Tom Sykes - Sini Sana: Travels in Malaysia

DAMYANTI BISWAS is a freelance writer for various magazines and journals. She is also the editor of the fashion section of lifeinitaly.com. Her short fiction has been published in Quarterly Literary Review Singapore and in anthologies by Marshall Cavendish and Monsoon Books.

ROBERT M. BRADLEY, a civil engineer specialising in water supply and waste-water disposal, has lived and worked in developing countries for over forty years. His work has taken him to many places in Asia. His experience of things Malaysian spreads over more than twenty years. A love of the outdoors and membership of numerous multiracial running groups have enabled him to better understand the peculiarities and cultural issues that weave their way through Asian society. Running around the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur and Petaling Jaya has introduced him to many lasting friendships, not least of these being his Malaysian wife, whom he first met in the middle of an oil palm plantation where they were both trying to follow the paper trail of a local Hash House Harrier group. While recognising the need for urban development, he is saddened by the rampant destruction of the environment in the Klang Valley.

SARAH CHEVERTON was born and raised in Portsmouth, England. She graduated from the University of Southampton in 2003. She tried out many career pathsincluding being a librarian, castle custodian, market researcher, and perhaps the first atheist verger in the history of Christianitybefore deciding that working for other people really wasnt for her and starting her own business as a freelance writer and researcher in 2007. Since then, Cheverton has worked for a range of clients, including local authorities and charities, and was a researcher for Peter Biskinds biography of Warren Beatty. She was first published in The Feminist Seventies by Raw Nerve Press, and has since published several pieces in Verve and Children and Young People Now. She is a contributing editor to Womens Views on News and is currently working on her first novel. Her story, A Complicated Paradise, is her first attempt at travel writing, following a three-month trip to Southeast Asia in 2009, an experience she is keen to repeat in the near future.

LEE EELEEN was born in London and now lives in Kuala Lumpur. Her stories have been published in Urban Odysseys: KL Stories and in Best of Southeast Asian Erotica. In 2009, she was shortlisted for the MPH-Alliance Bank National Short Story Prize 2009. She is working on a novel and a collection of stories.

LEE YU KIT was born in Kuala Lumpur, where he lives with his wife and their cat. An accountant by profession and training, he now works as a technologist in a global IT company. He combines his hobbieswriting, travel and photographyby contributing to magazines and newspapers. He is also the author of MalaysianCultureShiokalingam, a collection of stories on the peculiarities of Malaysian culture. He loves the outdoors, especially the Malaysian rainforest, and hiked up Gunung Tahan as part of his goal to hike up the ten tallest peaks in Peninsular Malaysia. The highest peak he has climbed is Mount Kilimanjaro. His current outdoor pursuit is road cycling.

JASON MORIARTY has been in the health-and-fitness business for twenty years. He has a black belt in martial arts and is a former kickboxing champion. Born and bred in Ireland, Moriarty has travelled extensively throughout Asia, preferring the slower pace of rail and sail. He writes for health-and-fitness magazines, and recently contributed a chapter to Life is an Open Secret, a book on exercising for Muslims during the fasting month. His blog, jasonmoriarty. blogspot.com, was named runner-up in the 2010 Social Media Awards sponsored by Rock Your Life.

SUBASHINI NAVARATNAM is Malaysian, but occasionally pretends she lives in Regency-era London. A pen-for-hire by day, she allows herself to write something creative once every five years. She writes to get to the heart of the big Other, as Jacques Lacan would have it, but mostly she does it to make fun of herself and others.

POLLY SZANTOR grew up in England where she trained as a speech-language pathologist. She emigrated to Canada in 1974 and settled in Nova Scotia, where her son still lives. Malaysia has been home to her for the past eight years, and she has travelled widely throughout Asia. She is especially interested in indigenous cultures. Her favourite journeys take her to out-of-the-way places where she has had many fascinating encounters.

JENNIFER STEPHEN graduated in animation and visual effects. Her dream to make music videos was cut short due to an unexpected illness, but with providence on her side, she later landed a job as a travel writer and eventually an editor, the other dream she had since she was little. Her job took her to places she never thought shed go and she did things she never imagined doing. The most important thing she learnt as a travel writer was to respect people and accept them for who they are. Following her stint in travel magazines, she moved on to the television industry. Having written for various newspapers and magazines, she hopes to continue writing travel pieces.

MARC WHITE is originally from Ireland but has lived in England, Belgium and France, and worked in several fields: hotels, accountancy, import-export, teaching English, telling lies for a living in a call centre, singing in a rock band, freelance translation, running a vegetarian restaurant in France, and several seasons as caretaker and head cook of a mountain hostel at the foot of a glacier in the Pyrenees National Park. He has travelled extensively throughout Europe and sub-Saharan Africa and speaks French, Dutch, Spanish and a smattering of German. In 1995, on the advice of his tai chi teacher, he took up yoga, and in 2004 made his first trip to India to learn more about it. He spent two years in India studying and practising yoga and meditation. He now lives in Langkawi where he runs a yoga centre with his Malaysian wife. Besides writing short stories, he reads, swims, plays the guitar and listens to the frogs singing in the paddy fields at night.

F.D. ZAINAL was born in Perak, but grew up in various places throughout the country. This nomadic lifestyle would later spill onto his adult life as well, where he has been a farmhand, factory worker, small business owner, part-time teacher, repairman and van driver. This is in addition to a short stint as a child labourer in his younger days. He now makes his home in Malacca where he enjoys copious bowls of Nyonya cendol with a good book in his hand.

ZHANG SU LI, in a sixth-form biology lab, discovered that power doesnt always lie in the hands of big things. An earthworm, pinned to a dissection board, challenged her as it held her entire future in its five inches of length. Her clinical phobia of slimy invertebrates shattered her childhood dream of becoming a veterinary surgeon. American novelist Edward Dahlberg said, When one realises that his life is worthless he either commits suicide or travels. Fortunately, she chose the latter. She spent the next twenty-five years travelling without much of a purpose. She prefers not knowing where shes going because thats when perceptions of beauty, ugliness, wealth, poverty, success and failure completely fall apart. The beauty of travel challenges her values again and again. She is the author of A Backpack and a Bit of Luck, a collection of travel narratives.

Hujan emas di negeri orang, hujan batu di negeri sendiri Thus begins a Malay version of the proverb, Be it ever so humble, theres no place like home. Humble, perhaps, but never humdrum. Sini Sana: Travels in Malaysia features the very Malaysian journeys of a dozen writers who have managed to uncover hidden gems that may not all glitter like gold, but are still rare and precious finds.