Absorbing the Ambience of the Peninsular North by Train

By William Tham

September 2020 FEATURE
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Masjid Zahir remains imposing after a century.
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THERE IS SOMETHING romantic about railways. In Penangite Wan Phing Lim’s essay, Slowly, Slowly into the Night, she documented her journey from Johor to Butterworth, clattering through a cross-section of the peninsula. For Lim, the far north remained out of reach. But now the electrified Komuter Northern Sector stretches from Padang Rengas in Perak all the way to the Thai border. Having the chance she did not have, I caught the commuter at its terminus, sitting back as the train...

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William Tham

has been published in NANG, PR&TA, The Best of World SF: Volume 2, and the Southeast Asian Review of English. He co-edited The Second Link: An Anthology of Malaysian and Singaporean Writing.


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