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Trip of a Lifetime

We flew through the air on a refurbished plane,
the shakes and the rattles sure gave us some pain.
But we were the ones who fortune had named
to spend years Far East with our dad’s army game.

The journey exciting, we’d not been before
to a place where the winters did not foul our door,
so with overcoats changed for our tropical clothes
we boarded the plane to where God only knows.

With propellers screaming we tore on our way
and rose in the air as the ground dropped away,
though creaking and groaning the plane struggled on
though both the wings flapped as we flew to the sun.

British Eagle, the airline that carried us away,
a turbo prop  plane that had long past its day.
But that’s all our army could ever afford
when transporting dozen of families abroad.

Though night time in Turkey, at our first stop,
was not really the place where we found it too hot,
when we landed in India, some time around noon,
I think that it dawned what we’d be facing soon.

As we walked down the gantry to this foreign place
I thought the plane’s engines blew hot in our face,
but as we walked away the hot stream still blew strong
and it soon became clear t’was the wind all along!

But soon we resumed on our creaky old ride,
like sardines in a can we were packed back inside
and as Singapore rose in the sky like the sun
our new life in the tropics had really begun.

From a plane that just made it, next day was a train
with another full day of rough travelling again,
with seats made of wicker on which we would ride
and bunks made of wood crammed with people each side.

The view as we trundled down the track for that day
was worth any discomfort the train threw our way,
plantations and jungle, bananas and palms,
made this glorious Malaya a world full of charms.

Four years in Penang with its warmth, sun and sea 
changed not only my life but the essence of me,
though it’s now fifty years since I had to depart
this ‘Pearl of the Orients’ still lives in my heart.

Ivor G Davies

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