch, full of gods, violence, misogyny, ghosts, rituals, rules and elaborate punishments. A colorful place, but a rigid one. Unyielding. I can’t live there.

Where there are lots of tits. (I don’t mind the tits. More tits. Tits forever!)

Tits ahoy!

Where evil temptresses seduce righteous men.

And… I don’t even know what’s going on here. I gather it has something to do with motherhood. Who IS that at her breast? Husband? Father? Father-in-law?

Where the punishment for prostitues in hell is drowning in a pool of filthy blood. Of course, only women are prostitutes.

Where wise, bearded men pronounce judgement on poor mortals:

There’s that judgy judge again. Strokin’ on his wise beard, watchin’ on a sawin’.

On the other hand, where this crab lady also resides. I wouldn’t mind being the crab lady. She is awesome.

Also, these dudes are cool. I would be the crab lady and I would hang out with these dudes. And then we would bust out of Haw Par Villa and set up a pacifist, non-hierarchical autonomous community.

We will take these freaky pandas with us.