I Married the Funny Guy From the Karaoke Bar in Malaysia

In 1996, I was assigned by my American university to teach in our MBA program in Malaysia. I was super excited about this. It seemed like a big adventure. Going to a place that was completely on the other side of the world. Meet new people with different languages and cultures. I really admired the colorful flowery dresses that the ladies wear, and couldn’t wait to get there and buy one for myself.

I remember being very selective about what to pack. I would be teaching in a muslim university and the women dress conservatively. I was told that they didn’t expect Americans to dress like them, but I wanted to look appropriate. I made sure that the clothes for work had long sleeves and at least knee length skirts. I talked to my colleagues about it, those who had already been there. Most of them had really great photos and interesting stories to tell about their time there. In my opinion, buying and wearing new clothes was one of the most exciting parts about going there. I even lost a few pounds, so I could look my best.

The trip to Malaysia is a little more than 24 hours long. I couldn’t even imagine being on an airplane that long. I’ve never been able to sleep on planes very well, so I was a little worried about how I could make the long trip more comfortable. My dad told me that he knew a Japanese travel agent who could arrange for me to stay in Tokyo for a few days and do some sight seeing. Wow! I was going to see Japan and Malaysia! I could hardly believe that I was living such a glamorous life! I felt like a rock star.

Finally, the day came to go. I went a couple of weeks before my teaching started, so I would have some time to adjust before work started. The plane ride to Japan was like mild torture. It was about 14 hours to Tokyo, and I was really tired and achy by the time I got there. I was really glad to get off the plane in Tokyo for a few days.

One thing I learned, very quickly, is that it is hard to find people in Japan who can speak English. If I ever go back again, I will arrange ahead of time to find an English speaking guide. I was able to get to my hotel and check into my room. It was the smallest hotel room I have ever seem. I am guessing that it was similar to the size of a typical room that you would stay in on a cruise ship.

Even eating meals became a challenge. I couldn’t speak the language or read a menu. Basically, I started walking the streets until I found a place where I could get food. One was McDonalds. I saw that they had pictures of the meals, so I could just point to the one I wanted. The other place I went frequently was the 7–11 convenience store. They had ready-made sandwiches that I could go in and pick up myself. Tokyo is a very big and very crowded city. I was a little bit afraid of getting lost and not being able to find my way back to the hotel. What I decided to do was to go to the subway station and just get on any train that happened to come by. I would stay on for a few stops until I saw an area that looked like it would be interesting, and then I got off. I made sure to remember how many stops it was to the subway station nearest to my hotel. When I got off, I would walk around the area. I really liked seeing the stores, parks and art galleries. When I had enough, I took the same train back the same number of stops to get back to my hotel.

I was especially bored and lonely at night in my room. This was before the internet, so I couldn’t look at Facebook or Netflix. I even tried to watch TV, but couldn’t find anything I was interested in. I guess I should have brought a good book along, but in all the excitement, I must have forgotten to do that.

After a few days, I got on a plane again and flew the nine or ten hours to Malaysia. One of my colleagues picked me up at the airport and took me to my hotel. I was really glad to see a familiar face and talk to people in English again. I was still very lonely. I had hardly spoken to anybody all week, so I was really glad to get to Malaysia, where most people speak several languages, including English.

There are three ethnic groups in Malaysia. The “Malays” are the most indigenous people, and to be the leaders in the government. Most of them are also Muslims. The second group are the Chinese, and many of them are leaders of business. The third and smaller group is people of Indian (India) ancestry. The university that I was teaching in was predominantly for Muslim students.

One of the first things I noticed was that there was a karaoke bar on the first floor of my hotel. I really like to sing and I was dying to talk to some other people, so I decided to go in and check it out. I had no idea what to wear, so I wore a knee length dress that looked a little bit like an old lady’s nightgown, and some sandals with socks, mostly because it was comfortable. It took a bit of courage to go in, sit down, and order a beer. The other patrons looked like a fun group of people, who were laughing, talking and singing.

I noticed that one guy seemed to be the most popular person there. He appeared to be the entertainer of the group, telling jokes that made everyone laugh. I had been only sitting by myself for a few minutes before the guy came to my table and asked me if I would like to join him and his friends. Of course I agreed! I was thirty-six years old at the time, and he and his friends appeared to be about my age. I found out that my new friend’s name was Ricky. I think I asked how he happened to have an English name. He told me that when he was a teenager, it was popular to adopt an English nickname. He explained that his legal name was Kim Chuan. One of the first things he asked was if I was Amish. I guess my dress and socks-with-sandals looked a little out of place. We probably laughed a lot about that.

Ricky spoke English very well, but with a thick accent. I had trouble understanding him at first, especially in a noisy bar. I had to ask him to repeat himself several times. Feeling frustrated, I decided to repeat the weird sentences that I thought he was saying. This caused both of us to start laughing again really hard. I found myself talking, singing and having a great time. I’m not usually a late night person, but i think I stayed pretty late that first night.

It’s been a long time, but I believe that Ricky asked me to go out with him the next day. Very quickly, we became a couple. He would show me around the Kuala Lumpur area and almost every night we would go to the karaoke bar together. We even developed a signature song: “California Dreamin’” by the Mamas and Papas, which we sang in perfect harmony. It was not long before I asked Ricky if he would be interested in going back to the United States with me, and he said he was. We were only together a few weeks before we were talking about getting married. We almost got married in Malaysia, and I can’t remember now why we didn’t. For some reason, we decided to wait until we got back to the United States.

