those hitch-hiking days of yore (ii)

i also learnt another lesson from one of my hitch-hiking trips : be careful whom you choose as your hitch-hiking partner. on one of my many sojourns in malaysia, i partnered one of my neighbours, from the same kampong.

sometime after the trip, i was called in by my principal, mr thomas tan. it seemed the people from isd wanted to interview me. i was not duly worried because i had not done anything wrong but i was mystified as to why they would want to interview me.

when i went down to the robinson road office, i was told by the investigating officer that they had trailed me and my partner on our trip up to penang. they were able to tell me which hotels we had checked into. i was cleared but they suspected my partner, an ex-police officer, of being a drug trafficker.

i had parted company with him in penang. he moved on to thailand while i made my way back to singapore, making stops at kuala lumpur and melaka.

later, i found out that he had escaped to united kingdom, where he got married and settled down. he has not been back since.