All this continued while I was teaching. I worked most of the day and spent time with Ricky in the late afternoons and evenings. It was one of the most fun times I have ever had, even to this day. During that time, we traveled a lot and did a lot of laughing. He started to take me to visit his family sometimes on the weekends. They were very friendly and welcoming. I was finished teaching for the semester after about ten weeks. I decided to stay in Malaysia with Ricky a few weeks longer to do some more traveling and sight seeing.

At the time, Ricky was a salesman for a major wholesale book distributer in Malaysia. He made personal sales calls to book stores all over the country. Interestingly, he was going to be traveling to the island of Borneo for a few weeks, and he asked me to come along. I think my colleagues were a little worried about what I was getting myself into. Just to be safe, I gave them information about where I was going and how to get in touch with me. I also contacted my parents in the USA to let them know where I was and what I was doing.

The first city we went to in Borneo was a small city named Kuching, which means cat in the Malay language. I wish that I still had the pictures of us standing in front of the big cat statue in the middle of the town. We stayed in a fancy hotel, where the Sultan of Brunai stays when he comes to town. We even had a butler who took us on a tour of the Sultan’s suite. There is a really interesting attraction there called the Cultural Village. It is a great place to spend the day. They have lots of traditional and tribal houses and buildings that people can tour. They have “villagers” in tribal and traditional costumes and you can have your picture taken with them. At the end of the tour, you go into a large auditorium, and there is a cultural program with beautiful dancers. One of the highlights of the show are men who can shoot darts out of a hollow tube. They did amazing tricks like burst balloons with their darts from an across the room. It was all very impressive, and I took lots of pictures.

We stayed in Kuching for about three or four nights. It was very exciting and glamorous. It felt like we were on the honeymoon, even though we were not married yet. Another thing that I remember was that I started to feel a little bit sick sometimes. Since it was not that serious, I didn’t give it much thought at the time. I’ll talk more about this later.

Soon after we left Kuching, we flew to the Muslim country of Brunei. I had not even heard of the Sultan of Brunei before this. When I was there I heard about him a lot. I think most of the stores had a picture of him and his two wives on their wall. I never heard of anyone in modern times who actually had two wives. I was thinking that this might be a difficult situation to handle. I certainly can’t imagine having two husbands. I can’t even imagine finding two men who I could talk into doing this. There are only a few things that I remember about Brunei. One was that the hotel we stayed at had a really nice swimming pool and I really liked spending time there. Ricky also took me to a big amusement park, that I believe was free to get into, courtesy of the Sultan. We also passed by the Sultan’s property, where the palace is, on the way to the amusement park, and the property was huge.

We stayed at two other places on Borneo. One was a hotel on the beach with beautiful sunsets. The other was a rather small town close to the jungle. I took a trip to an Orangutan preserve and it turned out to be a memorable experience. There was a short path through the jungle to where there was a wooden platform where people were literally interacting with orangutans. There is no way this would happen in the United States, because I’m sure that people would get bitten or hurt by an orangutan and sue the place out of business. I sat down to watch what was going on, when some older boys near me started to get up and move. I realized that an orangutan was coming really close to them and also to me. The boys started to run away and so did I. I believe that it actually grabbed onto my purse or jacket that was hanging behind me. I kept running until the orangutan let go. I think I turned around to see it falling on it’s butt, while I was still running away. I didn’t go back and went to try to find a taxi back to my hotel. When I look back on that incident, it was funny and scary at the same time.

That was our last stop on our tour of Borneo, and we flew back to Kuala Lumpur. We spent a few days there getting ready to go back to the United States. By this time, I was starting to get a little homesick. I wanted to go back to my own house in Ohio. Ricky’s whole extended family went with us to say goodbye at the airport. I was wondering how long it would be before we saw them again. As it turns out, we would come back to Malaysia about two years later.

When we got home, Ricky started looking for a job in our small college town. He ended up getting a job selling advertising for a small independent newspaper. Now, it’s more than twenty-five years later, and he still works as an advertising salesman for a newspaper. We also started working on getting a green card for Ricky. I hired an immigration lawyer, and that helped to move things along. We also were planning to go to the courthouse and have a small, informal wedding. My parents came to serve as the witnesses.

There was something on my mind that I waited to find out about until after I got back home. I went to a drug store and bought a test. As I suspected, I was pregnant. I had probably been pregnant since we were in Kuching, because that’s when I started feeling a little bit sick sometimes. I think it’s another reason I started feeling homesick. I was really happy with this news, and was excited to be a mom for the first and only time.

I had a difficult pregnancy and ended up in the hospital for more than five weeks. My son Christopher Blair Chan was born at only thirty weeks, but he quickly grew strong and healthy. He is now a nurse in Columbus, Ohio. My marriage to Ricky, however, only survived a few years. He still lives in Ohio, a little ways north of Columbus, not too far from our son Chris. I am happily retired and living in Mexico.

Even though our marriage didn’t work out, I still have fond memories of the early days of our relationship in Malaysia. I also got a really great son out of the deal. So, overall, things worked out pretty well.